=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-2900/WS8Summary
|storemode=property
|title=Summary Report
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2900/WS8Summary.pdf
|volume=Vol-2900
|authors=Georg Weichhart,Wided Guédria,Gash Bhullar,Hervé Panetto,Néjib Moalla
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/iesa/WeichhartGBPM20
}}
==Summary Report==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2900/WS8Summary.pdf
Workshop Summary: Pathways towards a Modelling and
Architecture Language for Interoperable Cyber-Physical Systems
Georg Weichharta, Wided Guédriab, Gash Bhullarc, Hervé Panettod and Néjib Moallae
a
PROFACTOR GmbH, Im Stadgut D1, Steyr, 4400, Austria
b
Syndicat Intercommunal de Gestion Informatique, 11, rue Edmond Reuter L-5326 Contern, Luxembourg
c
Control 2K Limited, Waterton Technology Centre, Bridgend, South Wales, CF31 3WT, UK
d
Université de Lorraine, CRAN, Campus Scientifique, BP 70239 - F54506 Vandoeuvre-les-Nancy Cedex, France
e
University Lumière Lyon II, DISP Laboratory, 160 Boulevard de l’Université - 69676 Bron
Abstract
In the following we summarize the discussions that took place at the I-ESA 2020 workshop
entitled “Pathways towards a Modelling and Architecture Language for Interoperable Cyber-
Physical Systems”.
Keywords 1
Enterprise Interoperability, Enterprise Architecture, Cyber-Physical Systems
1. I-CPS Workshop
The workshop took place within the frame of the I-ESA (Interoperability of Enterprise Application
and Systems) conference. In 2020 this event took place as an online version. 18 people attended the
workshop where five presentations were given. The event served as a kick-off meeting for an
international IFIP / IFAC Task Force and required from the participants to describe their research idea
as “pathways” with different levels.
After the initial welcome message by the workshop chairs, Chris Decubber from EFFRA (the
European Factories of the Future Research Association) and the Connected Factories project
(www.connectedfactories.eu) presented an overview of the pathways method which has been used to
highlight multiple stages towards a vision. At the EFFRA website (www.effra.eu) multiple pathways
(e.g. “Autonomous Smart Factory”, “Hyperconnected Factories”) are available. Given the nature of
EFFRA and the Connected Factories project, the pathways focus on topics which involve IT for
manufacturing in general.
The second presentation by Kawtar Ougaabal (Path simulation in BPMN workflow using resource
aggregation) focused on simulation and BPMN workflows. The paper was not originally written for
this workshop but the topic was a good fit. Never the less it was presented using the pathways method.
The third presentation by Chris Stary (Rethinking Interoperable Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) as
Interactive Behavior Designs) was the first from three presentations using the pathways method. It
focused also on processes and workflows and stressed the aspect of the human operator involved in
cyber-technical systems.
The forth presentation by Åsa Fast-Berglund (How to design a smart factory?) discussed several
aspects of interoperability in the Stena Industry Innovation Lab at Chalmers (SII-Lab). Here drones are
built and heterogeneous IT and hardware systems are needed to be made interoperable.
The last presentation was given by Georg Weichhart, Hervè Panetto and Néjib Moalla and discussed
a Pathway to CP(P)S Modelling & Architecting. That presentation was in particular focused on aspects
Proceedings of the Workshops of I-ESA 2020, 17-11-2020, Tarbes, France
EMAIL: Georg.Weichhart@profactor.at (G.W.); wided.guedria@sigi.lu (W.G.); gbhullar@control2k.co.uk (G.B.); herve.panetto@univ-
lorraine.fr (H.P.); nejib.moalla@univ-lyon2.fr (N.M.)
ORCID: 0000-0002-1405-5825 (G.W.); 0000-0002-5537-2261 (H.P.); 0000-0003-4806-0320 (N.M.)
©️ 2020 Copyright for this paper by its authors.
Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
CEUR Workshop Proceedings (CEUR-WS.org)
that support the CPPS modeling. Here also the importance of taking care about humans and their
interaction with technical hardware and software systems was discussed.
The discussions during the workshop have been focusing on the need to see CP(P)S also as socio-
technical systems. The user needs to be included in any model of CP(P)S. New approaches have to
cover a broad scope for modelling. The user brings in a perspective where execution of processes by
humans are modeled more abstract and allow therefore a wider interpretation how a particular task is
executed. The challenge when modeling processes in CP(P)S that, for example, include collaborations
of humans and robots is that the level of granularity of tasks descriptions are very different. This implies
that variances and variability of how tasks are executed will occur. A new approach has not only to
enable execution of models but also to react to changes during execution. Feedback from execution
environment to the modelling environment is a necessary consequence.
Another point raised during workshop discussion is the need of interoperability and loose coupled
CPS. Tight integration is not only hard to maintain but is also limited in terms of adaptation of systems.
Modelling of CPPS will need to respect that the individual CPS will be under control of different people
and organizations. This is a new aspect for modelling (but less for execution). The question is how
models that include existing complex systems can be constructed easily. Again, some feedback from
the execution environment, where the systems run, might help in modelling and adapting models when
these systems are updated.
As can be seen, the idea of the task force has already in its beginning raised several challenging
issues that need to be handled in the future.
All presentations are available online at the IFAC TC5.3 and the IFIP WG5.8 internet sites (see next
section for the web address).
2. Task Force
As already mentioned above, this event was organized to provide the basis for initial discussions on
a task force. This currently formed group to advance the research on interoperability of cyber-physical
systems, is mainly driven by two international groups that are joining forces:
International Federation on Automatic Control (IFAC) / CC 5 - Cyber-Physical Manufacturing
Enterprises / TC 5.3. Integration and Interoperability of Enterprise Systems (http://ifac-tc53.org)
IFIP / TC 5 Information Technology Applications / WG 5.8 Enterprise Interoperability
(http://www.ifip-ei.org/)
The task force is in an early stage and information will be made available through the groups’ web-
pages. Other groups like the IFIP WG5.12 Architectures for Enterprise Integration have been contacted
and show interest in the development of such a modelling and execution approach. We expect more
groups to follow soon.
The above section highlights already that during the workshop several starting points in terms of
unsolved issues and complex requirements have been discussed.