Enterprise Integration Technology Research Articles

Research on the application of computer aided Design in clothing Design teaching in higher vocational colleges

This research expounds the computer aided design application in modern fashion design teaching present situation, and ordering in teachers working task, based on the typical types of clothing products to enterprises as the teaching content of the carrier, the enterprise real tasks in classroom teaching method, attach importance to students learning and the consistency of the practical work, takes student's practical teaching, explore the classroom and the requirements of the enterprise integration technology Innovative.

Implementation of Generic Equipment Model (E30 Standard) for Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (SEMI) automation tool

The Semi Equipment Communication standard (SECS) defines a communication interface suitable for the exchange of messages between semiconductor processing equipment intended for wafer manufacturing, wafer processing and a host. This standard provides a means to communicate between different equipment without knowledge of their protocols. SECS is a layered protocol, which helps to understand meaning of messages between semiconductor processing element and host. Implementation of SECS standard will provide solution for making changes in automation software for complete process. This paper proposes a scientific and systematic approach to the design and development of a universal equipment interface by taking enterprise integration and cutting-edge technology requirements into consideration. In this paper, implementation of Alarm Management standard (E-30) under GEM (Generic Equipment Model for communication and control) layer is discussed. It is one of the layers of SECS Standard. GEM defines equipment behaviors and methods to communicate and control. GEM features in the equipment conforming to SEMI E30 standard. Key words: Semi Equipment Communication standard (SECS), Generic Equipment Model (GEM), Semiconductor Equipment Materials International (SEMI).

Investments in enterprise integration technology: An event study

This study examines stock market reactions to investments in enterprise resource planning and enterprise application integration technologies, using signaling theory concepts as explaining theory. The empirical results presented in this paper indicate that financial markets differentiate among technologies that companies invest in to integrate their information systems. In addition, this study confirms that technology maturity, financial health of the investing company, and stock market conditions are important factors influencing the stock market reaction.

Enterprise integration engineering reference framework and toolbox

Enterprise Integration Engineering (EIE) has emerged as an engineering discipline to re-structure the enterprise entities as integrated business processes that integrate human and technological resources to facilitate the knowledge sharing for better decision making. EIE is a complex task that requires applying different tools concerning strategic planning, performance management, modelling, simulation and business process management in order to properly engineer the enterprise entities. The present paper presents an EIE toolbox that aims to support enterprises in their decision making process and to provide different assisting tools to be applied on the components of the EIE Reference Framework proposed. Finally, a set of case studies are presented in order to demonstrate the utility of the EIE Reference Framework and its toolbox for strategic planning and enterprise decision making.

Implementation of product lifecycle management tools using enterprise integration engineering and action-research

This paper describes how enterprise integration engineering (EIE) and action-research (A-R) can be used to support the implementation of product lifecycle management (PLM) tools. The EIE concept is used to align the corporate strategies with the use of PLM technologies in order to impact the key performance indicators (KPIs) in the enterprise. An EIE reference framework is proposed to define strategies, evaluate performance measures, design/re-design processes and establish the enabling tools and technologies to support the enterprise strategies, while A-R is proposed to guide the PLM tools implementation at various stages of the product development process. An industrial application is described to demonstrate the benefits of applying EIE, A-R and PLM in an enterprise.

Linking design and manufacturing domains via web-based and enterprise integration technologies

The manufacturing industry faces many challenges such as reducing time-to-market and cutting costs. In order to meet these increasing demands, effective methods are need to support the early product development stages by bridging the gap of communicating early design ideas and the evaluation of manufacturing performance. This paper introduces methods of linking design and manufacturing domains using disparate technologies. The combined technologies include knowledge management supporting for product lifecycle management systems, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, aggregate process planning systems, workflow management and data exchange formats. A case study has been used to demonstrate the use of these technologies, illustrated by adding manufacturing knowledge to generate alternative early process plan which are in turn used by an ERP system to obtain and optimise a rough-cut capacity plan.

