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/
The first workshop supported by CETIM, was held in France. The workshop provided an overview on methodologies and tools for enterprise integration under the aspect of open systems, without binding the users to one particular architecture, methodology or IT vendor. Successful industrial applications and their benefits have been presented. Several requests have been received for more information and direct support regarding enterprise modelling, reference models and enterprise integration.
The workshop discussions revealed several issues :
- How can the business user get involved in enter-prise modelling: to convince users of business process modelling, the real benefits of models have to be dem-onstrated. In addition there is a need for very user friendly tools enabling the user get involved in the mod-elling himself, otherwise he has to rely on consultants, who guides the user with his methodology. The first approach is more desirable for the user, but today the second approach is the one practised. A potential solu-tion for the first approach was presented by FIAT with their integrated modelling tool environment.
- Which modelling language for whom. enterprise modelling is performed on different levels of the organi-sation with different objectives and contents. Initially the user starts with describing and modelling the process requirements. This model is represented in a form sup-ported with graphics and understandable to many people and should be enactable for animation. On the system design level of the resources and many other details are added. The model now must be complete and consistent to become the basis for computer based simulation.
- Perceptions of modelling in the enterprise: Decision makers, specialists and the average business user have different views on enterprise modelling and engineering. It seems to be very important to explain the goals and benefits of enterprise engineering on the base of a com-mon understanding throughout the enterprise.
Additional workshop are planned for the 3rd quarter.
DARIF: Prototypes of the DARIF Project developments have been installed at most of the user companies of the consortium. These prototypes are: (i) design and utilisa-tion of transparent business processes in manufacturing and in human communication processes - based on CIMOSA and Petri-Nets. (ii) knowledge management with the Team Information System (TIS) in decentral-ised enterprise structures and, (iii) applications of busi-ness process and workflow management with internet technologies, especially for SMEs. The project results have been presented at workshops with interested users at Offenburg, Stuttgart and Berlin, more information can be found at (http://www.darif.fh-offenburg.de).
EURISCON/SOFTCOM'98 Athens, Greece, June 22-25, 1998. Third European Robotics, Intelligent Systems & Control Conference/IMACS/ IFAC International Symposium on Soft Computing in Engineering Appli-cations. The events have been organised by the Univer-sity of Athens, a member of the CIMOSA Association.
An invited paper on the EI-IC project (ICEIMT'97) has been presented in the plenary session. The participa-tion in the conference indicated the need for further extension of the enterprise engineering and integration concepts to at least link to the concepts of automation control. Representation of automation tasks has much in common with the representation of tasks in business processes and some of the related information are rele-vant in business processes as well. However, further analysis has to be done to really identify the relevant points for co-operation.
INCOM'98, Nancy-Metz, France, June 24-26, 1998: 9th Symposium on Information Control in Manufacturing (INCOM'98). This major IFAC event covered advanced automation engineering as well as information technol-ogy for integration in manufacturing and integrated systems engineering. Results from the EI-IC project (ICEIMT'97) and from major European projects were presented such as AIT, PRIMA, OPAL as well as CIMOSA and GERAM for standardisation in enterprise engineering. Also, the IMS initiative was discussed and its holonic manufacturing project and enterprise integra-tion project for global manufacturing (Globeman21) were presented as well as multi-agent systems in manu-facturing.
The discussions outlined the need for IT solutions to support the distributed or network enterprise both in terms of technology and organisation aspects. In addi-tion, management of advanced industrial systems, in-cluding the social impact of automation and of new educational methodologies was discussed. The confer-ence covered many facets of industrial system engi-neering viewed from technical and socio-technical as-pects and was enriching in that sense.
CEN TC 310 Meeting on EMEIS Brussels, Belgium, May 26-27, 1998: the objective was to further develop the new work item on EMEIS (Enterprise Model Exe-cution and Integration Services). A table of contents of the EMEIS services has been generated grouped into model development services (MD), model execution services and services shared by both environments. The main services in the three groups are:
CEN/STAR (Standardisation and Research), Senlis, France, June 29-30, 1998: The workshop focused on pre-normative research and the needed standardisation efforts in the area of computer aided integration and manufacturing. Main emphasis was on product and production data modelling and on systems architecture and enterprise modelling. Following presentations about ongoing research and standardisation in both fields, three different working groups addressed the issues and needs for further research and standardisation in the area. The feedback will be used by CEN TC310 for further enhancement of its strategy.
ITC's FirstSTEP recently received a gold award at CA-World 1998 in the Most Creative Application for Unicenter TNG category. The process simulation and modelling tool allows users to design and test workflows before putting them into use. It allows the monitoring of the simulated flow of work through clocks and anima-tions, allowing users to check statistics before commit-ting to a final workflow design. For more details visit (http://www.interfacing.com).
www-cimosa@cnt.pl, 3.08.1998 (last update: 3.08.1998)