=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-3214/WS2Paper2
|storemode=property
|title=Model based Configuration of Platforms for Managing Cross- Organizational (Business) Processes
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3214/WS2Paper2.pdf
|volume=Vol-3214
|authors=Thomas Knothe,Patrick Gering,Ilona Glodde,Ulrich Ahle,Jonas Böttger,Niklas Döberitz
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/iesa/KnotheGGABD22
}}
==Model based Configuration of Platforms for Managing Cross- Organizational (Business) Processes==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3214/WS2Paper2.pdf
Model based Configuration of Platforms for Managing Cross-
Organizational (Business) Processes
Thomas Knothe1, Patrick Gering1, Ilona Glodde1, Ulrich Ahle2, Jonas Böttger3, and Niklas
Döberitz3
1
Fraunhofer Institute for Production Systems and Design Technology, Pascalstraße 8-9, 10587 Berlin,
Germany
2
FIWARE Foundation, e.V. Franklinstrasse 13A, 10587 Berlin, Germany
3
University of Applied Science Wildau, Hochschulring 1, 15745 Wildau, Germany
Abstract
In this contribution interoperability is considered from the perspective of platforms, which
have to manage cross-organisational business processes. A model-based approach for
configuring a cloud platform for managing complex processes and their dependencies across
different organisations is provided. The approach is applied on using FIWARE, which
provides a framework of open source software platform components. The core concept is to
extend the open source core data model of FIWARE by using the artefacts of an Enterprise
model, describing the dependencies of processes, roles, object data and application interfaces.
Based on a given use case the principal configuration was applied and validated.
Keywords 1
Cloud platforms, model based configuration, cross-organisational business processes
1. Introduction
Beginning with the cloud service hype around 2006/07, in recent two decades cloud platforms
supporting more and more business processes for and across companies have emerged. In the past five
years we see the increase to apply Platform as a Service (PaaS) for multiple and connected end-to-end
processes across different organisations. It can be identified as increasing applications in our more
and more networked business and social world. Below, some examples are illustrating the
importance:
• Cross-organisational-Engineering Processes, Approval and Certification: Complex products are
not only engineered any more by just one company. Using new technologies, like clous.io, even
very small engineering parts can be outsourced to sub-contracted engineers and recombined.
The development of security relevant components, like aircraft engines, requires along the
entire life-cycle of a product type compliance according to standard specifications and the
frequent assessment and evaluation of certification authorities.
• Product Passport for Track and Tracing: Because of actual and upcoming legal requirements
(e.g. Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence [1]) products have to be made transparent from the
beginning to the end of their life cycle including the origin of raw material sources until
recycling or reuse. For complex products this could mean the involvement of more than 100
companies and connected processes (for instance repair processes or introduction of additional
components)
• Supply Network Management: Supply networks are acting mostly in a multi-disciplinary
environment of connected production, logistics and financial processes [2]. As well partners
Proceedings of the Workshop of I-ESA’22, March 23–24, 2022, Valencia, Spain
EMAIL: thomas.knothe@ipk.fraunhofer.de (T. Knothe); patrick.gering@ipk.fraunhofer.de (P. Gering); ilona.glodde@ipk.fraunhofer.de (I.
Glodde); ulrich.ahle@fiware.org (U. Ahle); jonas.boettger@th-wildau.de (J. Böttger); nido5456@th-wildau.de (N. Döberitz)
ORCID: 0000-0002-3055-7155 (T. Knothe)
© 2022 Copyright for this paper by its authors.
Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
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from different companies have to interact (e.g. the logistics service manager and production
control manager).
For all cases the networked dependent processes are the base for interoperable business between
partners. Because of the frequent changes in our business environment, platforms can not rely on
stable process standards anymore. For that, PaaS – Solutions require suitable capabilities for
(automatic) configuration and adaptions of the underlying process network implementation. In the
following chapters a specific use case will be provided and a model-based configuration approach for
the open source Solution FIWARE proposed.
2. Example of cross-organizational processes in networks: Engineering of
aircraft components
In Figure 1, a partial view an Enterprise model based on the Integrated Enterprise Modelling
(IEM) methodology is given for describing the engineering lifecycle of aircraft components.