Guest Editorial

Full text This Proceedings volume contains selected papers from the Fourth International CIRP-sponsored, Conference on Digital Enterprise Technology (DET2007), which was held at the University of Bath, UK, 19–21 September 2007. All selected papers have been suitably enhanced for publication in the Journal and have undergone full review. Digital enterprise technology (DET) is ‘the collection of systems and methods for the digital modelling and analysis of the global product development and realization process, in the context of lifecycle management.’ The principal aim of the DET concept is to provide a coherent context for the development and integration of the various digital technologies that underpin modern design and manufacturing. These technologies can be classified according to the following five key areas. 1. Distributed and collaborative design. 2. Process modelling and process planning. 3. Advanced factory design and modelling. 4. Physical-to-digital environment integrators–verification. 5. Enterprise integration technologies. This special issue is representative of the wide breadth of the DET concept including; a comprehensive review of digital engineering, design processes, digital modelling of machine tools, forming, robotics and machining processes, verification and metrology, and dynamic networks. It is particularly pleasing to see the development of metrology as a key aspect of modern manufacturing technology, linking design intent to process capability. The papers published herein will facilitate the exploration of new and evolving research concepts by the international research community and will influence the development of international standards for the application of DET technologies.

A modeiing approach for designing a value chain of virtual enterprise

As the advent of digital economy changes business environment dramatically, virtual enterprise (VE), in general the interactions among business partners in a value chain, has become a key factor to survive under the competitive business environment. VE reveals that more complex and dynamic business processes should be considered as assembled service components in order to integrate the collaborative business processes. Therefore, a formal standard schema for describing and managing the business processes is required. In this paper, we propose a consistent modeling approach that combines enterprise modeling and simulation modeling to design a value chain of a VE. This methodology will provide designers with insight into the business processes of a VE and help identify and resolve unpredictable bottlenecks on the execution of virtual business processes. This paper also illustrates an implemented modeling tool which is based on the generalized model suggested by the working group of the international conference on enterprise integration and modeling technology (ICEIMT) and notations by the object management group (OMG)’s unified modeling language (UML) profile for enterprise distributed object computing (EDOC).

Potential of Webservices to Enable Smart Business Networks

Webservices (WSs) are believed to be among the key technologies to enable the transformation of current static supply chains into dynamic virtual networks of enterprises. Others have said that these technologies are not yet ready for large-scale applications to supply chains and propose ‘traditional’ cross-enterprise integration methods. However, there is currently little research available that objectively evaluates the usefulness of WSs to enable smart business networks. In this study, this question is addressed through developing a typical scenario in which we transform a static supply chain into a ‘loosely coupled’ business network. We implement the scenario using state-of-the-art ‘enterprise application integration’ and WSs orchestration technology. The comparison of these alternative approaches reveals that WSs technology has some clear advantages above enterprise integration technology currently in use. However, there are also some limitations and research issues which are presented as a future research agenda for WSs technology.

Integrated software agents: Enabling technology for collaborative E-logistics and E-business

The application of Multi-Agent Systems in the field of logistics is a major challenge and appears to be the next generation of enterprise integration technologies. Undoubtedly, agent technologies are very useful and will be the next major step toward the development of information systems, thus it is important to identify clearly and describe the appropriate business processes in E-logistics concerning collaborative E-business and supply web management. To prove the validity of software agents, it is of major importance to achieve a clear view of the application environment and to develop appropriate methods for agent-oriented modelling concerning their integration.

ENTERPRISE INTEGRATION: TRENDS & METHODOLOGIES WITH CASE STUDIES

From the Business Consulting perspective of today, the Enterprise Integration challenge has considerably shifted to newer dimensions than what was practiced only a few years ago. In extensive experience of this author from Asia to Americas and from SMEs to MNCs, no company boss ever stops worrying about the return on investment or investment to create the share holder value. Against this environment and e-Supply Chain Management as a domain of the focus, this paper describes the methodology of doing the Business Cases with Case Studies to illustrate the how to Business Case and Blue Printing aspects of Enterprise Integration Technology.

