=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-3214/WS2Paper4
|storemode=property
|title=Challenges and Opportunities of Enterprises Network Design and Services
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3214/WS2Paper4.pdf
|volume=Vol-3214
|authors=Frank-Walter Jaekel
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/iesa/Jaekel22
}}
==Challenges and Opportunities of Enterprises Network Design and Services==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3214/WS2Paper4.pdf
Challenges and Opportunities of Enterprises Network Design
and Services
Frank-Walter Jaekel1
1
Fraunhofer Institute for Production Systems and Design Technology IPK, Pascalstr. 8-9, D-10587 Berlin,
Germany
Abstract
Enterprise networks in terms of business partners cooperating to achieve common business
objectives are challenged by communication and technical conditions. A usual way to
manage these challenges is to look from a single enterprise perspective. If it is a large
organisation it tries to force the partners to follow its strategy. In terms of small or medium
size companies they try to follow standards or the requests of larger organisations. However,
the investment to improve the business is located within single partners of the network. This
raises the question of which technology and standard will be suitable in the future. The
related technology changes can require high investments. The question arises which
technology, standard, IT system, architecture, model should be used. The paper will discuss
the use of enterprise models together with open source utilities to reduce the risk of loss of
investments. Starting with the identification of requirements in the form of as-is models, the
development of conceptual to-be models, the enrichment to implementation models and
finally a realisation model that guides the implementation. In terms of a vision the paper will
especially focus on the options for the software implementation and reduction of costs of
change.
Keywords 1
Enterprise network, enterprise model, ecosystem, open source, standards
1. Introduction and challenges
Businesses need predictability and reliability in the standards and IT systems they use in terms of
safeguarding the related investment. In the quickly changing environment with evolutions of business
models and processes on one side and new technologies and IT solutions on the other side, companies
as well as business networks have to react very quickly to ensure resilience and economic stability. IT
applications and business processes should be invocated on demand and simply integrated in existing
structures of process and supporting IT applications within the organisation. This still seems to be in
conflict with the interests of software providers, as reported 12 years ago in “A Success Story:
Manufacturing Execution System Implementation” [1]. IT vendors introduce their system
understanding and solutions instead of business processes and IT services requested from the business
demands of organisations.
This might encourage the checking of other opportunities in general such as open source solutions
related with potential open platforms such as BASYS [2], GAIAX[3] and FIWARE[4] approaches.
However, also these platforms might have the risk for companies of being bounded to the platform.
Standards are important to increase interoperability but it is difficult to see which standard will be
the best for future development such as a decision to use OPC-UA [5], MQTT [6] or other
approaches. Therefore, also standards should be seen as an exchangeable and evolving asset. The
Proceedings of the Workshop of I-ESA’22, March 23–24, 2022, Valencia, Spain
EMAIL: frank-walter.jaekel@ipk.fraunhofer.de (F-W. Jaekel)
ORCID: 0000-0003-4846-005X (F-W. Jaekel)
© 2022 Copyright for this paper by its authors.
Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
CEUR
Wor
Pr
ks
hop
oceedi
ngs
ht
I
tp:
//
ceur
-
SSN1613-
ws
.or
0073
g
CEUR Workshop Proceedings (CEUR-WS.org)
target is to find approaches and solutions to decrees the dependency and to extend the flexibility in
terms of the enterprise architecture.
For decades enterprise modelling and enterprise architecture models have been used to identify
demands, week points, optimisation potentials and to improve the process quality of companies and
organisations. This already has been introduced into larger enterprises in terms of business process
management units. But the use to monitor the IT solutions and their evolution in line with the
evolution of the business processes seems less considered. Of course, models are used for the
implementation of Enterprise-Resource-Planning (ERP), Manufacturing Execution System (MES),
Supply-Chain-Management (SCM), Advanced Planning and Scheduling-System (APS) and other
large systems but usually from a system function perspective such as “we need MES system” instead
of “we have the following process and need IT support for this specific demand”. The result can be
easily a system implementation with lots of functions only partially used and difficulties of how to
further develop the related processes.