Figure 1: IEM Model – Process Part of System Engineering of Engine for hybrid electrical flight
In this case, engineering is about testing the design of an electrical aircraft engine for hybrid
electrical flight. In Figure 1, three process levels are indicated. In 1st level, the entire systems
engineering process from early design to the detach of a system is in the scope. In the 2nd level the
system engineering during the design phase is indicated. In the 3rd level the processes of testing the
engine according to over-torque and the information handling around are shown. By this, different
roles, like “Test Facility Provider” or “Aircraft OEM” interacting with different responsibilities along
the connected processes. During engineering, all of them have to provide specification and test data in
order to have a complete and consistent product certification data set. This is the basis for the
approval, to be performed by the certification authority.
The entire process complexity for this engineering object can be illustrated by considering:
• Number of major subcomponents of a product like the electrical engine: 7
• Number of major Requirements Specifications to be followed for the engineering of electrical
engines according to ASTM (American Society for Testing and Materials): 14
• Number of relevant process steps, to be considered in platform operations according to the
model: 67
• Number of different organizations interacting along the different networked processes: 6
Modelling and executing of processes using standard workflow design and execution systems
would lead to a lot of effort and delay, whenever a change has to be considered.
3. FIWARE platform
FIWARE provides a framework of open source software platform components [3]. The key asset
is the context broker. It enables to manage context information in a partly decentralized and large-
scale manner by gather, publish, notify and consume context information. For implementing the
context broker, FIWARE provides alternative implementations based on the ETSI NGSI-LD (Next
Generation Service Interface Linked Data) specification [4].
The specification contains the data model and the API (Application Programming Interface). The
core elements of the NGSI-LD are derived from the concept of resource definition framework (RDF)
[5]. It consists of interlinked Entity, Relationship, Property (as subclasses of rdfs.Resource) and
Value. These are interlinked with the type elements “hasObject and “hasValue” (as subtypes of
rdfs:Property).Based on this model cross-domain and domain specific data models can be derived. By
using a domain specific data model, such processes like the mentioned ones in chapter 1 can be
realized. ETSI provides fundamental concepts for security issues or tools for testing and validation as
well [4].
In the next chapter it is described how such a data model can be extended to reflect complex
processes and data standards as indicated in chapter 2 by utilizing an Enterprise Model.
4. Model based platform configuration
Enterprise Models are used to develop, operate and maintain complex enterprise architectures from
structural and behavioral perspectives. The major objectives of enterprise models are the multi-
disciplinary application for stakeholder with different professional background and at the same time
to describe target or real systems as formal as possible.
For the applicability in a wide range of disciplines and professional backgrounds enterprise
modelling methodologies aim to be expressiveness, whilst data models like RDF are suitable mostly
for computer scientist. The Integrated Enterprise Modelling Methodology (IEM) [6] is one of the
comprehensive approaches with a background in manufacturing and industrial services. As indicated
in Figure 1, the processes, responsible roles, data objects, documents and even the software
applications and its interfaces of complex cross-organisational process-networks can be described by
using IEM in a way, that all stakeholders can become familiar with. This ensures completeness,
economically feasibility, business consistency and at the same time formality of the specification. The
approach to configure platforms based on FIWARE technologies is extending the basic NGSI LD data
model with the specific cross domain ontology coming from the enterprise model (
Figure ). The FIWARE context broker management services are then just managing application
data according to the extended data model.
Figure 2 Model based configuration approach
The aim is to perform the extension of the data model based on the IEM model automatically. For
that purpose, a mapping between the IEM Modelling Constructs and its matching the NGSI LD
representation was performed (Table 1).
Table 1
Extract of Mapping between IEM to NGSI-LD
IEM Model Artefact NGSI-LD Representation
Generic IEM Super-Class rdfs:IEM subclassof Entity
IEM IEM Resource Class rdfs: IEM resource entity subclassof
Construct IEM
Classes for: Action, Similar to IEM Resource Class: E.g.
