A case study of ISO 11064 in control centre design in the Norwegian petroleum industry

In 2006-2008 we performed a case study for the purpose of assessing the industrial application of the seven part Control Centre (CC) design standard ISO 11064 to identify positive and negative experiences among stakeholders in the Norwegian petroleum sector. We mainly focussed on ISO 11064 Part 1, because this was the most commonly used among the identified stakeholders. ISO 11064 is generally appreciated and applied in the industry, but we did observe a significant variance in use between the different parts of the standard. We also identified potential areas for improvements, like scope and application adaptation. Thus we suggest a more goal-based approach based on one normative part only.     

A formal framework to integrate express data models in an extended enterprise context

The paper describes a formal framework to integrate EXPRESS models and facilitate sharing and exchanging of data in an Extended Enterprise context. We perceive in the creation of an Extended Enterprise an opportunity to use standardized data models. Hence our research is based on three important ISO standards whose primary objective is to enhance data exchange. These standards are ISO 10303, ISO 15531 and ISO 13584, known as STEP, MANDATE and PLIB, respectively. Although they are intended to overcome incompatibility problems for the computer-based applications that are used during the product life-cycle, they turned out to be semantically incompatible among themselves. This seems to be a major drawback when individual organizations want to share core competences, such as resources, manufacturing processes, or product design, to create an Extended Enterprise. The constructs we propose harmonize incompatible model components so that core competences can be transparent to the net of enterprises. The proposal is exemplified by creating a mediator application and a repository. The mediator application is used by individual firms to gain access to the core abilities that are shared, whereas the repository is a neutral means to store such competences. It complies with part 21 of the ISO 10303 standard. The proposed formal framework provides a sound model of the information system and facilitates data sharing in the Extended Enterprise.     

Introduction Human factors in teleinformatics

Abstract

This paper presents the results of an international questionnaire survey that was developed to analyse how the potential addressees of the ISO 9241 part 10 standard—human factor (HF) experts engaged in the design, evaluation, purchase, and application of software systems—accept the first committee draft of this standard. It reports how HF experts from nine countries evaluated the First Committee Draft of ISO 9241 Part 10. Inquiries were made about whether the standard provides a framework for the design and evaluation of dialogue systems, or whether the subject of the standard is mature enough to be published as an international recommendation. Results indicate a widespread approval among 90 HF experts of the form and content of ISO 9241 Part 10.     

Do human factors experts accept the ISO 9241 Part 10—Dialogue Principle—standard?

This paper presents the results of an international questionnaire survey that was developed to analyse how the potential addressees of the ISO 9241 part 10 standard—human factor (HF) experts engaged in the design, evaluation, purchase, and application of software systems—accept the first committee draft of this standard. It reports how HF experts from nine countries evaluated the First Committee Draft of ISO 9241 Part 10. Inquiries were made about whether the standard provides a framework for the design and evaluation of dialogue systems, or whether the subject of the standard is mature enough to be published as an international recommendation. Results indicate a widespread approval among 90 HF experts of the form and content of ISO 9241 Part 10.     

Toward standardized exchange of plant 3D CAD models using ISO 15926

Plant three-dimensional (3D) computer-aided design (CAD) models typically consist of logical configuration, equipment specifications and ports, and 3D shapes. Because 3D CAD models are used as master information throughout a plant’s entire lifecycle and many stakeholders are involved in such lifecycle, providing a method for sharing plant 3D CAD models among various stakeholders is very important. Standard 15926 from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO 15926) is a family of standards that is intended to support the sharing and integrating of all information during the life of a process plant. Therefore it is important for ISO 15926 to support plant 3D CAD models. In order to address this issue, this study investigates a standardized method to exchange plant 3D CAD models using ISO 15926. Information requirements regarding plant 3D CAD models are established, and then ISO 15926 reference data (classes, attributes, and templates) are extended to cover information requirements. For demonstration of the proposed method, we developed a prototype platform where plant 3D CAD models in ISO 15926 are loaded and retrieved.     

