Implementing organisational interoperability—The SUddEN approach

Dynamic markets require enterprises to collaborate in organisational networks. Current support for automotive supply networks is limited to logistic aspects. In the European project SUddEN an approach to support coordination and organisational interoperability in supply networks is researched. These networks are seen as complex adaptive systems, with their structure changing permanently and dynamically. This has impact on the flow of materials and information across the network. Coordination and interoperability are important aspects that enable the required business performance in order to survive in today's global competing business environment. The SUddEN ICT approach supports collaborative performance measurement system development. This allows network partners to adapt their individual processes to improve organisational interoperability. For this approach, an architecture has been designed and a prototype has been implemented.     

Interoperable enterprise systems: Principles, concepts, and methods

Interoperable enterprise systems (be they supply chains, extended enterprises, or any form of virtual organizations) must be designed, controlled, and appraised from a holistic and systemic point of view. Systems interoperability is a key to enterprise integration, which recommends that the IT architecture and infrastructure be aligned with business process organization and control, themselves designed according to a strategic view expressed in an enterprise architecture. The paper discusses architectures and methods to build interoperable enterprise systems, advocating a mixed service and process orientation, to support synchronous and/or asynchronous operations, both at the business level (business events, business services, business processes) and at the application level (workflow, IT and Web services, application programs).     

Maturity Model for Interoperability Potential Measurement

Interoperability potential concerns the preparation level of an enterprise to establish an efficient collaboration with possible partners. In order to improve their interoperability, enterprises need to know witch level of maturity they have achieved. This article proposes a complete maturity model composed by a methodology and a reference set of parameters to measure interoperability potential. In order to clarify the proposal, an example of application in a real case is described.     

Toward a business model reference for interoperability services

The importance of interoperability for businesses is undoubted. After an evolution from electronic data interchange to interoperability in electronic business and enterprise interoperability both the scientific and the practitioners’ community are today discussing the notion of interoperability service utilities. Furthermore, researchers are studying decentralized and distributed interoperability approaches such as peer-to-peer networks, for example. However, a comprehensive investigation of business models for such decentralized approaches to interoperability is still missing. Drawing from recent literature on business modeling on the one hand and interoperability research on the other hand this paper designs a business model reference for interoperability services. The business model reference assumes interoperability information as an economic good and is applied in two case studies and evaluated from multiple perspectives. The paper contributes to the scientific body of knowledge as it proposes a novel design artifact which lays the foundation for a number of future research opportunities.     

NEGOSEIO: A framework for negotiations toward Sustainable Enterprise Interoperability

With the rise of the Internet, competitiveness is pressuring enterprises to build better solutions with fewer resources, following new trends and supporting new platforms and methodologies. On the other hand, legislation and regulations are updating frequently and deeply, and demanding rapid compliance from enterprises. These frequent business changes shake all the interoperability links between the enterprises, leading to periods of adaptation where business operation is not possible. The urge to rapidly regain interoperability often leads to unfounded, poorly-chosen solutions, which lead to inefficiency and rework. This paper proposes that the best way to have a strong interoperable environment is to perform constant, periodic maintenance operations in order to adapt enterprises to their surrounding ecosystem. It introduces NEGOSEIO, a framework that promotes continuous improvement and adaptation towards the management of interoperability on enterprise systems, and which has negotiations as a core mechanism to handle inconsistencies and solutions for the detected interoperability problems. Following this approach, enterprises shall become more adaptable to changes and external factors, consequently developing resilient and efficient interactions with its supply chain. The paper validates the framework with its application in a real business case of aerospace mission design on the European Space Agency (ESA).     

Model-driven approach to enterprise interoperability at the technical service level

Enterprise Interoperability is the ability of enterprises to interoperate in order to achieve their business goals. Although the purpose of enterprise interoperability is determined at the business level, the use of technical (IT) services to support business services implies that interoperability solutions at both the business and technical level should be aligned. This paper introduces and demonstrates the suitability of an approach based on model transformations to automate enterprise interoperability. We start by considering that a set of enterprises are willing to interoperate in the context of their individual goals. The interactions necessary for their cooperation are then properly captured in terms of a so-called choreography. Our approach allows a choreography to be mapped and transformed to an orchestration, which defines the operation of the actual technical services of the interoperating enterprises. The paper discusses the technical challenges of implementing the transformation, and illustrates our approach with two application scenarios.     

基于OWL的制药企业本体的构建及应用

本体是共享概念模型的明确的形式化规范说明,通过概念之间的关系来描述概念的语义。药业本体是制药企业中或企业间公共的知识化的描述,不仅可以促进制药企业知识的重用和共享,还大大方便了制药企业内部以及企业间知识管理和信息交换。本文讨论了本体的概念,介绍了本体的构建原则和方法,以及各种本体表示语言,着重介绍了OWL本体语言,分析了药业本体应用领域,给出了一个简单的基于OWL的本体示例片段,最后简单介绍了本体编辑工具protege2000及其使用方法。     

Service-based negotiation for advanced collaboration in enterprise networks

Information systems support organisations to achieve greater efficiency by automating their activities. Nowadays, in the actual competitive and global business context, the advent of enterprise networking has been challenging collaboration, coordination and continuous interactions among dissimilar information systems to adapt and improve them. Sustainability of interoperability among heterogeneous systems regarding sharing information and knowledge in a collaborative dynamic environment is hard to achieve and maintain. This paper proposes a service-based negotiation framework for advanced collaboration in enterprise networks, as a solution to improve the sustainability of interoperability within enterprise information systems. Validation in industrial scenario is presented and discussed.     

面向OWL的联合作战管理语言本体开发方法

作战管理语言是一种能够无歧义指挥命令部队和装备进行军事行动和提供态势感知、共享作战行动的语言,其公开标准为联合作战管理语言。联合作战管理语言产品开发组制定了三个阶段开发语言标准,包括数据模型、形式化结构（语法）和形式化语义（本体）,目前的研究主要集中在前两个阶段,对实现概念交互的第三阶段的相关研究还比较欠缺。在总结相关对作战管理语言本体研究的基础上,提出了针对联合作战管理语言本体面向联合作战的一种应用框架。通过对炮兵打击任务分配的实际应用,验证了该方法的合理性和有效性,同时显示了本体在军事领域具有相当严格可靠的模型描述能力。