Order, Product, Split, rdfs: IEM action entity subclassof of
Decision, Join, IEM
Sequence Flow,
Control Flow
IEM Resource State rdfs: subclassof IEM Ressource
Entity and has Value of Property:
“State” = true
IEM Action, Order, Similar to IEM Resource State: rdfs:
Product, Split, subclassof IEM Action Entity and
Decision, Join, has Value of Property: “State” = true
Sequence Flow,
Control Flow
Generic Part Of NGSI Relationship “has object”
IEM Class Subclass rdfs:subclassof
Relation
Generic Supported NGSI Relationship relationshipID:
IEM State “supported”
Relation Controlled NGSI Relationship relationshipID:
“controlled”
Subprocess NGSI Relationship relationshipID:
“subprocess”
Generic Float, Text, String, Literal
IEM Integer
Property Reference Literal
List Literal
Domain Role - subclass of Role: rdfs: subclassof “Resource”
Specific Resource
Elements of Role Assignment to NGSI RelationshipID: “supported”
Engineering Process
Process Specification Document Template: rdfs: subclassof
used in Document Template – “IEM Resource”
IEM Subclass and State of
Models Resource
Specification Specification Document rdfs:
Document – Subclass subclassof “IEM Resource” and has
of and State of Value of Property: “State” = true
Resource
Test Result Data – rdfs: subclassof “Protery” and has
Value of Property Value of Property: “State” = true
Message - Subclass of rdfs: Message subclassof “IEM
IEM Order order”
Event - Subclass of rdfs: Message subclassof “IEM
IEM Order order”
In the first validation step, the modelling data were transformed into its respective NGSI-LD
representation manually as well as tested the accuracy of results. All relevant elements of the IEM
model could have been transferred to the NGSI-LD model and the data integration was shown to be
possible. By validating the first data sets we did not find any mismatches. The first trial was limited
by less amount of data, just three involved roles and their responsibilities and permissions, by less
complexity of data structure and the fact, that no business applications from different locations were
involved.
5. Conclusion and outlook
Model based configuration is an opportunity for fast and consistent realization of cloud platforms
for managing and operating complex cross-organizational process networks. The approach to
configure a platform through the extension of the underlying platform data model. The FIWARE
platform seems to be suitable, because business and data logic are separated from platform
management functions. The potential benefits are promising. With model-based configuration, such
platforms can be adapted, even with complex process handling. The evolvement and change can be
discussed with all stakeholders. So, flexibility and agility according to our changing business
environment can be increased. In this trial, the IEM methodology was used for the model-based
configuration. Because IEM is compliant to ISO 19440 “Constructs for Enterprise Modelling”, it
seems to be wise to create a mapping between ISO 19440, so that other enterprise modelling
methodologies and tools can be used for cloud platform configuration as well.
In future work, automatic testing capability has to be explored. Further on, data mappings
regarding complex business object definitions like CCTS (core components technical specification)
have to be integrated [7]. After the experiences of the manual trial to perform the mapping between
the enterprise model to the platform data model we see not too much complexity to realize automatic
testing.
6. References
[1] European Commission, Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence: Fostering sustainability in
corporate governance and management systems, 2022. URL: https://ec.europa.eu/info/business-
economy-euro/doing-business-eu/corporate-sustainability-due-diligence_en.
[2] H. Weinaug, M. Rabe, Models and Methods for Web-support of a Multi-disciplinary B2(B2B)
Network, in: K. Mertins, R. Ruggaber, K. Popplewell, X. Xu (Eds.), Enterprise Interoperability,
Springer, London, 2008, pp. 113–123.
[3] FIWARE, FIWARE: The Open Source Platform for Our Smart Digital Future, 2021. URL:
https://www.fiware.org/.
[4] ETSI, Context Information Management (CIM); NGSI-LD API, 2021. URL:
https://www.etsi.org/deliver/etsi_gs/CIM/001_099/009/01.05.01_60/gs_CIM009v010501p.pdf.
[5] W3C, RDF Schema 1.1, 2014. URL: https://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-schema/.
[6] G. Spur, K. Mertins, R. Jochem, Integrierte Unternehmensmodellierung, Entwicklungen zur
Normung von CIM Beuth, Berlin, 1993.
[7] UNECE, Core Components Technical Specification CCTS, version 3.0, 2009. URL:
https://unece.org/trade/uncefact/ccts.