ISO10303 compatible data model and its applications for PC configuration management

This paper focuses on identifying and defining standard data model for conducting configuration management (CM) of Personal Computer (PC) design and redesign. ISO product data representation and exchange standard (ISO10303) is adopted to support the realization of PC industry's global logistic management. The required data types are studied, identified and interpreted using ISO10303 Application Protocol 203 (AP203) to support the ISO10007-based standard CM procedure. This research enables the CM-related data being exchanged using a common data model among heterogeneous PDM systems of the supply chain partners for data sharing and virtual enterprise integration.     

On the applicability of capability models for small software organizations: does the use of standard processes lead to a better achievement of business goals?

The ISO/IEC 15504 standard implies that the use of its level-based capability model for software process development leads to a better business performance. At capability level 3, this would mean that there is not only a positive correlation but also a causal relation from the use of standard processes to better achievement of business goals. In this paper, we make this claim explicit and challenge it with a counterargument in the context of small software organizations. We argue that in most part, the way the software is designed is what determines the business success in software development, and when application domains are complex socio-technical systems, relying on a standard process instead of human expertise not only fails to answer the promise of process stability but also presents business risks related to poor design, a loss of diversity, and reduced adaptability. With reasons to believe that the standard’s claim is weak in this context, we come up with alternative explanations for why some small software organizations nevertheless use standard processes. Through these hypotheses, we argue that the reasons are not necessarily process-related. In closing, we suggest further studies on how the standard’s notion of process capability and business goals relate to each other when the application domain is not just complicated but complex.     

Creating value through governing IT deployment in a public/private-sector inter-organisational context: a human agency perspective

Harnessing value from Information Technology (IT) has long been a focus of research, but evidence is lacking about how effective practice of Information Technology Governance (ITG) contributes to creating value for stakeholders in inter-organisational contexts. This is especially so for public/private sector partnerships. In this study we used ISO/IEC 38500:2008, the corporate governance of IT standard, to direct analysis of how ITG was practised in deployment of a large IT project in an inter-organisational public/private sector context. The findings demonstrate that ITG strategies related to human agency contribute to the realisation of value for participating stakeholders, particularly through pre-emptive stakeholder participation in evaluating IT functionality of the old system and iteratively in deployment of the new system. Further, our investigation shows that ISO/IEC 38500:2008 has merit as an analytical framework to objectively evaluate corporate governance of IT, although there is need for some enhancement.     

Critical view of the application of the ISO standard for quality assurance

Abstract. The aim of this paper is to initiate a debate on quality assurance and the application of the ISO 9001 in the system development field. It is claimed that unquestioning application of ISO 9001 can be a backwards step in the practice and research of system development. Five aspects of quality are identified in order to design and evaluate the quality of information systems: technical quality, use quality, aesthetic quality, symbolic quality and organizational quality. We find that the standard solely emphasizes technical quality. The standard promotes the ideal of linear, phase-oriented system development, based on a fixed requirement specification and a document-driven process. This is in contrast to most research findings, which criticize one-sided adaptation of phase orientation in system development.     

GARUSO: a gamification approach for involving stakeholders outside organizational reach in requirements engineering

Stakeholder participation is a key success factor of Requirements Engineering (RE). Typically, the techniques used for identifying and involving stakeholders in RE assume that stakeholders can be identified among the members of the organizations involved when a software system is ordered, developed or maintained—and that these stakeholders can be told or even mandated to contribute. However, these assumptions no longer hold for many of today’s software systems where significant stakeholders (in particular, end-users and people affected by a system) are outside organizational reach: They are neither known nor can they easily be identified in the involved organizations nor can they be told to participate in RE activities. We have developed the GARUSO approach to address this problem. It uses a strategy for identifying stakeholders outside organizational reach and a social media platform that applies gamification for motivating these stakeholders to participate in RE activities. In this article, we describe the GARUSO approach and report on its empirical evaluation. We found that the identification strategy attracted a crowd of stakeholders outside organizational reach to the GARUSO platform and motivated them to participate voluntarily in collaborative RE activities. From our findings, we derived a first set of design principles on how to involve stakeholders outside organizational reach in RE. Our work expands the body of knowledge on crowd RE regarding stakeholders outside organizational reach.

