Autor: Martin Zelm

Interoperability between ICT systems is becoming an increasingly important success factor in the cooperation of enterprises. Organisations have to exchange business information and must have the same understanding of the meaning of the exchanged information. Only then can they rely on both the transaction of the information and the validity of its contents. This paper reports on the European INTEROP Network of Excellence concerned with interoperability research for networked enterprises applications and software, its goals, rationale and early results. In addition, an application of interoperability in a supply chain network of SMEs is presented and discussed.

Enterprise Modelling techniques and the associated visual languages become more important to support new approaches for business transformation and the development of ‘smart’ organisations. User-related holistic enterprise modelling requires capturing a multitude of enterprise aspects, business processes, inter- and intra-organisational integration as well as active knowledge management. These requirements are today mostly resolved with single non-interoperating modelling tools. The paper describes a generic extendible solution, the Unified Enterprise Modelling Language (UEML) for the interchange of enterprise models in a neutral format. The benefits of UEML have been demonstrated with three commercial modelling tools MO²GO, e-Magim and Metis.