• The IFAC/IFIP work, Task Force on UEML has completed its work with the establishment of the UEML EC-sponsored Framework project. UEML is not to generate a new language but to find a way to map among existing languages. For example, it could consider extending Process Specification Language, PSL, from the process domain, or level, to the enterprise domain, and project the Standard Upper Ontology, SUO, from the world generic to the enterprise domain.

• GLOBEMAN might provide a contribution to a new Annex of 15704--a reference model (GRAI-GRIDS and IDEF0 model) for mission management (noted though that the Annexes were purely informative). GLOBEMAN will also be input to "VOSTER", a European cluster of Virtual Enterprise projects. (matti.hannus@vtt.fi) A mapping by Ovidius Noral of the C4ISR (Computer, communication, command, control, information, surveillance, and reconnaissance) interoperability reference model onto GERAM has shown some holes (in the former?)

• NIST (Jim Nell) is working on a similar mapping of medical information onto a generic medical healthcare enterprise

• CEN TC310 WG1

• prEN ISO 19439, Framework for enterprise modelling, has been circulated for ballot (voting starts 02-April-11, closes 02-September-11), Greg has also placed the document on the SC5 Web site.

• CEN TC310 WG1 has continued to work on WI 19440, Constructs for Enterprise Modelling; the latest draft is N182, which incorporates a revised UML model. This draft has been circulated to the CEN WG and those who have registered interest in ISO TC184 SC5 WG1. Unfortunately, N182 did not contain edits in response to Richard Martin’s comments on an earlier draft. Some time was later spent in the margins of the Valencia meetings discussing how there could be addressed. Material is still to come relating to decisional view and possibly a restructuring reflecting an ontological ordering. Later, it was noted that decision centers needed to be linked to decision-making processes--how is this to be done? (David Shorter to email David Chen, done).

• During the Valencia meeting, it was agreed that there should be a new section for Construct-related concepts, which would contain clauses describing those things referred to in the construct templates that were not themselves constructs; for example, objectives and constraints.

• CIMOSA is involved in the UEML project and is updating the Technical Baseline in preparation for the actual development with Euro funding. There have been meetings in early April in Norway, and in Valencia in late April. Involved are Computas (prime), CIMOSA, Universidad Politecnica de Valencia, University of Namur, University of Nancy, and Politecnica Torino

Following the technical failure of its interoperability ballot (approved in principle but with insufficient participating national-standards boards, the group brainstormed a plan of action. The following lists some of the main points (some are David Shorter's personal views). The essence of these recommendations is to move the advertised mission of WG1 toward capability afforded to our constituency and away from merely standards. The European Union has stated that the main issue in the information-technology domain is interoperability; that is, sharing information among human and machines, and machines and machines.

Some of the thoughts generated were:

• The main need is to sell the capability, not the technology--ballots and work-item details tend to focus on the necessary technology.
• More standards such as a "methodological companion to IS15704" will not engage industry
• There are three sets of customers for 184/5/1: industry at large (not sufficiently addressed), technical contributors, standards peers.
• WG1 should emphasis the business aspects, for example:

• Interoperability of business processes
• Cohesion of heterogeneous and multiply-owned business processes
• New business emergence
• New market emergence
• Usability and accessibility of business processes
• Contextual and business awareness (for example, for agents)

• A new major focus for WG1 could be resource management for extended business. This requires management of business capabilities, that in turn requires understanding and clarifying what is being interoperated, re-engineered, or re-deployed, This could then be interpreted (technicalities in brackets) in terms of:

• Making understandable (explicit) the way we do things (rules, models)
• Organisational style: who does what (responsibilities, obligations, constraints), both for AS-IS and TO-BE situations, such that these elements can be better managed, redeployed, recombined for greater responsiveness and agility.
• The standards would specify a minimum set of "things" for sustainable operation in a changing world (model-based continuity of knowledge)

• General point: WG1 should use terms such as blueprint, checklists, managing business capabilities, interoperability of software tools. We should avoid terms such as model, modeling, architecture, and mapping.
• Of interest is creating and maintaining trusted processes in business-enterprise capability, infrastructure, standards, and training.
• We should be thinking in terms of a fresh domain that has to do with exploiting know-how. An alternative catch-phrase could be operationalizing know-how.

It was agreed that Jim Nell would consolidate these thoughts into a two-page, business-oriented version of our interoperability NP and bounce this off potential participants before a new ballot and prompting the participants to declare their willingness to participate in the ballot responses.

How do we respond to the criticism that "for interoperability you need lots of detail like the 12000 EDIFACT messages"? Answer: WG1 provides key abstractions and guidance on how to specialise these to particular situations (instances) (See the Büssler Oracle PDF paper, on disk)

See discussion in Section 2, SC5 resolution 407.

See CEN item in Section 4.

8. Implementation considerations for ISO 14258 and ISO 15704 (Beijing resolution 375)

WG1 crafted a draft statement regarding implementing the two standards that have been developed by WG1: (Where is the quoted clause? I remember the words but can not find them.)

The discussion focused on positioning SC5 WG1 relative to WG4. WG1 and WG4 considered what interoperability meant to each working group using a simple agent-based model. Some identified differences in meaning arising from the differing viewpoints were:

• What is being interoperated: WG4 is concerned with interoperability of software such as methods, tools, data structures, and HCI. WG1 is concerned with business process aspects such as function, organization, decisions, and resources.
• What an interoperation agent is doing: For WG4, software is passing output and signals to other software. For WG1, a process is passing a case, such as work in progress, to other processes, or process resources are reporting status or are bidding for work.
• What enactment means: There might be differences in what is required for visualization, for simulation, or for control (not really discussed though).
• How negotiation is carried out: Probably the performatives are the same, but the content is different. For example, WG4 is concerned with tokenized procedure calls, and method invocations; and WG1 is concerned with representations of instances of enterprise-model components and their attributes.

Some other points were:

•WG1 needs software that is sensitive to the context of the enterprise-life cycle

•WG4 is primarily concerned with interoperability at the operational phase(?)

•WG1 is operationalizing know-how about the business, WG4 is operationalizing know-how about software components

•WG4 is defining a capability profile for interoperability, a catalogue for publication of some parts of software specification. "There is no conversation, only a classification" (Is this right? No negotiation protocols?)

Noted that some partners in GLOBEMAN/MEN might be interested in WG4 in terms of understanding what software applications were needed. Current work is in terms of 3 GRAI-GRIDS and IDEF0 representations of typical processes--not tried to reduce these to a small (canonical) set.

Michiko Matsuda " there can be no overlap because WG1 does not have an active work item". Jim Nell "well, that’s only the current position; we will be balloting again".

WG4 is developing (in Part 3) a very general approach to allow components to communicate with other components via data objects, so WG4 is concerned with interfaces and protocols. Therefore, it appears to be an information-technology architecture, and that’s something that is needed for WG1 too; for example, to provide EMEIS services. David Shorter is to send a late draft of EMEIS to Michiko Matsuda. It seems that EMEIS is the middle ground between the WG1 enterprise models and the WG4 information-technology platform.

WG1 needs to understand what model enactment means when models are distributed, say, into a heterogeneous environment, and subsequently composed into models of a new virtual enterprise.

The general conclusion was that there was no overlap, but rather an area (of services required for the enactment of models) where WG1 and WG4 should make each other aware of requirements and possible solutions.

Next meeting: not arranged (other than SC5’s encouragement to meet in Korea)