     

Designing a shared freight service intelligence platform for transport stakeholders using mobile telematics

Internet of Things (IoT) technology transforms freight transport operations by adopting novel data-driven services and enables information sharing among actors involved in global transport chains. Mobile telematics represents emerging IoT technologies for global forwarding increasingly applied to full loads conveyed by freight transport assets (FTAs) (e.g., ISO containers) facilitating intelligent services. In this light, telematics-enabled FTAs support freight transport operations utilized by individual stakeholders in three overarching service dimensions: transport management, fleet management, and risk management. This topic is, however, understudied by information systems (IS) research and service science. For this reason, we establish a design science research project, conceptualize a shared Freight Service Intelligence Platform (FSIP), and introduce freight service intelligence as an interdisciplinary research field. To this aim, we first review related literature, interview 14 transport stakeholders, and theorize six meta-requirements. Second, we propose five design principles that indicate how the meta-requirements may be associated. Third, we develop a web-based prototype application to instantiate the proposed design principles comprising performance analytics, anomaly detection, risk assessment including prediction, data exchange, communication, and IS integration. Subsequently, we evaluate the application with six transport stakeholders and logistics software vendors. Finally, we conclude with a discussion on the implications of an emerging topic addressed by this paper.

     

Defining stakeholder relationships

Jointly developed by the ISO and IEC in 1995, the ISO/IEC 12207 standard, Software Life Cycle Processes, provides specific guidance in defining the roles and responsibilities of various stakeholders in the life cycle of a software project, product, or service. And the software community is beginning to take heed. The standard itself is relatively brief, detailing 17 processes in less than 40 pages. The 17 processes are divided into three main process groups: primary processes include acquisition, supply, development, operation, and maintenance; supporting processes include documentation, configuration management, quality assurance, verification, validation, joint review, audit, and problem resolution; organizational processes include management, infrastructure, improvement, and training. Each process breaks down into relevant activities and tasks that reflect a clear plan-do-check-act cycle. One further process, tailoring, specifies the activities and tasks to follow in adapting the standard to a particular situation or application. But just how useful is this standard? Based upon personal mentoring experiences, the author describes two case studies that demonstrate the standard's importance and versatility: Haldex Traction AB of Landskrona, Sweden, the supplier of a safety-critical automotive component; and Cambiot Healthcare Systems AB of Linkoping, Sweden, the supplier of a medical information system for hospitals and clinics. In these two cases, ISO/IEC 12207 has provided important value-added guidance in both systems and software engineering     

Comments on ISO 14102: the standard for CASE-tool evaluation

In this paper, we comment on the ISO standard for evaluation and selection of CASE-tools (ISO 14102), focusing on the important task of establishing a relevant set of requirements for any specific use of the standard. We review the literature related to CASE-tool evaluation and illuminate our findings by comparing CASE-tool requirements developed for a company with the suggested set of characteristics in the standard.

We identify two weaknesses in the standard. Firstly, we note a lack of method support for evaluation framework development. Secondly, we note a number of weaknesses in the way decision frameworks are treated. The paper concludes with recommendations for improvement, as submitted to ITS/AG7.     

