Antonio Grilo

Challenging the interoperability between computers in industry with MDA and SOA

The global market is willing to improve their competitiveness through collaborative work and partnerships, motivating the companies to look for erhanced interoperability between computer systems and applications. However, the large number of systems heterogeneity and the companys lack of resources and know-show have been preventing organizations to move ahead in that direction. Today, the OMGs model-driven architecture (MDA) makes available an open approach to write specifications and develop applications, separating the application and business functionality from the platform technology. As well, the service-oriented architecture (SOA) establishes a software architectural concept that defines the use of services to support the requirements of software users, making them available as independent services accessible in a standardized way. Together, these two architectures seem to provide a suitable framework to improve companys competitiveness through the adoption of a standard-based extended environment, challenging and enhancing the interoperability between computer systems and applications in industry. The paper, after illustrating the general motivations the industrial SMEs have to adopt open architectures to achieve interoperability for extended and collaborative enterprise practices, presents the emerging model-driven and service-oriented architectures. Then, it describes an innovative case study in validation by the industry, proposing a standard-based extendable platform to support an interoperable environment through the adoption of MDA and SOA. The paper finishes with discussion and concluding remarks concerning the empirical results obtained from the pilot demonstrator.

A decision-making model for Lean, Agile, Resilient and Green supply chain management

In modern business environments, an effective supply chain management (SCM) is crucial to business continuity. Competition between supply chains (SC) has replaced the traditional competition between companies. Lean, Agile, Resilient and Green (LARG) paradigms are advocated as the foundation of a competitive SCM. To make a supply chain more competitive, capable of responding to the demands of customers with agility and capable of responding effectively to unexpected disturbance, in conjugation with environmental responsibilities and the necessity to eliminate processes that add no value, companies must implement a set of LARG SCM practices and key performance indicators (KPI) to measure their influence on the SC performance. However, the selection of the best LARG SCM practices and KPIs is a complex problem, involving dependencies and feedbacks. This paper proposes an integrated LARG analytic network process (ANP) model to support decision-making in choosing the most appropriate practices and KPIs to be implemented by companies in an SC. To validate the model in an exploratory approach, a case study in an automaker supply chain is presented.

Systematisation of Interoperability Body of Knowledge: the foundation for Enterprise Interoperability as a science

The recently posed challenge of developing an Enterprise Interoperability Science Foundation (EISF) prompted some academic agents to attempt a systematisation of the Interoperability Body of Knowledge (IBoK). Still in their embryonic stages, these efforts have sought to organise and aggregate information from very fragmented and disparate sources, and with different granularities of detail, distinct epistemology origins, separate academic fields, etc. This paper aims to distinguish between levels of specificity of the Interoperability academic work, which are often confused, by considering Models, Theories, and Frameworks. The paper revises these concepts within the context of the EISFs recent work. The results presented here, reflecting consultation with the expert community, provide the synthesis of the current state of play regarding the work developed by the Enterprise Interoperability (EI) at the European Commissions Future Internet Enterprise Systems (FInES) cluster.

Sustainable interoperability: The future of Internet based industrial enterprises

Enterprise Interoperability is a high-impact productivity factor both within the private and the public sector, affecting the overall quality, yield time and cost of transactions, as well as the design of manufacturing operations or digital public services. This paper addresses the rationale and analysis of the results of the special issue on sustainable interoperability, which is defined here as focusing on novel strategies, methods and tools to maintain and sustain the interoperability of enterprise systems in networked environments as they evolve with their environments. The paper starts by reviewing current state of the systems interoperability research domain and describing the constitution of the community of systems interoperability research and application. We then outline this communitys progress on the development of a science base for Enterprise Interoperability. The paper then identifies how each paper in this special issue contributes to the body of knowledge on sustainable interoperability, according to three main development areas: Enterprise Network Configuration; Architectures and Data Models; and Fundamentals for an Enterprise Interoperability Science Base. Finally the paper discusses the aggregate contributions towards sustainable interoperability, in an evolving technological, business and social environment.

