Announcement ------------ The CIMOSA - News is published by the CIMOSA Association. The CIMOSA News will report on CIMOSA applications, evolution of its technical specification, advancements in standardisation and related items. Contributions from other parties are welcome. The CIMOSA - News will be printed periodically and will be distributed to all parties interested in CIMOSA.
CIMOSA Applications ------------------- Several new applications have been reported by external parties during a recent Workshop at Aachen. More details are described below and in the paragraph 'Reports from Events'. KfK Karlsruhe and the Engineering School of Offenburg have developed a CIMOSA application 'Analysis and Restructuring of Business Processes in a Paper Mill'. The CIMOSA GmbH is emphasising their intention on product developments, one area being Business Process Management in SME's. A project proposal has been prepared; a non-German partner for development of application software is still needed. For further information please contact M. Klittich(1).
CIMOSA Technical Specification ------------------------------ The CIMOSA Technical Baseline, Version 3.0 was presented at the last Workshop in Aachen. It will become available in October 1994 and may be ordered from the CIMOSA Association (price ECU 200). The new version is based on the AMICE Formal Reference Base (Milestones M-2 and M-3 Deliverables) and has been edited for re-structuring its contents, reducing redundancy and improving consistency. Compared with the previous version of the Technical Baseline, the constructs for the Requirements Description and Design Specification Modelling Level have been completed and constructs for Function and Information View for the Implementation Description Modelling Level have been added.
CIMOSA in Standardisation ------------------------- The 9th meeting of the IFAC/IFIP Task Force on Architectures for Enterprise Integration was held in Ottawa, Canada on August 25-26, 1994 in conjunction with the SPE/IFAC International Conference on CAD/CAM, Robotics and Factories of the Future. A large part of the meeting was dedicated to the presentation and acceptance of the PERA proposal for master planning as part of GERAM (2). It was concluded that it should be possible to have a generic activity model from which both machine and human activities could be specialised (with the enterprise activity model of CIMOSA as a candidate) and it is proposed to document the GERAM methodology in terms of business processes using CIMOSA constructs. The ISO Committee Draft (CD) 14258, Framework for Enterprise Modelling has been analysed by the IFAC/IFIP Task Force on Architectures for Integration. In a common position documented in a letter to ISO, the Task Force members expressed their doubts about the practical usefulness of the present CD version. A revision of the CD is expected.
Reports from Events ------------------- CIMOSA Association; Workshop (3): Business Re-engineering; WZL/ADITEC, Aachen, Germany , 94-09-21: At the Workshop, several CIMOSA applications in the fields of integrated quality management, process oriented order handling and document flow management, all related to model based process re-engineering were reported. The models, usually suited for SME's are supported by modelling tools. Examples of tools are Proplan (WZL), PACE (Grossenbacher) and the McCIM tool kit (KfK). The Manufacturing Systems Integration (MSI) Research Institute of Loughborough University presented their 'Model driven CIM' Frameworks Prototype. The integrated environment embraces three modelling approaches:
(1) a largely CIMOSA based approach named SEW-OSA (Software Engineering Workbench - OSA),
(2) an object oriented approach based on the Booth methodology, and
(3) a modelling approach based on Estelle - together with an integrating infrastructure for model enactment.
An application of 'order flow' business process at an electronic component manufacturer was reported. The discussions at the Workshop were focusing on the need to provide user guidelines for problem solutions with CIMOSA and on the feasibility how to include human activities of group work in the context of business re-engineering in CIMOSA models. The need for modelling tools supporting the business user rather than IT people was emphasised.
Upcoming Events --------------- 94/11/09 - CIMOSA Association: Workshop on Enterprise Modelling and Simulation Tools; WZL/ADITEC, Aachen, Germany.
94/12/12-14 - INRIA; IMSE'94 - European Workshop on Integrated Manufacturing Systems Engineering; Grenoble, France (information: vernadat@imag.fr).
95/03/9-10 - Business Process Management with CIMOSA, Impact on Human Aspects and on SME's; Offenburg, Germany.
95-tbd - CIMOSA Association: Workshops to be held at WZL/ADITEC, Aachen, Germany: Concurrent Engineering Integrated Quality Strategies Virtual Enterprise Design Oriented Costing
CIMOSA Literature ----------------- CIMOSA - Open System Architecture for CIM; ESPRIT Consortium AMICE, Springer-Verlag 1993, (ISBN 3-540-56256-7), (ISBN 0-387-56256-7)
CIMOSA - Open System Architecture for CIM, Technical Baseline; ESPRIT Consortium AMICE, private publication February 1993
CIMOSA Association ------------------ The CIMOSA Association is a non-profit organisation involved in the promotion of CIMOSA, its active support in national, European and international standardisation and in the consolidation of the evolution of its technical specification: the CIMOSA Technical Baseline. The CIMOSA Association acts as a focal point for all parties involved in applying CIMOSA in industrial and research environments. It supports these efforts through expert service by clarifying the CIMOSA technical specifications and by providing opportunities for presenting results to interested Workshop audiences and through general publications on CIMOSA applications. Members of the CIMOSA Association are industrial and research organisations involved in exploitating CIMOSA or interested in the subject of enterprise integration. Membership is open to any organisation interested in supporting enterprise integration and CIMOSA. Proformas for membership application may be obtained on request.
For more information please contact: K. Kosanke Stockholmer Str 7 D-71034 Boeblingen, Germany Phone: (49) 7031 27 76 65 FAX: (49) 7031 27 66 98 e-mail: Kosanke@IPA.FHG.de
1 EEISS, Spessartweg 54, D-65760 Eschborn, Germany 2 Generic Enterprise Reference Architecture and Methodology 3 CIMOSA Assoc. Workshops supported by the European Commission through its Programme on Accompanying Measures
________________________________________________________________________ Francois B. Vernadat INRIA Rhone-Alpes 46, avenue Felix Viallet F-38031 Grenoble Cedex, France
mail: vernadat@imag.fr or Francois.Vernadat@inria.fr Tel.: +33 76 63 57 47 Fax: +33 76.44.66.75 ________________________________________________________________________