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 the Internet under the address http://cimosa.cnt.pl/News/
'CIMOSA Promotion and Evolution Support' has been completed its work in March 1996 and a final report is under preparation.
The project has been carried out jointly by the CIMOSA Association, Germany, EEISS, Germany and Partners of the ESPRIT Project VOICE represented by TNO, The Netherlands. The partners have been engaged in four different activities:
A1 General Information Dissemination has held 3 workshops (Aachen, Brussels, Loughborough) covering different subjects in enterprise integration and produced a primer document and a computer aided tutorial on CIMOSA, a hypertext version of the CIMOSA Technical Baseline and several publications on CIMOSA industrial applications and further developments of CIMOSA. Furthermore, a dedicated WWW Server 'http://cimosa.cnt.pl' has been installed, where most documents, news and other information are available.
A2 Encouragement of Industrial Exploitation has held one workshop (Offenburg) and has been engaged in a very thorough analysis of available tools for modelling, analysis and enactment of work processes (200 tools). The final report is available from EEISS.
A3 Information Dissemination on Standardisation and participation in standardisation activities has held three 3 meetings (Frankfurt, Brussels and Loughbororugh) and has focused on enterprise modelling which has lead to the ENV 12 204 on Enterprise Modelling Constructs. This activity has also analysed standardisation work on Integrating Infrastructure (EMEIS Enterprise Modelling Execution and Integration Services) leading to additional inputs to standardisation. Other activities have taken place in relation with the IFAC/IFIP Task Force on Architectures for Enterprise Integration leading to a positioning of CIMOSA in the Generalised Enterprise Reference Architecture and Methodology (GERAM).
A4 Support of CIMOSA Technical Baseline Evolution. This activity has handled the up-dates of the CIMOSA Technical Baseline which have been requested by people involved in industrial applications, standardisation and enhancements of CIMOSA. This work has resulted in a complete revision of the Business Modelling Section with emphasis on Resource and Organisation View and enhancements on the representation of Process Behaviour.
The project has reached its goal to enlarge the community of parties involved in enterprise engineering and to disseminate information on enterprise integration to the European public. It has significantly increased the recognition of CIMOSA especially in the scientific community. More work is still needed for increasing acceptance in the industrial domain especially the SME's.
'Enterprise Integration - International Consensus' is a new Working Group currently under negotiation (technical annex is in preparation) with the EC. The project goal is to increase consensus on enterprise integration contents and terminology. A programme committee will analyse and identify the major issues in enterprise integration. Several workshops will be arranged with experts in this field to address those issues and to propose solutions. Workshop results will be presented at the second ICEIMT conference to be held in 1997.
The project will be carried out in co-operation with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), USA.
DARIF - a German project to develop Tools and Methods for Decentralised Workgroup and Information Structures based on Business Processes has started its activities by putting together the different user requirements.. The objective of DARIF is to develop and implement reference models and methods with tools for computer supported co-operative work (CSCW) in SME's and information structures based on business processes. The goals of the end-users are :
Chapman & Hall Publishers have announced three books addressing the aspects, status and issues of enterprise integration.:
'Modelling and Methodologies for Enterprise Integration' edited by P. Bernus, Griffith University and L. Nemes, CSIRO, Australia
'Architectures for Enterprise Integration', edited by P. Bernus, Griffith University, L. Nemes, CSIRO, Australia and T.J.Williams, Purdue University
'Enterprise Modelling and Integration' by F. Vernadat, University of Metz
Details can be found in the Chapmann and Hall catalogue at : http://www.chaphall.com/chaphall.html
A workshop 'Process modelling for Enterprise Integration with CIMOSA' was held at Loughborough on March 27/28, 1996 . The goal of the workshop was to provide an overview of the progress in process modelling with CIMOSA to support enterprise integration. The workshop was jointly organised by the CIMOSA Association and the Manufacturing Systems Research Institute at Loughborough University of Technology.
The first part of the workshop 'Overview on Enterprise Models' consisted of eight lectures about establishing, enacting and industrial use of enterprise models including a tool survey and demos of selected modelling tools. The second part 'Experience in Enterprise Modelling' consisted of training sessions on process modelling and a plenum discussion on the workshop results and issues in model driven enterprise integration. One main conclusion has been that model enactment, realised in a multi-stage approach of model driven simulation, model driven emulation and model driven execution has proved to be an effective, ordered and incremental way to develop and maintain complex systems. Another conclusion has been that the social system is particularly important to cope with the acceptance of humans vis-à-vis process changes and their motivation to work with computer supported process models.
A standards meeting was held in Loughborough on 96/03/26 to discuss input to CEN/TC310 on Enterprise Model Execution and Integration Services (EMEIS). The requirements for EMEIS were reviewed and a roadmap for upcoming activities decided.
Conferences and workshops with significant CIMOSA contributions are listed:
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.
www-cimosa@cnt.pl, 25.04.1996 (last update: 30.04.1996)