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Meeting Minutes

ISO TC184/SC5/WG1

6-7 February 1997

Vienna University of Technology – Vienna, Austria

1. Call to Order

Jim Nell, WG1 Convener, opened the meeting at 0900 on 6 February 1997. Attending were:

EXPERT	EMPLOYER	COUNTRY
Francisco Edeneziano D.P.	CTI	Brazil
Jean-Jacques Michel	CETIM	France
David Shorter	IT Focus	UK
Andreas Schlatter	ETH	Switzerland
Gabriel Caduff	ETH	Switzerland
Kurt Kosanke	CIMOSA Association	Germany
Jim Nevins	Consultant	US
David Chen	GRAI/LAP U. Bordeaux	France
Dennis Jarvis	CSIRO	Australia
Peter Bernus	Griffith University	Australia
Ljubisa Vlacic	Griffith University	Australia
Ted Williams	Purdue University	US
Jim Nell	NIST	WG1 Convener
Greg Winchester	NEMA	SC5 and WG1 Secretary

2. Review of Previous Meeting Minutes

The minutes of the November 1996 WG1 meeting held in Tokyo were accepted noting some typographical errors and that standardization strategy materials are available on the WWW rather than the email exploder as mentioned in the minutes.

3. Review of Meeting Agenda and Objectives

The agenda, distributed as WG1 N374, was approved. For agenda item 6, WG1 asked its secretary to register a number of documents with WG1 'N' numbers. The four documents originally comprising N375 were broken out into parts a through d. Additionally, three new documents were registered as N377-379. ACTION ITEMS: Greg Winchester will circulate an advisory as to the N375 renumbering and ensure that an update document log is posted on the WG 1 web site. Greg Winchester and Jim Nell to arrange the posting of N 377-379 on the WG 1 web site.

4. Reports of Related Organizations

1. CEN TC310 WG1: David Shorter noted that WG1 is still dormant however he believed that there is industry support for identifying integration services and that funding will be forthcoming to reconvene WG1.
2. IFAC/IFIP Task Force: Peter Bernus introduced the Task Force and the GERAM that is being defined. In discussing the components of GERAM the diagram in Annex A was referred to. It was felt that this diagram portrays, in fact, a framework that could be used for identifying areas where standards are better and where individual designs are better.
3. ICEIMT '97: Kurt Kosanke briefly mentioned ICEIMT '97, a workshop and conferences on enterprise integration. Kurt noted that a web site will be created when a number of workshop/conference documents are ready to be posted. ACTION ITEM: Jim Nell to explode a notice on the WG 1 email listserve when the ICEIMT web site is active.

5. Other Reports

1. From SC5 Secretary: Greg Winchester informed meeting attendees if they were already on the WG 1 roster (list for hardcopy mailings and subscription to the WG 1 email listserve). ACTION ITEM: Greg Winchester to add the following experts to the WG 1 roster: Ljubisa Vlacic, Jim Nevins, Kurt Kosanke, Peter Bernus, David Chen, and Laszlo Nemes.

   It was also reported that the changes identified in Tokyo to CD 14258 have been made and the document has accordingly been registered as a DIS. The DIS document, included in WG1 N374, has been sent to the ISO Central Secretariat with a request to circulate a five-month DIS ballot to SC5 P-members.

2. From WG1 Convenor: Jim Nell reviewed the report he will be giving to the SC5 plenary meeting in April 1997 (circulated as document SC5 N509). It was also noted that the web site was functioning well and was a real benefit to the experts in following/contributing to the progress of WG1.
3. Environmental-oriented Modeling: Andreas Schlatter of BWI/ETH (Zurich, Switzerland) provided a presentation covering:
   • The relationship between TC184 and TC207;
   • Environmental management systems;
   • Requirements for the GERAM project.

   Slides from this presentation are shown in ANNEX B (mail version only)

   Three areas were identified where environmental issues can impact the GERAM project:

   • Methodologies to address environmental issues at each lifecycle stage;
   • Modeling environmental impacts;
   • Understanding the many aspects existing for each viewpoint (e.g. the functional viewpoint).

   WG1 thanked Andreas Schlatter for this presentation and asked him to remain involved in this GERAM project so that his environmental modeling expertise can be applied to the project when appropriate.

6. "GERAM" New Work Item

The IFAC/IFIP Task Force on Enterprise Integration met on 5 February and discussed what requirements will be contained in the new work item. This discussion identified N 375c, which contains six requirements (one for definitions, and the other five relating to the GERAM).

WG1 developed a working title for the new standard: Compliance requirements for complete enterprise-reference architectures and methodologies.

For the first requirement of N 375c, the group decided that definitions should relate to both type I and type II architectures. For the second requirement, WG1 developed text elaborating on the concept of "completeness". For this, the following working text was agreed upon:

A complete enterprise reference architecture shall:

1. Cover all life cycle activities for any enterprise and its products (see note) (from initial concept throughout all aspects of life history until and including operation and final disposal);

   Note: From a system theory point of view, the product of an enterprise is only the output of this system. Therefore, it cannot be normally considered to be a part of the system. The word "and" is used here to identify the whole area of concern of a complete enterprise-reference architecture.

