Business Interoperability Research Articles

Pathways to improve health information systems in Ethiopia: current maturity status and implications

BackgroundTo achieve national and international strategic goals, countries are advised to assess the maturity status of their health information systems (HIS), including business continuity and interoperability. This work aims to determine the existing maturity status of the Ethiopian HIS, set HIS improvement goals, and inform a path towards an improved national HIS by the end of 2024.MethodsThis assessment was a collaborative and transparent process that was carried out with the engagement of all key stakeholders through consultation. We used the Stages of Continuous Improvement (SOCI) tool to guide the assessment to measure the maturity level of the Ethiopian HIS in five core domains, 13 components and 39 subcomponents and to guide future plans.ResultsThe overall average score of the national HIS maturity was 2.68/5, which is categorized between repeatable (stage 2) and defined (stage 3) maturity levels. The assessment findings revealed that three out of the five HIS maturity domains were at a repeatable stage. Only the leadership and governance and the data quality and use domains were at the defined maturity level. A majority (7/13) of the subcomponents were at the repeatable level of maturity, while four were at the defined level. Policy, legal and regulatory framework and compliance from the leadership and governance domain and interoperability from the data quality and use domain were categorized as having an emerging status. Considering the current HIS maturity status, gaps and strengths identified, ongoing HIS initiatives, existing platforms, and the interest and level of engagement of senior government leadership, this assessment put forward an improvement roadmap for achieving the desired managed stage (4.37) of maturity by the end of 2024.ConclusionsThe findings show that the overall maturity level of the Ethiopian HIS is 2.68, which is between the repeatable and defined maturity stages. Enforcement of policies and legislation, data exchange among systems, and information and communication technology infrastructure business continuity planning are the main challenges of Ethiopian HIS requiring further investment. Strengthened and collaborative effort is critical to reaching the desired goal of “managed” HIS (stage 4) in the country by 2024.

The Business Interoperability Decomposition Framework to analyse buyer-supplier dyads

The current competitive environment demands cooperative arrangements like buyer-supplier dyads to struggle for the success of supply chains. Managing inter-firm relationships is a decisive and highly demanding activity, whereas business interoperability (BI) is key to achieve meaningful interactions to create value. Nonetheless, cooperation issues due to lack of interoperability constrain the success buyer-supplier dyads. Problems ranging from technical to strategical perspectives of BI may lead to problems like lack of coordination which decrease the supply chain surplus. Interoperability literature provides several contributions and frameworks to deal with different interoperability issues. Nonetheless, it is missing a cohesive framework allowing one to address inter-firm relationships in the full scope of BI. The present paper proposes a framework to support the analysis of interoperability conditions in buyer-supplier dyads. A case study was conducted to demonstrate the framework, and what decisions are required to improve or scale-up cooperation.

An approach for business process model registration based on ISO/IEC 19763-5

To facilitate business collaboration and interoperation among enterprises, it is critical to discover and reuse appropriate business processes modeled in different languages and stored in different repositories. However, the formats of business process models are very different, which makes it a challenge to fuse them in a unified way without changing their original representations and semantics. To solve this problem, this paper uses semantic interoperability technique which is able to transform heterogeneous process models into uniform registered items. Based on the general and unambiguous metamodel for process model registration (PMR for short) in ISO/IEC 19763-5 that we proposed before, in this article, we provide a generic process model registration framework for registering heterogeneous business process models to facilitate semantic discovery of business processes across enterprises, and promote process interoperation and business collaboration. Considering that Event-driven Process Chain (EPC) is a popular process model widely used in the industry, we focus on the mapping rules and related specific transformation algorithms from EPC to PMR as an instantiation of our framework and develop an automatic process model registration tool for EPC. Moreover, we conduct a series of experiments to verify the correctness and efficiency of our proposed framework by leveraging the real data set of 604 EPCs from SAP.

