The Service Meta Modeling Editor – Bottom-Up Integration of Service Models

Abstract

The logistics service industry is characterized by a high level of collaboration between logistics customers and providers. In fact, sophisticated, knowledge-intense business models such as fourth party and lead logistics evolved in recent years that are responsible for planning, coordination, and monitoring entire supply chains across logistics companies. The Logistics Service Engineering and Management (LSEM) platform is a service-oriented infrastructure for the development and management of collaborative contract logistics enabling fourth party and lead logistics. The service modeling framework (SMF) is a central element of the LSEM-platform. It allows users of the platform to define, manage and combine logistics services from different providers and allows for an integrated view on complex services setups. In this paper, the Service Meta Modeling Editor is presented as an essential part of the SMF. It allows connecting and integrating various types of service models and avoids the need to define and maintain a complex, global service model. Instead a comprehensive service model is built bottom-up in that elements from different models are linked on a metamodel level.