What is needed is the clear identification of demands and the gaps between demands and the
current situation as well as the steps forward implementing new processes or IT applications. This
includes the understanding of the available IT support and potential changes. The analysis and
clearness of migration and replacement risks for new processes and IT applications has to be
transparent. This requires a good understanding of information flows and data structures in use and
the strategy of the further development of enterprise data model of information model. This would
allow a more seamless interaction with different IT applications but also across organisations in
enterprise and supply chain networks.
2. Enterprise modelling to monitor evolution
The challenges of evolution in standards, competing standards, new technologies and new business
processes even new business is reality. So, enterprises and network of enterprises have to manage this
environment. An approach in this direction is a holistic blue print of the enterprise processes and
structures using enterprise modelling which allows the creation of transparency of the as-is and to-be
processes. It should express the effect of each change in terms of structures and technology also in an
executable way such as scenarios and mock-ups. In this sense a simulation would be nice but might
need too much effort. It also can be very difficult to identify every relevant parameter value within a
chaotic environment. Scenarios of workflows and user interfaces like a movie seem more adequate to
understand effects of changes. These scenarios should be integrated within the whole enterprise model
including the cross organisational supply chain or enterprise network processes.
In this approach, the enterprise model is an asset of the organisation that is continuously used and
developed according to the requirements and changes in structures and technologies (Figure 1). The
model indicates demands and helps to monitor available IT applications to fulfil the demands. New
process structures will automatically update the demands and support the identification of the relation
between workflows and IT applications. Interfaces and data descriptions are managed in the
information model of the enterprise model and therefore related to process and IT application
descriptions.
New technologies are mapped initially into the enterprise model in terms of fulfilments of
demands. The adaptations of the enterprise model together with the available IT applications are
implemented into the workflow of the organisation.
Specification / Implementation
Evolution Evolution
IT / technology mapping, IT Application Vendors
orchestration
Open source services
IT Infrastructures Data
Enterprise architecture Demand matching,
/ Enterprise model adaptations Protocols Standards
Execution
Executed enterprise model design
Figure 1: Use of enterprise model within the evolution of processes and technologies
In the context of IT application implementation projects in industry, the approach is implemented
in several steps:
1. General demands and identification of potential technology
2. Holistic as-is model of an enterprise via interviews and document checks
3. Design of an initial to-be model covering standard pattern of supply chain, order management
and manufacturing control
4. Training of staff in the company so that they can apply the modelling techniques themselves
5. Identifying pain points and creating appropriate scenarios to overcome them.
6. Developing executable scenarios expressing the paths across the model including the related
date, IT function and interface demands
7. Integrating the real IT function and user interfaces from IT vendors
8. Identify potential adaptation regarding capabilities of the provided IT
9. The last but important step is the establishment of the model for every further activity. This
allows to predict potential effects of changes and decrease the risk about technical changes by
two aspects
a) The availability of documentation of interfaces, processes and constrains
b) The business effects regarding the scenarios or about further scenarios in the whole
enterprise structure.
The related projects are performed by the use of the integrated enterprise modelling (IEM) and the
MO²GO system [7], which provides an easy way to learn user interfaces because of few but
extendable modelling constructs. The IEM in MO²GO provides an extendable object-oriented
information model interlined with the process view. This gives the possibility to build the required
views especially for the mock-ups by specific clients on the same enterprise model.
So far, the projects relay on large application providers for systems such as MES, ERP, SCM, APS
or warehouse management. This creates a dependency to the IT provider and reduce the freedom of
supporting the business processes. This effects also the master data management and the integration
between different other systems of an organisation because the IT provider invents its data structures
and interface protocols. The question here is whether an open source concept, which identifies a set of
IT applications that are extended and maintained over time and become a standard after a while, could
be an alternative solution. Approaches such as FIWARE, BASYS and now GAIAX started in a
similar direction but became a platform by its own in terms of the business model. The question
remains whether we can develop a more decentralised concept that enables different business models
without reverting to a leading platform model and involving specific providers.