Impact of Business Interoperability on the Performance of Complex Cooperative Supply Chain Networks: A Case Study

This paper proposes an agent-based model for evaluating the effect of business interoperability on the performance of cooperative supply chain networks. The model is based on insights from the Industrial Marketing and Purchasing network approach and the complex systems theory perspective. To demonstrate its applicability, an explanatory case study regarding a Portuguese reverse logistics cooperative supply chain network is presented. Face-to-face interviews and forms were used to collect data. The findings show that the establishment of appropriate levels of business interoperability has helped to reduce several non-value-added interaction processes and consequently improve the operational performance of the Valorpneu network. Regarding the research implications, this paper extends the current knowledge on business interoperability and an important problem in business: how business interoperability gaps in dyadic organizational relationships affect the network of companies that the two companies belong to—network effect. In terms of practical implications, managers can use the proposed model as a starting point to simulate complex interactions between supply chain network partners and understand better how the performance of their networks emerges from these interactions and from the adoption of different levels of business interoperability.

How Do You Know When You Have Interoperability?

This paper first looks at the several definitions of the word interoperability. Next, the paper addresses several of the distinct components that are factors in accomplishing interoperability: semantic interoperability, functional interoperability, stakeholder interoperability, consumer interoperability, business interoperability, privacy and security interoperability, and international interoperability. This paper discusses each of these components in terms of their current state relating to interoperability and suggests what changes might be made to achieve interoperability.

Performance analysis of Enterprise Service Buses of Open Source type

The growing interest in business integration and interoperability of IT systems led to an increase in the importance of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), which provides tools for Enterprise Application Integration (EAI). In this sense, Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) provides technical capabilities for communication between IT systems. The aim of this article is to present the results of performance tests of selected ESBs of Open Source type. The basis for our performance analysis was a business case of the order realization in the Internet shop of electronics retailer. The order realization requires a collaboration of three IT systems. The business case has been implemented with the use of each selected ESBs: WSO2, Mule, and Talend. Test scenarios were defined and performance tests were conducted for each of the three selected ESBs. On the basis of the collected results it can be concluded that each service bus has its own strengths and weaknesses. Focusing on the merits it should be noted that WSO2 copes very well with files of small size, for small number of users, and also does not burden the CPU significantly. Results for Talend ESB, show that it does well with both kind of files, small and large sizes, for large number of users, but harder utilizes CPU. Research shows that it is worth to analyze the parameters of transmitted messages while selecting ESB for building integration solution. The results show that the Talend ESB may be a good choice for construction of integration solution in a business environment with a large number of users and diversified communications. Keywords: Enterprise Service Bus, performance, integration, Service Oriented Architecture

An agent-based model for analyzing the impact of business interoperability on the performance of cooperativeindustrial networks

This paper presents an approach for analyzing the impact of business interoperability on the performance of cooperative industrial networks. The analysis of the impact is grounded on the agent-based simulation method. A theoretical agent-based model is proposed to simulate the manner in which companies interoperate in cooperative industrial networks and how the distance between the actual and the required level of business interoperability in different dyad relationships can affect the performance of these companies. To test the applicability of the proposed theoretical agent-based model, a case study regarding a dam construction project is presented. The objective of the case study is to analyze the impact of the introduction of a Radio Frequency Identification system and a cooperative information system platform, first on the business interoperability performance and then on the operational performance of a the companies involved in the dam construction project. The application of the theoretical agent-based simulation model to this case study supports our assumption that indeed, agent-based simulation is appropriate for achieving the objective set. Regarding to the case study results, the main benefits of the introduction of the cooperative information systems platform are the reduction of the time needed to analyze the slump and compression test results, which can be reduced up to 98%.

Interoperability in supply chain and logistics:What can the Common Framework offer?–A scientific evaluation

Different business models fostering more flexible management of supply chains have been proposed in recent years. The rapid technology development is supporting more reliable and efficient ICT-based cooperation among stakeholders within the supply chain. The technology itself, serving as infrastructure for cooperation has evolved and also tools and frameworks assisting the development and deployment of these technologies have been developed. During this evolvement there have been several attempts to organise different artefacts into frameworks for interoperability. The motivation for this paper is to evaluate qualities held by the Common Framework in relation to new business models, interoperability and other frameworks for interoperability. Consequently our main research question is: Does the Common Framework offer any new qualities serving interoperability in the supply chain management sector compared to established frameworks? The idea behind this evaluation is that the Common Framework contrary to so...

