Jorge Minguez

A SOA-based approach for the integration of a data propagation system

Major challenges that companies face nowadays are extremely volatile markets, a globally distributed supplier network and constantly changing business environments. These circumstances demand a high level of agility and extraordinary flexibility in the business modeling and the organizational structures of a company as well as adaptive and interoperable IT systems. In order to meet these requirements an integration of systems needs to be achieved.

The Smart Real-Time Factory as a Product Service System

In modern manufacturing landscape, companies are increasingly relying on product service systems i.e. bundling of products and services together in order to gain a competitive edge. In this article we present the Smart Real-Time Factory, a smart digital manufacturing environment that can transform the process of production into an informational service for the customers. The different components of the smart factory are discussed at length along with a discussion of the different services that can be offered by the smart factory.

A service-based approach for next-generation Product Lifecycle Management

Nowadays, one of the main challenges for companies is the effective management of IT-systems. In times where requirements and companies change steadily, the IT-infrastructure has to adopt these changes as well: new systems have to be integrated or existing adapted. Even worse, these systems work together to support business processes of a company and, thus, the infrastructures becomes complex and difficult to manage. The same situation is true for Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) that accompanies a product development by means of interconnected IT systems running on complex IT infrastructures. This paper introduces a viable solution to the integration of all phases of PLM. An Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) is employed as the service-based integration and communication infrastructure. Three exemplary scenarios are introduced to describe the benefits of using an ESB as compared to alternative PLM infrastructures. Furthermore, we introduce a service hierarchy to enable value-added services to enhance PLM functionality.

Service-based integration in event-driven manufacturing environments

Constantly changing business conditions require a high level of flexibility in business processes as well as an adaptive and fully interoperable IT infrastructure in todays manufacturing environments. The lack of flexibility prevents manufacturing companies to improve their responsiveness and to adapt their workflows to turbulent scenarios. In order to achieve highly flexible and adaptive workflows, information systems in digital factories and shop floors need to be integrated. The most challenging problem in such manufacturing environments is the high heterogeneity of the IT landscape, where the integration of legacy systems and information silos has lead to chaotic architectures over the last two decades. In order to overcome this issue, we present a flexible integration platform that allows a loose coupling of distributed services in event-driven manufacturing environments. Our approach enables a flexible communication between digital factory and shop floor components by introducing a service bus architecture. Our solution integrates an application-independent canonical message format for manufacturing events, content-based routing and transformation services as well as event processing workflows.

Event-driven business process management in Engineer-to-Order supply chains

Integration efforts in todays manufacturing environments tend to enable service-based communication interfaces between enterprise and manufacturing systems. Constantly changing business conditions demand a high level of flexibility in business processes as well as an adaptive and fully interoperable IT infrastructure. The principles of reusability and loosely-coupled services have driven Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) to become the most used paradigm for software design at the business level. In a manufacturing environment, event-driven architectures (EDA) are often employed for managing information flows across different production systems. The timely propagation of business-relevant events is a fundamental requirement in Engineer-to-Order (ETO) enterprises, which require a high level of transparency in their supply chains. Agility is one of the top priorities for ETO manufacturers in order to react to turbulent scenarios. Therefore, the main challenge for ETO supply chains is to identify and propagate events across the ETO logistics network and integrate these into the manufacturer business processes. We present how an existing service-oriented integration platform for manufacturing can be used to fill the gap between EDA-based manufacturing environments of an ETO supply chain and SOA-based manufacturer business processes. In this paper, we discuss the benefits of the Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) as vehicle for this integration. The adoption of BPEL will enable an efficient and effective reaction to turbulent manufacturing scenarios in an ETO supply chain.

Advanced Product Lifecycle Management by Introducing Domain-Specific Service Buses

Manufacturing companies are operating today in a turbulent market. Permanently changing preconditions forces the companies to continuously adapt their business and production processes to get the optimal productivity. Therefore, a vast number of IT systems are introduced to support tasks along the product life cycle. These systems are typically isolated and their communication, cooperation and in special cases also integration results in more and more overhead and gets quickly unmanageable. Further problems arise, when building continuous processes within the Product Lifecycle Management (PLM). The service-based PLM architecture faces these challenges and presents a homogeneous integration approach based on Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) technology. The characteristics and findings of our approach are presented and the inclusion of security features is discussed. A proof-of-concept for the production planning and the corresponding Production Planning Service Bus are presented. Finally, the advantages of the service-based approach compared to traditional integration solutions are pointed out.

