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 is also available in the internet at the dedicated WWW server http://cimosa.cnt.pl/News/
'CIMOSA Promotion and Evolution Support' has been completed with a project review on June 13, 1996 in Brussels. All deliverables have been fully accepted and were rated 'of excellent quality'.
The project was carried out jointly by the CIMOSA Association, Germany, EEISS, Germany and Partners of the ESPRIT Project VOICE represented by TNO, The Netherlands.
Project Highlights:
The Review Team commented that information dissemination to R&D organisations as well as to academia was very successful, marketing in industrial enterprises has to be emphasised in the future.
'Enterprise Integration - International Consensus' is a new Working Group started on 96.06.01 . The project goal is to achieve international consensus on Enterprise Modelling and Enterprise Integration Technologies. This initiative will identify major issues in business and enterprise integration. and will organise a series of five workshops with international experts in this field trying to resolve those issues, contributions are welcome. Workshop results will be presented in the concluding conference ICEIMT97. The project is lead by the CIMOSA Association and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), USA. More details can be found in the attached flyer
'Tools for modelling, analysis and enactment of business processes' - a market survey has identified more than 300 tools from which 250 have been further analysed. The market ranges from simple drawing tools to very sophisticated tool systems for method based enterprise modelling, simulation and enactment. The tools were classified into 13 categories - diagramming, process modelling, analysis, simulation, workflow definition and modelling, CASE oriented process modelling and meta tools - and referenced against both the Enterprise Modelling Framework of CIMOSA and the Reference Model of the Workflow Management Coalition. The survey is intended to serve as a base for evaluation supporting users to select the best suited tools. The final report is available from EEISS (Manfred Klittich <100623.1070@compuserve.com>). Information with multiple links to the CIMOSA Home Page and to the Workflow Management Coalition can be obtained via the WWW Server 'HTTP:// members.aol.com/groepl/cimosa.htm/'
DARIF - a German project to develop Tools and Methods for Decentralised Workgroup and Information Structures based on Business Processes has identified the following major user requirements in a series of workshops held at the four SME user sites :
An investigation 'Bottom-Up Enterprise Modelling with CIMOSA' was made at the Dept. of Computer Science of University Karlsruhe .The paper describes the tool supported modelling of activity chains starting from a real problem to be solved. From the activity chains the model of the kernel business processes is generated in a bottom-up mode. This model is then used to analyse alternative solutions. The report provides an industrial application example, solutions to an order backlog problem. An integrated simulation tool is in preparation.
'Integrated Enterprise Modelling' by G. Spur; K. Mertins; R. Jochem, ISBN 3-410-13310-0, Beuth Verlag, Berlin Germany. The book is addressing the aspects of integrated planning and design of information systems on the basis of enterprise models. The book presents the Integrated Enterprise Modelling (IEM) methodology, which, proceeding from the identified business processes, tasks and object classes, supports the user in the design of the information system architecture and the interfaces in the enterprise. The reader gets an overview of the state of development of modelling methods and tools. Subsequently the modelling language and the associated procedures as well as the related modelling tool are described and illustrated with application examples in analysis, simulation and re-engineering. Finally the entrance of IEM into the National, European and International Standardisation is presented.
ASI'96 Advanced Summer Institute was held in Toulouse, June 2nd to 6th 1996. The theme of the conference was Life Cycle Approaches to Production Systems. With 16 sessions and a total of 74 papers the program covered a rather broad field ranging from decision support and modelling to recycling and re-use of products. Most relevant for the CIMOSA Association was the invited session organised by Prof. Morel from CRAN which was on enterprise integration and enterprise modelling. The papers in this session covered different concepts (CIMOSA, C.M.M.S GRAI) applied to different application areas (Enterprise Operation, Shop Floor Operation, Enterprise Planning). Discussion focused on the need for harmonisation of methods and identification of their relations to each other.
CEN workshop on 'Constructs for Modelling - Progress and Practice' was held in Brussels, June 25th 1996. Following an overview on standardisation in enterprise integration and its relation to other relevant standards and application areas (STEP, CALS, BPR) several papers addressed the needs and current results in enterprise integration and enterprise modelling. In the presentation by Fiat the need for decision support tools based on multilevel, 'zoomable' enterpise models was demontrated. The papers by Aerospatiale and Renault expressed the needs for modelling of the extended enterprise and presented examples of on going work related to the ENV's 40 003 and 12 204 and to CIMOSA .
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 specifications. Members of the CIMOSA Association are industrial and research organisations involved in exploitation of CIMOSA or interested in the subject of enterprise integration (EI).
www-cimosa@cnt.pl, 18.07.1996 (last update: 19.07.1996)