The purpose of the paper is to present a high-level view of the problem space with which each JSW participant is concerned. The paper will describe the heterogeneous enterprise environment that exists, attempting to separate the real problems that exist from some possible red herrings, and to develop some alternate approaches to a solution. The nature of enterprise interactions and integration will be analyzed to see if it is realistically achievable or even desirable.
Then, an operating scenario of common enterprise transactions will be developed. This scenario will be presented in terms of what has been done by enterprises that have made products for the past several decades to see if anything really new is being proposed. Topics covered will include human interactions that occur to achieve integration, the nature of legacy information, and what will have to be accomplished outside of the technical and human arenas to improve integration. Discussions of virtual-enterprise interactions and agile manufacturing will be analyzed to see how these models complicate the problem of integration.
The approaches will focus on what the strategy should be for creating standards as a proposed solution and the probability of success of that approach. Is the long time for development of standards a problem or a blessing? Is there anything from past process interactions that we can improve our knowledge about the nature of integration in the future?
Finally there will be a reveiw of the terminology problem. We will not have any real integration until we face and solve the problem of combining the expressiveness of natural languages and the precision of the formal language. Consensus drives us to the lowest common denominator of problem and less utility; plus many of the people involved will choose to ignore the problem because the concept is too hard to learn.
The paper will conclude with a strategy for a standards suite and a realistic role for the type of individual standards and a that have a fighting chance of being implemented widely.