A Novel Approach to Product Lifecycle Management based on Service Hierarchies

In grown IT infrastructures for Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), applications are mostly interconnected using point-to-point interfaces. This leads to complex and unmanageable infrastructures. A continuous and efficient integration is a key requirement for successful PLM implementations. The Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is a prevalent solution to efficiently integrate legacy applications and systems into business processes. Its possibility for loose coupling of services enables the replacement of point-to-point interfaces, this way reducing the complexity of managing and maintaining the IT infrastructure. This article introduces a SOA-based solution to the integration of all PLM phases. We employ an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) as service-based integration and communication infrastructure and introduce three exemplary scenarios to illustrate the benefits of using an ESB as compared to alternative PLM infrastructures. Furthermore, we describe a service hierarchy that extends PLM functionality with value-added services by mapping business processes to data integration services.

A provenance-aware service repository for EAI process modeling tools

One of the major challenges for Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) process modeling tools is the continuous adaptation of the business processes and services. Business and IT specialists are both confronted with a number of problems involved in the adaptation of such processes, such as the lack of support for process lifecycle management, data and functional interoperability problems or the appropriate service knowledge base. Currently, most service engineering methods adopt a lifecycle strategy for the design, implementation, deployment and evaluation of services. However, enterprises exploiting service reusability lack the knowledge on process dependencies across the entire service lifecycle. This knowledge is required by process modeling tools in order to keep EAI processes loosely-coupled. Using a provenance data model we describe the different types of service dependencies in EAI processes with regard to the service changes across its lifecycle. We present a provenance-aware service repository with provenance subscription capabilities and its adoption for different use cases in the manufacturing domain.

Der Manufacturing Service Bus

Im heutigen globalen Wettbewerb mussen produzierende Unternehmen ihre technischen Prozesse und Ressourcen in der Fabrik an die sich standig verandernden Geschaftsbedingungen anpassen. In diesem Umfeld gewinnt der Einsatz digitaler Werkzeuge zunehmend an Bedeutung. Die Datenverwaltung in der Fabrik setzt auf Informationsflusse, die auf verschiedene Systeme zugreifen. Das Problem in vielen produzierenden Unternehmen liegt darin, dass die meisten digitalen Werkzeuge sehr heterogene Insellosungen sind. Dies stellt fur die Systemverknupfung eine gewaltige Herausforderung dar, da mangelnde Schnittstellenkompatibilitat den Datenaustausch zwischen Einzelanwendungen erschwert und den Aufwand der Integration neuer Systeme erhoht. Haufig werden Einzellosungen durch individuelle Anpassungen fur die Kopplung digitaler Werkzeuge eingesetzt. Solche Ansatze basieren auf einer starren Integration, die sich meist nur aufwendig erweitern und andern lassen. Dies fuhrt zu hohen Wartungskosten bedingt durch die Komplexitat und die Unzuverlassigkeit einer starren Vernetzung. Hierfur ist eine Infrastruktur notwendig, die eine effiziente Anpassung der systemubergreifenden informationstechnischen Prozesse ermoglicht.

A Service Bus Architecture for Application Integration in the Planning and Production Phases of a Product Lifecycle

Constantly changing business conditions require a high level of flexibility in business processes as well as an adaptive and fully interoperable IT infrastructure in todays manufacturing environments. The lack of flexibility prevents manufacturing companies from improving their responsiveness and adapting their workflows to turbulent scenarios. In order to achieve highly flexible and adaptive workflows, information systems in digital factories and shop floors need to be integrated. The most challenging problem in such manufacturing environments is the high heterogeneity of the IT landscape, where the integration of legacy systems and information silos has led to chaotic architectures over the last two decades. In order to overcome this issue, the authors present a flexible integration platform that allows a loose coupling of distributed services in event-driven manufacturing environments. The proposed approach enables a flexible communication between digital factory and shop floor components by introducing a service bus architecture. This solution integrates an application-independent canonical message format for manufacturing events, content-based routing and transformation services as well as event processing workflows.