GKS-94: an overview

A revision of the Graphical Kernel System (GKS), the first ISO standard for computer graphics programming, was completed in 1994. This summary of GKS-94 also describes an implementation of part of its new functionality. We have demonstrated that fast selection is possible with GKS-94. Thus, an application can use namesets and selection criteria as its main method of subdivision, selection and creating hierarchy within the application, and performance is acceptable given a reasonable implementation. European organizations are showing interest in implementing GKS-94, and new products are anticipated early in 1996     

SCALPS: Smart card for limited payment systems

Secure money-transfer cards continue to find acceptance in commerce. Currently, three main types of these cards coexist: magnetic stripe, mass memory, and smart. We describe another approach: merging the processor and coprocessor on a small chip dedicated to public-key cryptography. We added parts needed to obtain a low-cost smart card compatible with the ISO 7816-3 standard. By developing the processor for specific applications, we drastically reduced the complexity without affecting the chip's usefulness. To prove the feasibility of such a chip, we built one for use in a payment application with prepaid tokens     

“炎黄”中文平台结构设计

随着我国计算机应用水平的提高, Internet的迅速普及, GB2312 - 80中的6763个汉字已不能满足应用的需要。ISO 10646标准的制定,使得为开发支持大汉字字符集的中文平台提供了宽阔的代码空间。 我们的工作目标就是探讨在现有的的开放系统上,提供支持ISO 10646标准CJK大字符集、支持多种内码、兼容现有中文平台、与原英文系统及版本无关、符合国际、国家标准、具有一定跨平台功能、实用高效的中文平台解决方案及实现技术。 本文详细阐述了该中文平台的设计目标、模块结构、以及各个子系统的实现方法。     

Roles in information security – A survey and classification of the research area

The concept of roles has been prevalent in the area of Information Security for more than 15 years already. It promises simplified and flexible user management, reduced administrative costs, improved security, as well as the integration of employees’ business functions into the IT administration. A comprehensive scientific literature collection revealed more than 1300 publications dealing with the application of sociological role theory in the context of Information Security up to now. Although there is an ANSI/NIST standard and an ISO standard proposal, a variety of competing models and interpretations of the role concept have developed. The major contribution of this survey is a categorization of the complete underlying set of publications into different classes. The main part of the work is investigating 32 identified research directions, evaluating their importance and analyzing research tendencies. An electronic bibliography including all surveyed publications together with the classification information is provided additionally. As a final contribution potential future developments in the area of role-research are considered.     

The SQUID approach to defining a quality model

This paper describes an attempt to use the approach developed by the SQUIDproject, which was part of the ESPRIT 3 programme, to define the software quality requirements of the Telescience project. The SQUID project developed its approach to quality modelling in parallel with ongoing feedback from testing that approach on the Telescience project, which was both large and software intensive. As part of this exercise we used the ISO software quality standard ISO 9126. It was an assessment of this and other existing quality models that caused us to re-assess what was meant by a quality model and led to a decomposition of existing quality models into a composite model reflecting the different aspects of the model and its mapping onto a specific project or product. We break existing quality models into components which reflect the structure and content of the model. This composite model must then be customized for an individual product/project, we call this customized model a Product Quality Model. Application of this approach to the Telescience project identified a number of practical problems that the SQUID project needed to address. It also indicated a number of problems inherent in the current version of ISO 9126.     

Architecture and implementation of a shop-floor programming system for STEP-compliant CNC

STEP-NC (formalized as ISO 14649 and ISO 10303 AP238) is a new interface (or language) standard for the CAD-CAM-CNC chain, currently under establishment by ISO TC184 SC1 and SC4. Upon completion, it will replace ISO 6983, so called M & G codes used for CNC since 1950s. As the new language is being established, a new CNC controller called STEP-CNC (STEP-compliant CNC), capable of carrying out various intelligent tasks using the new language as an input, receives worldwide attention. Shop-floor programming (SFP) system is a computer-assisted part programming system interfaced with STEP-CNC. Its primary function is to generate part program in ISO 14649 (or STEP AP238) to machine the part geometry given by STEP AP203 or AP224 file. In this paper, we first present an architecture for the SFP system, followed by implementation technology including: (1) STEP physical file interpretation, (2) feature recognition, (3) process planning, (4) part program generation, and (5) verification. The developed methodology was implemented in a prototype called PosSFP, and tested with Korea STEP-NC system.