ISO TC 184 SC 5 WG 1

1999-April-26/27

London, Ontario, Canada

Jim Nell, WG 1 Convenor, opened the meeting at 0915 on 1999-April-26. Attending were:
Jean-Jacques Michel France
Yoshiro Fukuda Japan
David Shorter UK
Gunnar Eriksson Sweden
Thomas Lindholm Sweden
Hui (Helen) Xie Canada
Michael Gruninger Canada (part time)
Em delaHostria SC 5 Chairman (part time)
Craig Schlenoff US (part time)
Jim Nell TC 184 SC 5 WG 1 Convenor
Greg Winchester TC 184 SC 5 WG 1 Secretary (part time)

The agenda (N427) was approved as distributed.

The minutes of the Brisbane meeting (N426) were approved as written.

David Shorter said that WG 1 has completed its current plan of work and is proposing new work items to TC 310. The next stage proposal recommends that WG1 update the current pre-normative standards, ENVs, that they have developed, ENV 12204 and ENV 40003. These reflect enterprise-modeling constructs based on work done by the CIMOSA project (Computer-Integrated Manufacturing Open-Systems Architecture). The proposed work would extend the capability, define ways to formally represent these constructs, and include a guide or code of practice about how to use the constructs defined therein.

Yoshiro Fukuda reported on the JOP work. The prototype has been completed and testing is underway. The object model for the shop floor is similar to the NIST SIMA model. The reference model, to be completed by the end of 1999, will be proposed to TC 184 SC 5 WG 1 as a partial-enterprise-reference model. This will serve as an example in the planned new standard covering requirements for partial-enterprise-reference models.

Jean-Jacques Michel reported that WG 8 has resolved STEP and MANDATE models for representing time and that STEP, MANDATE, Parts Library, and the STEP application protocols are all trying to use the STEP integrated resources. These will improve the interoperability of the SC 4 standards. MANDATE plans to use the Parts Library to describe the capability of resources that is needed by MANDATE.

Greg Winchester reported that technical corrigendum to accompany ISO 14258, Concepts and rules for enterprise models, will be developed at the London meeting.

Greg Winchester reported that the DIS15704, Requirements for Enterprise reference architectures and methodologies, must undergo a FDIS ballot. A comment received too late to be considered at the Brisbane meeting was resolved by WG 1 at the London meeting. This involved a minor change to the informative annex to the standard. The ballot will be sent following the London meeting.

The SC 5 chairman conducted a joint meeting of the working groups, WGs 1, 2, 4, and 5, to discuss the feasibility of using common-modeling tools in SC 5. Tool candidates included the eXtensible Markup Language (XML), Universal Data Element Framework (UDEF), Process Specification Language (PSL), Universal Modeling Language (UML), and EXPRESS. Other technologies were advocated during the ample period allocated for discussion (see item 7).

WG 1 continued to pursue their strategy to create a family of standards that apply to interoperating enterprise processes. At Brisbane WG 1 identified six proposed standards that would be high priority with industry. At this meeting we combined some overlapping terms so that there are now five standards. More detailed descriptions of two of the five proposed standards were developed further by the person advocating that standard. A draft paper, Enterprise representation--A different paradigm for designing process-interoperability standards, describing new-work-item proposal that was developed for the new suite also was reviewed. This paper will be placed on the WG 1 World-Wide-Web site.

The planned part 1, Overview--Guidelines and philosophy of use, describes WG 1s new standardization approach for enterprise representation. WG 1 will draft its new standards in a paradigm similar to the ISO 9000 series of quality standards. In the new standards WG 1 will be less prescriptive about representing all enterprise processes and more prescriptive about major components and attributes that should exist in the enterprise. The new standards will define how an enterprise process can determine, in a standard way, information necessary to enable other enterprise processes to communicate with it. The new-work-item proposal, and the draft enterprise-representation paper were critiqued by the group. These documents were the basis for a brainstorming session to generate the use cases that appear below.

Jean-Jacques Michel prepared further notes on the content of another proposed standard on partial-enterprise models. Jean Jacques felt that a partial model should define the different elements to be modeled and the deliverables (constraints) that it should provide. This concept was later elaborated into applicability (context), elements, constraints (rules governing elements), rules and the necessary negotiations to build partial models. David Shorter noted that WG 1 needs to be careful to distinguish between abstractions and instances of those abstractions. Also WG 1 must define how this should be done to allow partial models to be reused.

David Shorter said WG 1 needed to define the ‘distinguished elements’, in the sense of having unique names and recognizable characteristics. These elements would be used to describe those things that were visible at the ‘projection’ (or some similar term) of an enterprise model onto the interface that the model needed to expose to interoperate with another enterprise. Not all of the internal elements of a model need to be exposed to another enterprise--and some details would be confidential anyway.