2. Cover all pertinent aspects (such as functional, organizational, informational, economic, and ecologic) of the enterprise, and its elements (such as humans, machines, and systems), and its products;
3. Provide a unifying perspective on the enterprise and any of its entities;
4. Provide an environment for representing aspects and elements of any enterprise or any of its entities;
5. Be represented by a framework identifying all the components which make up the reference architecture;
6. Define the terms for all items to be used in the course of the application of the reference architecture in any enterprise engineering efforts.

The associated methodologies shall:

1. Provide all the necessary guidelines and management techniques for the initiation and pursuit of a project or program for development of an enterprise or any of its entities;
2. Provide user assistance for interpretation and use of the reference architecture and its associated methodologies;
3. Define all the items to be used in the course of applying the associated methodologies in any enterprise engineering efforts.

WG1 also decided that there needs to be explanatory text describing the origin and purpose of these requirements. ACTION ITEM: David Shorter to develop this text, which would be inserted after the requirements in the documents, and email explode it for review by other WG 1 members.

Regarding a clause in the document on compliance, WG1 felt that one aspect of compliance would be to require other architectures to have glossaries with contexts similar to the glossary to be provided in the definitions clause of this standard. Additionally, descriptions of these other architectures should find a way to map from their glossaries to this standard's glossary.

The structure of the document was envisioned to be:

Introduction
1. Scope
2. Normative references
3. Definitions
4. Requirements
5. Compliance
Annex(es) ACTION ITEMS: Jim Nell to review DIS 14258 to see what requirements from that document needs to be transferred to the GERAM working draft. Once this is done, Jim Nell to further elaborate on the above outline.

WG1 realized that current IFAC/IFIP documents need to be updated and merged so that requirements can be transferred to the GERAM working draft. ACTION ITEM: Peter Bernus, with input from Kurt Kosanke, to identify the IFAC/IFIP requirements for inclusion in clauses 2, 3, and 4 of the GERAM working draft.

The editor for the GERAM document was then discussed. Ted Williams agreed to be the editor if funding to support this activity is forthcoming. Greg Winchester volunteered to be the back-up editor.

There were extensive discussions as to what the focus of this new work item should be, as well as who the beneficiaries will be. ACTION ITEM: Jim Nevins and Ted Williams to revise WG 1 N 364 taking these discussions into account. It was noted this revision would be used to draft the scope clause of the standard.

7. Standardization Strategy

Jim Nell mentioned that the GERAM work item – and, in particular, the GERAM framework of ANNEX A – could very well define what standards are needed by industry and, thereby, what standards WG 1 should be working on. It was then questioned whether the current GERAM work item would result in a "push" standard (pushing industry towards complying to a "standardized way" of representing enterprises) or a "pull" standard (pulling in industry's commitment to the "standardized way" by convincing them of the benefits). It was agreed that it will clearly be a "pull" standard and that efforts such as the ICEIMT'97 conference can be instrumental in convincing industry of this GERAM standard.

This then led to a discussion of what industry wants/needs. It was mentioned that industry no longer is looking for support to accomplish huge integration projects, but rather for gluing together identified pieces of the enterprise that clearly need to communicate with each other. As for a "standardized architecture", it was also felt that companies would ignore this as they can always develop better ones on their own.

ACTION ITEM: David Shorter, with input from Ljubisa Vlacic and Jim Nevins, will develop a strawman document that identifies the business-oriented drivers for integration. This material could be used in either the introduction of the standard or for GERAM project promotional purposes.

8. Time and Place of Next Meeting

The following schedule of future meetings was set:

DATE	LOCATION	PURPOSE
7-9 April 1997	Frankfurt (with SC5 – already arranged)	Start drafting clauses
25-27 June 1997	Paris (either La D้fense or Senlis)	Begin v1.0 of working draft
late Oct 1997 or early Nov. 1997	Torino (in conjunction with ICEIMT'97) or Detroit (in conjunction with IFAC)	v2.0 of working draft
early 1998	Campinas Brazil (tentative)	v3.0 of working draft
April 1998	tbd with SC5	Finalize working draft

ACTION ITEM: Jean-Jacques Michel to inform Greg Winchester of the arrangements for the June 1997 Paris meeting.

9. Appreciation and Adjournment

Noting the excellent hosting arrangements by IHRT/Vienna University of Technology, the meeting adjourned at 1500 on Friday, 7 February 1997. ACTION ITEM: Greg Winchester to write a letter to Prof. Peter Kopacek on behalf of WG 1 and the IFAC-IFIP Task Force expressing their thanks.

ANNEX A

ANNEX B – 1

(available in hardcopy version only)

ANNEX B – 2

(available in hardcopy version only)

ANNEX B – 3

(available in hardcopy version only)

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