The Business Interoperability Quotient Measurement Model

Over the last decade, the context of interoperability has been changing rapidly. It has been expanding from the largely technically focused area of Information Systems toward Business Processes and Business Semantics. However, there exists a need for established methods to define Business Interoperability and provide for measuring its performance as a first step toward improving interoperability conditions between collaborating entities. This paper proposes a model that captures the factors that are responsible for Business Interoperability in the context of collaborative business processes. The Business Interoperability Quotient Measurement Model (BIQMM) uses an interdisciplinary approach to embrace the key elements responsible for collaboration performance. Through the quantification of the importance of each element to the particular collaboration scenario, and by combining the BIQMM with the Analytical Network Process (ANP) approach, this model enables a quantitative analysis of Business Interoperability, so that an overall interoperability score can be calculated for enhanced performance measurements. Two application scenarios are presented, validating the proposed model.

Cloud-Marketplaces: Distributed e-procurement for the AEC sector

The development of web-based collaborative platforms, BIM, and transactional e-marketplaces has been changing the way companies in the AEC sector work. However, due to interoperability issues, the main problems of distributed data and information management across AEC companies and projects are yet to be overcome. This paper presents the Cloud-Marketplace concept, which expands on earlier developments combining BIM, SOA, Cloud Computing, and e-marketplaces in order to create interoperable communities of e-platforms. The Vortaway case study is described to demonstrate the validation of the concept in simple AEC e-procurement processes.

Deriving an IT-enabled process strategy for construction

This paper demonstrates that to understand the problems and opportunities facing the use of Information Technology (IT) to support process improvement in the construction sector, a dynamic perspective on how transformation takes place in the whole industry is required. Drawing on new process-based management and organisational methods used in manufacturing, an IT-enabled process strategy for the construction industry is derived. This enables the identification of: core and support processes; inhibitors to process flow; and construction-specific process improvements. It allows us to outline a workplan to implement these changes in order to achieve a consistent innovation strategy. The place of IT research within this workplan is specifically identified and compared with the current practice in IT application within the sector.

A model for evaluating Lean, Agile, Resilient and Green practices interoperability in supply chains

Due to market pressures and increased competition, companies were led to adopt collaborative working practices by creating communication networks and integrated material and product flows. Supply Chain Management is one key to success in this sector, being one recent and powerful operations strategy tool that led to success in many enterprises all over the world. However, it is not affordable to conduct SCMs newest methodologies like Lean, Agile, Resilient and Green being subject to problems of interoperability. This paper presents a model to evaluate the overall business interoperability and establish what measures can reduce interoperability problems in the SC.

A framework for measuring value in business interoperability

To achieve business interoperability (BI), a comprehensive understanding of the business factors influencing its deployment is required, along with a framework that can contribute to the measurement of the interoperability value of the enterprises involved in production networks. In this paper we have adapted and extended the balanced scorecard concept for assessing the value of business interoperability, which seems to be appropriate for this propose.

Reference framework for enhanced interoperable collaborative networks in industrial organisations

Industrial collaborative networks are characterised by heterogeneous business processes and data structures. Enterprises joining these networks face difficulties when they have to manage and orchestrate information within the network, namely due to the lack of interoperability between the systems and software applications operating between them. The furniture industry is the largest manufacturing sector in the world, involving mostly small and medium enterprises (SMEs). The development of collaborative networked environments in this industrial sector has been identified of major importance, looking forward to enabling enterprises to extend the potential of their own business capabilities. Indeed, to keep its competitiveness, industry needs to accomplish rapidly the requirements in the digital global marketplace, and push promptly SME-based enterprises to adopt seamless electronic business services in networked environments, using modern ICT and standards among all agents involved in the furniture product life cycle. The funStep case study presented in this article developed a framework to accelerate the integration of enterprises in collaborative working environments, solving information interoperability problems in the furniture supply chain. The funStep framework enables gradual and sustained system interoperability, allowing incremental implementations using conformance options and classes. The funStep created an ISO standard which defines a formal structure for catalogue and product data under industrial domains of the furniture sector. Then, the ICT combined with the use of open-standards, and enriched by semantics representation, resulted in a suitable tool to improve enterprise competitiveness via a wider adoption of STEP Application Protocols in collaborative environments. Model Driven Architecture technology is used to enable automation of Model Morphisms, and therefore, translation at the information model and data levels. A reference ontology integrated in the standard product data model, permits an intelligent management at semantic level, providing enhanced capabilities for interoperability. The results of the case study presented stimulate enterprises on the adoption of technologies and practices to reach the future vision of furniture manufacturing business based on collaborative networked environments. It prepares industry and researchers to advance on the state of the art, and to establish solid proposals for the industry in general. The funStep case study has been validated by the industry, supported by European/International industrial research projects.