Carlos Agostinho

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.

Harmonising technologies in conceptual models representation

The lack of interoperability among systems, applications, and services has been hindering collaboration between organisations raising the need for integration and cooperation between multiple standard business objects and application protocols. ISO 10303-STEP has been acknowledged by most of the industrial companies as the most important family of standards for the integration and exchange of product data under the manufacturing domain. However, STEP standards use technologies unfamiliar to most application developers. This paper presents a platform for the harmonisation of technologies used in the representation and implementation of conceptual models, showing how different standard models and technologies can be unified for industrial benefits, enabling organisations to take the most from all of them. This work results from the research developed and validated in the scope of international research projects involving partners from USA, Europe, Canada, and Australia, under the scope of the IMS SMART-fm, ATHENA IP, and INTEROP NoE European research projects.

Towards a sustainable interoperability in networked enterprise information systems

Sustaining interoperability in enterprise networks is the next research challenge.Not understanding the impact of a single system change may cause network failures.Pervasive information models and EA can support dynamic interoperability enablers.Combined use of model-driven and knowledge-based approaches can improve NG-EIS.We present and discuss the sustainable interoperability research framework. In a turbulent world, global competition and the uncertainty of markets have led organizations and technology to evolve exponentially, surpassing the most imaginary scenarios predicted at the beginning of the digital manufacturing era, in the 1980s. Business paradigms have changed from a standalone vision into complex and collaborative ecosystems where enterprises break down organizational barriers to improve synergies with others and become more competitive. In this context, paired with networking and enterprise integration, enterprise information systems (EIS) interoperability gained utmost importance, ensuring an increasing productivity and efficiency thanks to a promise of more automated information exchange in networked enterprises scenarios. However, EIS are also becoming more dynamic. Interfaces that are valid today are outdated tomorrow, thus static interoperability enablers and communication software services are no longer the solution for the future. This paper is focused on the challenge of sustaining networked EIS interoperability, and takes up input from solid research initiatives in the areas of knowledge management and model driven development, to propose and discuss several research strategies and technological trends towards next EIS generation.

Dynamic Business Networks: A Headache for Sustainable Systems Interoperability

Collaborative networked environments emerged with the spread of the internet, contributing to overcome past communication barriers, and identifying interoperability as an essential property. When achieved seamlessly, efficiency is increased in the entire product life cycle. Nowadays, most organizations try to attain interoperability by establishing peer-to-peer mappings with the different partners, or in optimized networks, by using international standard models as the core for information exchange. In current industrial practice, mappings are only defined once, and the morphisms that represent them, are hardcoded in the enterprise systems. This solution has been effective for static environments, where enterprise and product models are valid for decades. However, with an increasingly complex and dynamic global market, models change frequently to answer new customer requirements. This paper draws concepts from the complex systems science and proposes a framework for sustainable systems interoperability in dynamic networks, enabling different organizations to evolve at their own rate.

Sustaining interoperability of networked liquid-sensing enterprises: A complex systems perspective

The emerging Liquid-Sensing Enterprise (LSE) concept provides manufacturing industrial networks with the required enablers to seamless interoperate and sustain its interoperability along the operational life cycle. Actually, the actual domain of enterprise information systems interoperability prospects the need for a new paradigm able to manage the network dynamics, facilitating adaptation along the lifecycle of an enterprise and the LSE network. The theory of complex systems provides a set of heuristics that can be applied to support the formalization of the LSE industrial network and its dynamics, demonstrating how they can be enabled and at the same time controlled to keep the overall level of interoperability stable. Hence, today there is technology suitable to implement such systems, capable to realize the LSE real, digital and virtual worlds. However, isolated, this technology cannot deliver the requirements for a self-sustainable LSE network. The authors propose a novel metaphor from complexity as a framework to model and implement the mechanism for sustaining interoperability in such networked environments. They identify the motivations for sustaining interoperability of networked liquid-sensing enterprises, having complex and adaptive systems as a vehicle to model and understand the relationships between enterprises and enterprise information systems in networked environments. Then, existing technology such as model-driven interoperability, agent-based or service oriented architectures, and knowledge management, is proposed to detail the conceptual solution for the sustainability of interoperability. An instantiation of the concept proposed is presented, which details the prototypal application elaborated in a real manufacturing scenario, implemented and validated during the European Project Factories of the Future IMAGINE.

Tuple-Based Semantic and Structural Mapping for a Sustainable Interoperability

Enterprises are demanded to collaborate and establish partnerships to reach global business and markets. However, due to the different sources of models and semantics, organizations are experiencing difficulties exchanging vital information electronically and seamlessly, even when they operate in related business environments. This situation is even worst in the advent of the evolution of the enterprise systems and applications, whose dynamics result in increasing the interoperability problem due to the continuous need for model adjustments and semantics harmonization. To contribute for a long term stable interoperable enterprise operating environment, the authors propose the integration of traceability functionalities in information systems as a way to support such sustainability. Either data, semantic, and structural mappings between partner enterprises in the complex network should be modelled as tuples and stored in a knowledge base for communication support with reasoning capabilities, thus allowing to trace, monitor and support the stability maintenance of a system’s interoperable state.

Interoperability of Complex Business Networks by Language Independent Information Models

With the demand of globalization, the opportunities for collaboration became more evident with the effect of enlarging business networks. In such conditions, a key for enterprise success is a reliable communication with all the partners. Therefore, organizations have been searching for flexible integrated environments to better manage their services and product life cycle, where their software applications could be easily integrated independently of the platform in use. However, with so many different information models and implementation standards being used, interoperability problems arise. Moreover, organizations are themselves at different technological maturity levels, and the solution that might be good for one, can be too advanced for another, or vice versa. The work presented in this paper responds to the above needs proposing a framework for model language independent P2P mappings on a need-to-serve basis for interoperability of complex business networks.

Infusing scientific foundations into Enterprise Interoperability

In a turbulent world where technological evolution has surpassed even the most imaginative scenarios predicted a few years ago, interoperability remains an intangible and elusive challenge. Associated with cost, risk and complexity reduction, Enterprise Interoperability can be defined as a capability of two or more enterprises, including all the systems within their boundaries and the external systems that they utilize or are affected by, to cooperate seamlessly, over a sustained period of time to pursue a common objective. During the last decade, substantial advancements at an application level have been made through EU- and national funded research. However, the lack of scientific foundations seems to hinder unlocking its full potential. In this context, the aim of this paper is to investigate the pathway towards establishing a science base and to provide an overview of the main milestones in the fascinating quest that shall eventually shape interoperability as a scientific discipline.

Semantic Enrichment of Standard-based Electronic Catalogues

Today, enterprises are facing serious interoperability problems concerning the exchange of electronic data. Due to the proliferation of terminology, organizations from similar business environments have trouble cooperating, and supply chains are experiencing difficulties exchanging electronically vital information, such as catalogue data. In order to solve this problem, standardization communities are working to define formalized structures for catalogue and product data. However, standards by themselves do not solve semantic interoperability issues. For instance, a group of enterprises which share catalogue information in their business activities need to have a common semantics to understand each other. Otherwise their systems might understand the data structure but not its meaning. This is today a major challenge in modern enterprise integration. This paper contributes to achieving seamless product oriented enterprise interoperability by proposing a framework based on knowledge representation elements to support the semantic enrichment of standard-based electronic catalogues.

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.