3. Initial ideas increase open source involvement
Open source solutions for enterprise applications exists since a long time like Odoo
(www.odoo.com). They are already platforms and require software components from these platforms
to run single IT functions. Another approach might be the creation and usage of fully independent
small IT functions for enterprises such as a check of OPC-UA interfaces (Figure 2), matching of
demands and suppliers, getting profile information of suppliers.
Figure 2: Small function for enterprises – CPS validation adapter [8, 9]
A target to discuss is an increasing set of such functions including interoperability by using
standards and quasi standards. This would allow a very flexible support of business processes by IT
applications and also a faster step from design to implementing this support. But the feasibility seems
still not finally clarified.
4. Conclusion and outlook
An approach has been drafted to implement new IT application in a way which allows the
monitoring and further evolution of processes and IT applications. The approach outlined poses some
questions about feasibility and applicability that need to be discussed further:
• Companies hesitate to use open source. A potential barrier is the business responsibility for the
solution. But on the other side examples such as the LINUX operation system shows
possibilities to overcome such barriers. What are the drivers to enable a wider successful use of
open source application for enterprises or will be just a small number of vendors more
sufficient to provide the requested solutions from industry?
• The use of enterprise models can allow an adequate and flexible orchestration of IT functions
building an appropriate enterprise application for an organisation. What are the drivers which
might enable and motivate the approach?
• In terms of partnership between enterprises within different kinds of networks information
needs to be exchanged as well as functions of IT application that need to work seamlessly,
especially related to cross-organisational processes. Is there a chance instead of a common
large ontology to standardise sets of open source applications which are continuedly further
developed but which are able to work on different information models?
The questions and especially the answerers can create a first roadmap for further developments.
5. Acknowledgements
This research and development has been partially granted by IoT-T project (www.iot-t.de) via the
smart service world program of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi) in
Germany until 2019. The results are derived from industry projects focussing on implementation of
new technologies especially the integration SCM, ERP, MES.
6. References
[1] A. Bajric, K. Mertins, M. Rabe, F. W. Jaekel, A Success Story: Manufacturing Execution System
Implementation, in: K. Popplewell, J. Harding, R. Poler, R. Chalmeta (Eds.), Enterprise
Interoperability IV. Springer, London, 2010, pp. 357-366. doi: 10.1007/978-1-84996-257-5_33.
[2] BASYS4.0, Basissystem Industrie 4.0: Eine offene Plattform fur die vierte industrielle
Revolution, 2022. URL: https://www.basys40.de/.
[3] GAIAX, About Gaia-X, 2021. URL: https://www.gaia-x.eu/what-is-gaia-x.
[4] FIWARE, FIWARE: The Open Source Platform for Our Smart Digital Future, 2021. URL:
https://www.fiware.org/.
[5] OPC-UA, Welcome to the World of OPC, 2022. URL: https://opcfoundation.org/.
[6] OASIS OPEN, OASIS Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) TC, 2020. URL:
https://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=mqtt.
[7] K. Mertins, F. W. Jaekel, MO2GO: User Oriented Enterprise Models for Organisational and IT
Solutions, in P. Bernus, K. Mertins, G. Schmidt (Eds.), Handbook on Architecures of
Information Systems, Springer, Berlin, 1998, pp. 649-663. doi: 10.1007/3-540-26661-5_27.
[8] F. W. Jaekel, T. Wolff, V. Happersberger, T. Knothe, Ensure OPC-UA Interfaces for Digital
Plug-and-Produce, in: International Workshop on Enterprise Integration, Interoperability and
Networking (EI2N), 2019, Rhodes. doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-40907-4_5.
[9] GitHub, OPCUA information model Validation Adaptor, 2022. URL:
https://github.com/ipkdeveloper/OPCUA-information-model-validation.