Georg Weichhart

Dynamic business network process management in instant virtual enterprises

Nowadays, business supply chains for the production of complex products or services are likely to involve a number of autonomous organizations. The competitive market requires that these supply chains are highly agile, effective and efficient. Agility and effectiveness are obtained by forming highly dynamic virtual enterprises within supplier networks. We call these instant virtual enterprises (IVEs). The required efficiency of creating and operating IVEs can only be obtained by automated support for design, setup and enactment of business processes within these IVEs. This process support involves the dynamic composition of local processes of network members into global processes at the IVE level. This functionality goes significantly beyond traditional approaches for interorganizational workflow management. The approach, architecture and technology required for this dynamic network process management in IVEs are outlined in this paper. We show how the developed approach is applied in the automotive industry in the context of the CrossWork IST project.

Agent-based optimisation of logistics and production planning

Abstract Manufacturing and logistics service provision enterprises are currently moving towards open virtual enterprise collaboration networks to meet the needs of the Global Economy. In such networks, manufacturing and logistics planning and scheduling is challenging due to the difficulties in integrating information from different partners and in exploring a large and dynamically changing number of planning and scheduling alternatives. Agent-based technology is considered suitable to support planning and scheduling in such enterprises because agents can dynamically adapt their behaviour to changing requirements and they can reduce the number of planning and scheduling alternatives via negotiation. This paper presents an agent-based approach for supporting logistics and production planning, taking into account not only production schedules but also availability and cost of logistic service providers. This is achieved through efficient negotiation mechanisms based on an extended contracting protocol. The agent infrastructure is being developed within the context of Agentcities, a successful EU-funded initiative to build a world-wide distributed and open platform which provides agent-based services. The proposed approach is illustrated in a case study concerning optimisation of production planning of a virtual manufacturing enterprise in relation to sub-contracted logistic services used to transport materials between the enterprise units.

Internet-based support for process-oriented instant virtual enterprises

The ever-increasing complexity of contemporary products and services demands business supply chains that ultimately involve a large number of autonomous organizations. Competitive markets require these chains to be highly agile, effective, and efficient, which organizations can achieve by forming dynamic virtual enterprises within supplier networks, called instant virtual enterprises (IVEs). The authors present the CrossWork system, which helps these organizations efficiently create and operate IVEs by providing automated, Internet-based support for the composition, setup, and execution of global business processes. This article uses the automotive domain to illustrate the systems optimal use.

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 todays 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.

Interoperability Contributions of CrossWork

Effective cross-organisational collaboration enables a company to focus on its core business within a dynamic network of partners providing complementary expertise. This allows companies of all sizes to pursue immediate opportunities in the marketplace through participation in virtual organizations and dynamic supply chains. Such collaboration-based business models, however, place substantial demands on software infrastructures to ensure robust intersystem communication, meaningful information exchange and successful coordination of processes and activities. Interoperability at all levels is paramount and significant advances in enabling software technologies are needed to support this. Interoperability issues are addressed by several EC-funded projects under the 6 Framework Programme. The focus here is on the specific contributions of one of them, CrossWork*, which pursues the automated creation of cross-organisational workflows to support opportunistic collaborations among members of Networks of Automotive Excellence. These collaborations, also known as task groups or virtual enterprises, are formed to pool together resources in the pursuit of business opportunities, for example responding to a call for tender, and are characterised by their decentralised decision-making and transient nature. Effective collaboration among task group members is a key success factor. This includes coordination of activities distributed amongst members, supported by crossorganisational workflows. Such workflows have to be formed in concert with the formation of the task group in a dynamic and opportunistic fashion. Achieving such level of process interoperability relies on frictionless information exchange between the information processing infrastructures of the group members, or interoperability at the systems level, within the context of compatible legal and organisational structures predicating interoperability at the business level. Any successful collaboration is informed and underpinned by a shared understanding and this reveals a fundamental need for semantic interoperability at the information level and beyond. Within this context, CrossWork focuses on the issues at process interoperability and semantic interoperability levels. We see interoperability as a systemic property of the set of collaborating entities, which arises in the context of their collaboration, rather than as an individual property of system components. We are therefore focused

Supporting interoperability in complex adaptive enterprise systems

From a Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) theory perspective a new approach for supporting Enterprise Interoperability (EI) is described. Particular needs informed by the theory are presented and a software environment supporting these requirements is proposed. The infrastructure aims at serving as a tool for solving problems in the EI domain, and includes a Domain Specific Language (DSL) supporting engineering interoperability solutions. The Ontology of Enterprise Interoperability (OoEI) provides the underlying conceptualisation of the Enterprise Interoperability (EI) domain and is used as basis. The DSL enhances the ontology with CAS related concepts. The CAS perspective provides a particular focus on dynamic aspects, which requires a new approach currently only addressed to a limited extend. The research interoperability infrastructure provides components to address the decentralised nature of a CAS by providing software agents and agent interaction protocols that facilitate the identification of interoperability problems and agent negotiations to find solutions. It is realised using the functional programming language Scala.

Service-Oriented Concept of a Holonic Enterprise - Enabling Adaptive Networks Along the Value Chain

In this paper we are discussing a holonic architecture for a management and control software, supporting users within enterprises and networks of enterprises in their co-ordination tasks. Holons are extended with functionality identified by intelligent software agent and multi agent systems research. This improves communication capabilities, flexibility, and the overall system robustness. Furthermore we discuss the need for a service oriented approach, which enables us to let the same agent kernel, which is handling mainly coordination and communication, be applied to hierarchy levels ranging from the virtual-enterprise-level to the shop-floor level.

Supporting Interoperability for Chaotic and Complex Adaptive Enterprise Systems

Living systems like enterprises and enterprise networks not only want to survive but also want to grow and prosper. These organisational systems adapt to changing environments and proactively change the system itself. Continuous evolution (of parts) of these enterprise systems requires diversity, but this heterogeneity is a source of non interoperability. In this article, interoperability and enterprise systems are analysed through the lenses of chaos theory and complex adaptive systems theory and requirements for continuous adaptation and organisational learning to maintain interoperability are identified.

Organisational network models and the implications for decision support systems

Abstract Various models for cooperative organisational networks exist. The obvious differentiation is the structure of the networks. But these models, sometimes implicitly, assume different levels of autonomy of the network partner. This paper compares a number of such models. Depending on properties of the problem at hand that requires a decision, different models are preferable. Decision Support Systems that aim at supporting decision makers in various decisions ranging from strategic to operative nature have to support the varying degree of centralisation of decision making.

A Domain Specific Language for Organisational Interoperability

In the SUddEN (SMEs Undertaking Design of Dynamic Ecosystem Networks) project a web-based environment has been researched supporting automotive SMEs (Small and Medium Sized Enterprises) with respect to organisational interoperability using performance measurement systems. Using a CAS (Complex Adaptive Systems) point of view, we have implemented a Domain Specific Language and interoperability support services implementing the SUddEN frame of reference. Extending interoperability support to the process and data level, this environment enables simulating processes and data transfers.