The advanced information technology innovation roadmap

Abstract

The AIT (Advanced Information Technology for the European Manufacturing Industry) initiative is focusing on IT innovations and their integration in the users enterprise. This is achieved through the deployment of the AIT Innovation Cycle starting with the AIT strategic planning (development of a common master plan) and finishing with the business integration of complete IT innovative solutions. The IT integration includes two major action streams supported by various R&D projects belonging to the ESPRIT and Brite Euram research programmes, which are: ⋅ The technological integration which is achieved in strong cooperation with IT vendors through the development of integration platforms based on emerging standards such as STEP, CORBA, JAVA, etc. In this integration context, the CIMOSA framework has been used to build the AIT IT Reference Model (ITRM). ⋅ The IT innovations integration into the users' enterprise which consider the usage of all the CIMOSA views (function view, information view, organisation view, resources view including Human, Financial and IT resources) as well as their aggregation in order to support the development of generic networked enterprise (re)engineering methodologies, processes and associated IT supporting tools. This paper is focusing on the second integration stream by describing the progress achieved to date in the AIT-IMPLANT project. The aim of this ESPRIT project is to develop a generic enterprise change management methodology and associated IT tools to support the integration of IT Innovations into the networked manufacturing enterprises.