Enterprise organisations and the new enterprise paradigms

The advent of the new enterprise paradigms of extended, virtual and agile enterprises causes new requirement on organisational concepts and supporting technologies. Inter- and intra- organisational relations need more and real-time information to support their establishment, deployment and discontinuation. Business-process-based decision support will make a significant contribution to these new forms of enterprise organisation and operation. It will enable the forming of such enterprises by providing detailed analysis and evaluation of partner-business processes and their contribution to the overall goals and objectives as well as re-planning and restructuring of the operation in the course of exception handling.The paper is concerned with the organisational aspects and the decision-support for extended and virtual enterprises, drawing from current practice and identifying shortcomings in the current EE&I (Enterprise Engineering and Integration) technologies. The work carried out under the joint Europe-USA initiative (ICEIMT'97) is analysed especially in the area of representing humans in enterprise operations.

ICEIMT Results: Enterprise Integration And Control Issues

The history of the International Conference on Enterprise Integration and Modeling Technology (ICEIMT) is briefly reviewed and some issues from both ICEIMT92 and ICEIMT97 are highlighted. Selected outcomes from the recent workshops are discussed. The purpose is highlight some new insights relating the problems of enterprise integration to fundamental issues relating to control. A new EI capability model is introduced and some barriers to advanced EI are discussed.

RASSP Enterprise Technologies for SignalProcessor Life-Cycle Support

Enterprise integration technologies are a key contributor to improving time-to-market, cost, and design quality by a factor, which is the goal of the DARPA Rapid Prototyping of Application-Specific Signal Processors (RASSP) program [1]. The Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Laboratories (ATL) RASSP team developed a productivity improvement model, shown in Fig. 1, that indicates the relative contributions of various RASSP technologies to the overall improvement. Enterprise technologies address the entire 17% enterprise partition, and more than half of the 30% reuse and model-year architecture partition, thus accounting for at least 35% of the overall RASSP productivity improvement. The ATL RASSP approach to implement enterprise systems is to extend commercial technologies so the results are available to a broad base of potential users. Unlike current automation concepts which start at later stages of the development cycle, the RASSP enterprise system supports the entire signal processor life cycle. Core concepts of the enterprise system include: Tools and tool frameworks integrated into an enterprise environment Program execution control through workflows Integrated data management functions Design reuse Concurrent engineering team support Integrated design engineering and manufacturing. The model-year architecture, which enables users to rapidly, efficiently upgrade systems with new technology, is supported in the enterprise system by a robust reuse management system. Manufacturing interface and communication services elements of the enterprise system provide improved concurrent engineering support for distributed product teams. The enterprise system will be provided to commercial and aerospace users as products, including a reusable set of workflows for electronics design, commercial tools supporting the enterprise system environment, and utilities to enable users to customize the RASSP enterprise system for a particular organization or project. The enterprise system development cycle includes four build cycles with increasing capabilities. The ATL team completed the Build 2 implementation in May‘96. This implementation supports the processes associated with detailed hardware/software design, architecture design, and trade-off analyses. It is being used at Lockheed Martin and multiple government sites for benchmarking and evaluation. Results to date indicate >5:1 productivity improvements in the manufacturing interface, and 5–10% improvements in design engineering, which is growing with increasing level of utilization.

Agents for sale: first wave of intelligent agents go commercial

After years of promised prototypes, the first intelligent agents are hitting the streets, and cash registers are starting to ring. The first wave of prime time agents, as exemplified by Firefly from Firefly Networks Inc. (formerly Agents Inc.), are personal assistants that simplify Web surfing. Firefly has became a media darling-everyone from Time magazine to local TV stations is featuring the little critters. More than half a million users have Firefly agents to help them shop on the Web for music, movies, and books. Two other Web agents are just coming to market-WebTamer from AgentSoft, and WiseWire from Empirical Media. Plus we are seeing the first embedding of agent technology into application specific software such as Swiss Bank's Balet (balance sheet estimation tool) financial management system. Other agents will soon follow Firefly and its cohorts. Still in prototype or getting ready for production are various agents or agent development environments from big league players such as Microsoft, IBM, Enterprise Integration Technologies (now part of Verifone), and Andersen Consulting.