Several process-information-exchange use cases were generated to help the group envision what would be the nature of the communications necessary and the standards involved in such exchanges. The use cases are:

1 Publishing a capability (an interface) to unknown clients.
Raises issues of semantics, taxonomy, representation, costs, and service qualities. Also, this case involves a looser coupling than in 2 below.

2 Negotiating and establishing an interworking mechanism, possibly with help from intermediaries.
Implies contracts, modalities such as inventory replacement, and two-sided purpose. This case has a tighter coupling than in 1 above.

3 Establishing a low-overhead version of 2, once trust has been established.
Implies presence of tokens, encryption, and authorization.

4a Executing the interworking mechanism (e.g. state-machine characterization).
Implies time horizons, volumes, and description of behavior.

4b Executing the interworking mechanism but adding interaction modalities such as ODP handoff; for example, motion control.

5 Monitoring the interworking, within an agreed (envelop of ) quality of service(s)-- perhaps with third party involvement.
Implies contract monitoring, exceptions, performance.

• Use cases 1 and 2 are concerned with the 'What'; use case 3 with the 'How', and use cases 4 and 5 with the 'Do' part of process communication.
• A possible 6th use case might emerge as a result of 5. That is the evolution and encapsulation of business processes into a new business process with newly exposed service interfaces.
• A further important use case was identified by Em de la Hostria; that is, how will an organization make use of the standard(s) that will come out of this work. This theme will be incorporated into each use case.

There was time to expand only one of the use cases. The others will be expanded at the next meeting.

Actors and Resources:
Marketing function, business processes (inputs and outputs), external view of process model, language, World-Wide Web, database, and server.

What happens:
1 Extract or select a needed capability.

2 Represent the capability. Implies language(s), customer vocabulary, codifying, key words, arrangement (in the sense of organization of parts), registration, and notification.

3 Map 1 to 2 above

4 Publish. Implies implementation

5 "How to use us" and/or "How we do business". This implies modalities and qualities of service such as costs accuracy, and delivery. Note that publication could be for human review and/or machine review.

WG 1 will establish a project to do preparatory work that employs the use cases to generate a suite of standards designed to improve manufacturing-enterprise-process interoperability. To define the project, WG 1 will assemble a paper to include:

• The title, scope, purpose, and justification of the new standards (included in a new-work-item proposal, already prepared).
• The problem statement that defines the problem to be solved (in a guidelines paper already prepared).
• Why industry needs a new approach to process interoperability (in a guidelines paper already prepared).
• The use cases discussed above.
• A road map of the planned standards that shows a logical order of development, any research or development needed on technology before standards development, and testing required after standards development.

This paper will be posted on the WG 1 web site and forwarded the SC5 Secretariat for distribution.

The purpose of the joint meeting was to identify areas of possible cooperation by the SC 5 working groups. The object is to encourage a consistent use of languages, semantics, syntax, and profiles. This is an opportunity to see if the SC 5 WGs can use the same tools. Em dela Hostria was chairman. There were the following presentations:

• WG 5 Application-Profile work, Graeme Meyer, convenor (A newly formed SC 5 working group)
• Process-Specification Language, Craig Schlenoff and Michael Gruninger NIST.
• eXtensible Markup Language (XML) and Unified Data-Element Framework (UDEF) Jim Nell (for Ron Schuldt and Melissa Price).

Discussions after the presentations resulted in the table below that depicts the technology that each working group feels that it could use. The entry is not based on a formal poll of members.

DATE: 1999-September-14/16 (Tuesday/Thursday)

LOCATION: Paris France, or London England.

This meeting will identify the types of standards that will be necessary to effect the use cases. The object is to generate a logical sequence of new work and begin the process of generating new-work-item proposals.

9 SC 5 Meeting (after the WG 1 meeting adjourned)

WG 1 had determined that the Process Specification Language would be a useful tool to accomplish the process-interoperability improvements sought. The issue was brought to the SC 5 members during the part of the WG 1 convenor's report in which the future standardization plans were discussed. After considerable discussion, the SC5 passed the following resolution about standardizing PSL:

SC 5 acknowledges the importance of PSL to WG 1 work. Since standardization of PSL would benefit users of WG 1 standards, SC 5 asks WG 1 to:

Jim Nell, Convenor
TC184 SC5 WG1

Edited by Greg Winchester, Secretary
TC184 SC5 WG1

The convenor acknowledges contribution to this report from David Shorter.