Standardisation Group

Missions & Objectives

The need for interoperation of enterprise processes especially for ICT/Internet based processes has caused huge R&D efforts in both academia and industry. This work has initiated numerous standardisation efforts in Standards Development Organisations (SDOs) and in industry consortia.

The I-VLab Standardization Group has the goal to evaluate the state of art of standards in Enterprise Interoperability (EI) and follow-up on its ongoing development. The results will be made available through publications and demonstrations of its benefits. Emphasis is on dissemination and promotion of upcoming standards. The objectives of the group are:

–       To analyse relevant standards in the field of enterprise interoperability and identify gaps and redundancies related to  the Future Internet activities

–       To disseminate analysis results to both academia and industry to foster gap filling research as well as a better understanding of the capability of standards for enterprise interoperation

–       To analyse the different standard development processes and derive a common vision of the transfer process from research to standardisation in EI together with an implementation methodology

–       To enhance the contacts of I-VLab members with standardisation bodies (ISO, IEC,  CEN,  OMG, W3C, OASIS and others) e.g. through their national counterparts.

The Standardization Group consists of I-VLab specialists most of them participating in SDOs with experience and excellent knowledge in the fields of both research and standards development issues.

Activities

The work in this group is based on the Framework for Enterprise Interoperability developed from research work started in the European projects ATHENA ,  INTEROP/ IDEAS. The framework refers to the ability of enterprises to interact through the exchange of information and other entities such as material objects, energy as a necessary support to allow business collaboration This work has been transferred into the standard CEN/ISO 11354 Part1 Requirements for establishing manufacturing enterprise process interoperability and CEN/ISO 11354 Part2: Maturity model for assessing enterprise interoperability. Both are jointly developed by CEN/TC 310/WG1 and ISO/TC 184/SC5/WG1 and have reached the level of Committee Draft (CD) .

The Value Delivery Modeling Language (VDML) is an ongoing standard development with the I-VLab member SINTEF[1] as a leading partner of the OMG submission team. The language has the goal to advance business modeling from linear models to more human centric collaborative models. VDML is specifying enterprise services that support the views of Value Networks, Value Chain, Business Model, REA (Resources, Events, Activities) and is intended for use by business leaders and managers. Also, specifications for the  Service oriented Modelling Language (SoaML), have been developed in collaboration with OMG

A number of standards workshops have been held at the  I-ESA conferences in 2008-2009-2010 and to come in 2012 as well as at the IFIP IWEI 2011 conference with the purpose to disseminate development and applications of EI standards, inside and outside of the I-VLab.

Implementing eBusiness standards for SME networks usually requires system customization to achieve interoperability between different SMEs. Investigations in the Textile/Clothing Industry on the use of eBusiness standards in the area of customization rules and conformance testing tools have been reported at the Standards Workshop[2] of the IWEI 2011.Working conference.

Further work, will focus on access and contribution to upcoming standards, starting from an analysis of the state of the art in standardisation in ICT / Service oriented enterprises.  Another focus will be on a terminology base for EI standards.  Support to the project partners will be provided concerning the standards development process. Promotion of MSEE results in standardisation via workshops and European events is planned in collaboration with similar European projects, through the FInES Cluster[3] and directly with SDOs. This work will be done as part of the MSEE[4] project.

[1] http://www.fines-cluster.eu

[2] Manufacturing SErvice Ecosystem (MSEE), a European FP7 Integrated Project 2011-2014

[3] Contact point Arne Berre, arne.j.berre@sintef.no

[4] http://www.ics.kth.se/iwei/IWEI/Workshops.html, contact piero.desabbata@enea.it

Standardisation Group Members

Documents

1. Standardisation workshop 2012
2. fines-standardisation-task-force-report-working-draft-20120316