Re-design of an Interoperable Buyer-seller Automotive Relationship Aided by Computer Simulation

Business Interoperability has become an indisputable reality for companies who cooperate and strive for competitiveness. Supply chain management is one kind of industrial cooperation that relies on large integration and coordination by interoperability factors, which until now is missing a tool to identify and solve its problems. The present article presents a systematic methodology applying axiomatic design theory and computer simulation to: study the impact of interoperability problems on dyad performance in terms of supply chain and interoperability; and the re-design of cooperation from the findings of the performance impact study. A case study applied in an automotive supply chain is presented to demonstrate the application of this method, mapping from the actual interoperability conditions (“as-is”) to a scenario that guarantees higher levels of business interoperability (“to-be”).

An approach to business process registration for enterprise collaboration: using BPEL as an example

To facilitate business collaboration and interoperation among enterprises, it is critical to discover and reuse appropriate business processes modelled in different languages and stored in different repositories. Therefore, it is a challenge to register them in a unified manner without changing their original representations and semantics. This paper proposes a reference metamodel for process model registration (PMR) to register selected metadata and semantics of heterogeneous business processes. PMR is mainly designed to register business process automatically, facilitate the semantic discovery of business processes across enterprises, and promote process interoperation and business collaboration. Considering the popularity of BPEL in business process description, our approach takes BPEL as an example to illustrate how to specify the mappings from BPEL to PMR when performing PMR-based registration of business processes in a specific modelling language. Finally, a prototype of web-based business process registration tool named PMRegister is developed to demonstrate the feasibility and capability of our approach.

Novel strategies for global manufacturing systems interoperability

This paper reviews some of the most recently reported research into novel strategies for global manufacturing systems interoperability. Such research can be categorised as addressing four broad topic areas: the sensing manufacturing enterprise; semantics and knowledge management in manufacturing; service orientation and the need for negotiation; and business interoperability. Thus we identify a spectrum of research from the management of hardware and virtual sensing devices, through the semantic interpretation of the data and information generated by these, and its utilisation to support the collaborative manufacturing network lifecycle through service oriented software, and ultimately the provision of effective business interoperability. This study includes conceptual, theoretical, empirical and technological contributions, illustrated by real examples and demonstrating the novelty in comparison with previously reported results. The paper concludes elaborating final considerations on novel strategies for global manufacturing systems interoperability.

Defining collaborative business rules management solutions: framework and method

The goal of this research is to define a method for configuring a collaborative business rules management solution from a value proposition perspective. In an earlier published study (Business rules management solutions: added value by means of business interoperability. In: van Sinderen M, Oude Luttighuis P, Folmer E, Bosms S (eds), International IFIP working conference on enterprise interoperability, vol 144. Springer, Twente, pp 145---157, 2013) we took a business rules perspective on interorganisational collaboration optimization, when we addressed the question what the relation was between types of business interoperability and an organisation's business rules management solution. Different types of collaboration were defined and subsequently combined with eleven identified types of service systems; these service systems together make up the business rules management solution. In this paper we re-address and -present our earlier work, yet based on the findings, we extend it with the construction of a method for determining the configuration of collaborative business rules management solutions. This method is tested by applying it to a case study at an alliance of airlines. Presented results provide a grounded basis from which empirical and practical research on business rules management solutions can be further explored.

Corpus of Internet Standards-The Standards for Communication

Information technology exchange is a very important facet of life to many people in the world today. The biggest contributor to information exchange today is the Internet. Standardizing the Internet become an increasingly central issue as business interoperability demands mount. This paper explains about different standards bodies and the features of Internet standards developed and published under the coordination of different standards organizations. Keywords: ISOC (Internet Society),IETF(Internet Engineering Task Force),RFC(Request For Comment).

Construction collaborative networks: the case study of a building information modelling-based office building project

This paper proposes a model that captures the factors for the deployment of building information modelling (BIM) that are responsible for business interoperability in the context of collaborative business processes' construction networks. To validate the theoretical model, a case study is presented regarding a construction collaborative network, where a BIM-based office building project will be developed. The Business Interoperability Quotient Measurement Model (BIQMM) uses an interdisciplinary approach to capture the key elements responsible for collaboration performance and BIM platform configuration. Through the quantification of the relevance of each element to the particular collaboration scenario, and with the combination of the BIQMM with a multi-criteria decision-making tool, the analytical network process (ANP) approach, this model enables a quantitative analysis of business interoperability for BIM-based projects, so that an overall interoperability score can be calculated for enhanced performance measurements. The case study presents the application of the BIQMM and ANP and provides a comprehensive framework for interoperability measurement in BIM solution selection. This paper concludes by recognising that relationships between business interoperability and true architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) performance improvements and subsequent economic benefits derived from BIM-based approaches need to be further developed.

