Editor. M. Zelm, Gehenbuehlstr. 18A, D-70499 Stuttgart
The CIMOSA - News is published by the CIMOSA Association. The CIMOSA News will report on CIMOSA applications, evolution of its technical specification, advancements in standardisation and related items. Contributions from other parties are welcome. The CIMOSA - News will be printed periodically and will be distributed to all parties interested in CIMOSA. The CIMOSA - News is also available in WWW under the address http://cimosa.cnt.pl/News/
A Reference Model of Production Planning in Microsystems has been developed at the KfK-Karlsruhe. This modelling application is concerned with documentation, planning, analysis and simulation in the very complex technology environment of microsystems production. For each microcomponent - the fabrication processes with various parameters and equipment resources including configuration must be analysed, simulated and evaluated prior to the physical production. An integrated tool box consisting of three tools was used : GTVOICE for the design specification model, the expert system MIKADO to systematically explore technical manufacturing alternatives, process plans and expected yield and the LeanMcCIM tool for simulation of process times and costs, allowing benchmark systems based on the Economic view.
Model of Quality Engineering in the product design process: A recent application reported from FIAT at the CIMOSA Workshop on 95-09-27 in Brussels is concerned with modelling the quality engineering process with the goal to predict the final quality level of concurrent product design tasks while reducing the overall design time. Quantitative assessments are made on the quality level of the concurrent design tasks and simulated to obtain the final outgoing quality level versus the elapsed development time.
A comparison of the modelling methodologies CIMOSA, IEM (Integrated Enterprise Modelling) and PERA (Purdue Enterprise Reference Architecture) has been made with the goal to achieve a better common understanding, to improve harmonisation and to demonstrate the benefits of a common process oriented representation of enterprise modelling. The modelling methodologies were described in terms of their information exchange with the environment - i.e. between CIMOSA domains - and in terms of the internal process structure and information used and produced. The comparison enables to assess coverage of the life cycle and shows the different emphasis on the different life cycle phases
A comparison study of tools and environments to analyse the capability of modelling tools and model enacting systems from the CIMOSA viewpoint is in preparation. A total of 77 products has been identified and analysed together with a vendor inquiry about trends towards openness of their tools or systems. Tools are broken down into the categories graphical process documentation, simulation of production logistics, process enactment (limited workflow control) and business process management (advanced workflow management). Openness is defined in terms of supported client/server platforms, interoperability through model enactment services, integrateability of applications etc.
Enhancements in the description of process behaviour to include ill-structured processes have been proposed. Ill-structured processes are processes for which the exact sequence of all employed sub-processes is not completely known. To describe ill-structured processes, two types of behavioural rules, random choice rules and open set rules need to be added to the previous rule set.
The Economic view mentioned earlier, aims to collect and structure relevant information for evaluation of economic aspects of enterprise operations represented in Benchmark Objects and to provide for its evaluation through the use of Economic Objects. Economic relevant information (time, cost, etc.) is expressed as a set of Benchmark Elements and is linked to other Business Modelling Constructs like products, processes, activities, resources to collect their economic information. Discussions have started to introduce the Economic view as a separate modelling view of the CIMOSA Modelling Framework with a documentation in the Technical Baseline.
The CIMOSA Association has provided input to ISO TC 184/SC5/WG1 concerning the work on the proposed ISO Standard for an Enterprise Integration framework.
Further CIMOSA contributions were made to the document N90 : 'Constructs for Enterprise Modelling', which is prepared by CEN/TC310/WG1 and may later become a European Pre-Standard. The role of the CIMOSA Association is to focus on standardising the modelling framework and the constructs and to form a link to CEN/TC310/WG1 in order to consolidate inputs based on the experience - as for instance the use of CIMOSA constructs in the CIMOSA validation - gathered in AMICE and related projects.
A workshop 'CIMOSA Advances', was held in Brussels on September 27, 1995. The workshop was organised by the CIMOSA Association, jointly with the CEC, DGIII F7/IiM Accompanying Measures Programme. The workshop was attended by 34 participants, two third of which were users of enterprise modelling from industry and from academia. The objective of the workshop was to provide an overview of the progress and the advances of CIMOSA, which have been achieved since the termination of the AMICE Consortium in March 1994. The agenda was covering information dissemination, enhancements of the Technical Baseline, harmonisation of various modelling methodologies, inputs to standardisation in CEN and ISO, contributions to the IFAC/IFIP Task Force as well as modelling applications and tools. From the discussions it became clear that the main emphasis has to focus on harmonisation of methods and user oriented tools as well as offering reference solutions in enterprise modelling.
At a conference of the Workflow Management Coalition on August 9-11, 1995 in Oakland/Calif a CIMOSA presentation was made and contacts for potential co-operation with this organisation, representing 162 world-wide users and vendors of workflow applications have been established. CIMOSA and the Workflow Management Reference Model have similar concepts aiming at open systems for modelling and enactment of business processes. Especially the CIMOSA modelling language is considered richer and more user oriented compared to that of other modelling concepts.
As deliverables of the ESPRIT Project 9814 : 'CIMOSA Promotion and Evolution Support' the following new promotion material is available:
For more details please request the list of CIMOSA offerings from the CIMOSA Association.
The CIMOSA Association is involved in promotion of CIMOSA, its active support in national, European and international standardisation and in consolidation of the evolution of its technical specification - the CIMOSA Technical Baseline. The CIMOSA Association acts as a focal point for all parties involved in applying CIMOSA in industrial and research environments.
Members of the CIMOSA Association are industrial and research organisations involved in exploitation of CIMOSA or interested in the subject of enterprise integration (EI). Membership is open to any organisation interested to support EI and CIMOSA.
For more information please contact K. Kosanke at the address given on the first page.
www-cimosa@cnt.pl, 14.01.1995 (last update: 15.01.1996)