A concurrent constraint and pi-calculus-based language for service contracting

In e-service environment, service agreement is essential for assurance of business interoperability and quality of services. Combining service agreement and process model will facilitate analysing service process and monitoring service execution. This paper proposes a concurrent constraint and pi-calculus-based service modelling approach consists of service agreement and process model. Based on this service model, a service contracting mechanism, which checks the consistency between service agreement and process model as well as the applicability of services with respect to the requester’s capabilities, is designed.

The Business Interoperability Quotient Measurement Model

Over the last decade, the context of interoperability has been changing rapidly. It has been expanding from the largely technically focused area of Information Systems toward Business Processes and Business Semantics. However, there exists a need for established methods to define Business Interoperability and provide for measuring its performance as a first step toward improving interoperability conditions between collaborating entities. This paper proposes a model that captures the factors that are responsible for Business Interoperability in the context of collaborative business processes. The Business Interoperability Quotient Measurement Model (BIQMM) uses an interdisciplinary approach to embrace the key elements responsible for collaboration performance. Through the quantification of the importance of each element to the particular collaboration scenario, and by combining the BIQMM with the Analytical Network Process (ANP) approach, this model enables a quantitative analysis of Business Interoperability, so that an overall interoperability score can be calculated for enhanced performance measurements. Two application scenarios are presented, validating the proposed model.

Research on Enterprise Application Integration Based on Service Oriented and Workflow

Aiming at the disadvantages like the enterprise application system scalability, integration and interoperability is not strong, neglecting the business process integration, the integration platform lacks flexibility and adaptability, based on service oriented and workflow technology system, Service-oriented and for integration of foundation, enterprise application integration system solutions were proposed. To realize loosely coupled, business process integration, high integration and interoperability strong application integration system we need discuss enterprise application integration the architecture and hierarchical model.

Conceptual Business Service

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is gaining acceptance, offering advantages including closer alignment of IT systems with business. Ideally, within large enterprises, capabilities would be used by solutions from a number of business units while matching the detailed requirements of each; this level of interoperability is difficult to achieve. While much of the current activity focuses on technical interoperability we propose that the focus shift to business interoperability as the key consideration to bring clarity to the engineering aspects of technical interoperability. A model-driven architectural approach is presented that views an organization’s business processes as structured assets requiring formalization. A new concept is presented, the conceptual business service (CBS), which provides abstraction through modeling, and promotes building a portfolio of navigable business services at the appropriate level of abstraction and granularity. A method for specifying a CBS is outlined using reference domain meta-data allowing easier service solution recognition among other benefits.

Business process integration point classification and the priority evaluation method

Business process integration is considered a crucial technique to support interorganisational business interoperability, i.e., integration between collaborative business information systems. However, current researches usually pay the most attention to 'how to integrate' and lack an answer to 'where to integrate'. To address this issue, this paper classifies business process Integration Points (IPs) and presents a priority evaluation method. Based on the concept of 'integration point', four typical atomic integration patterns and some composite patterns are put forward. Then, starting from ultimate goals of business process integration, three metrics to measure the importance of each IP and the corresponding evaluation methods are addressed, and three responsibilities are adopted to calculate the priority of each IP. By using a practical case from a real-life ERP implementation project, the effectiveness of the method is validated. Several key research issues are briefly discussed for future works.

Business-to-business electronic market place selection

There is an increasing demand for doing business online, which calls for higher business interoperability on business-to-business (B2B) electronic market places (EMp). This drives the development of integration technologies for improving B2B electronic market (EM) functions on EMp. This paper argues that with the development of integration technologies companies will use more private, community and public EMp and select their proper type of EMp when comparing the function–cost ratios of business interoperability on different types of B2B EMp. This argument has been validated through the case studies against a method of historical event analysis. In this shift, four integration factors of standard flexibility, enterprise integration, service provision and semantic integration are constantly improving EMp functions, which lead to an overall reduction of interaction cost for business interoperation on all types of EMp. This will change business behaviour and corporate strategies of most firms, and have important implications for firms to make strategies of how to select EMp to increase business interoperability for higher competitiveness.