Software

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.

Today the service, which a producing company is offering his customers, has a more distinguishing potential than the product itself. In this case the quality and economy of the service is the deciding factor. This is even more valid when the service is not carried out by the producing company itself, but by a service contractor, which integrates itself into the value adding chain between the producer and the customer. The developments in the communications technology and in particular the Internet show possibilities for advanced services, which go clearly beyond the classical remote maintenance concepts of the past years.

This article describes a new IT system, which provides all process relevant information to the production process involved employees. The access to the company data is done online by using mobile devices (PDA, tablet PC, wearable PC etc.). The employees receive context sensitive all required information via wireless transmission (WLAN etc.). The type of information, its representation and the system’s functionality depends on the role and the function of the corresponding user within the company.

In the internet age, collaborative product development has led to new challenges for OEM’s, suppliers and development partners. In the course of globalisation, engineering activities come together and companies are forced to follow innovative concepts concerning product development processes. This paper presents a framework to support dynamic product development processes for cross-cultural, global value constellations by providing semantic information model standards and suitable software components. The software framework serves as an open development- and integration platform for both information models and functions which cover the relevant aspects of cross-cultural engineering collaboration.

The tasks of service organisations have become more and more complex during the past years and EDP-based service management systems have to meet new demands. At present, these demands lead to extensions to resp. further developments of established systems. Against this background, this article gives a survey of the development status of service management systems in German speaking countries on the basis of a current study of the Research Institute for Operations Management (Forschungsinstitut für Rationalisierung; FIR), Aachen. In addition to that, it presents a way of structuring and facilitating project work comprising the definition of requirements as well as the management of the tendering procedure among eligible contractors and the performance testing of the top candidates.

Speed and cost reduction are plainly the factors of success in global competition. But more and more, the increasing amount of information aggravates the efficient access and finding of information from different systems. Semantic technologies provide convincing solutions by integration of process related knowledge models. Field-tested applications from areas like information retrieval, product development and online consulting illustrate further areas of application.

Due to heterogeneous standards of information systems in many indus-trial firms the planning- and execution systems are unconnected or incompatible. Therefore, Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) combine ERP-, PDM/EDM- and automation systems. However, simultaneously an increase of the in-house usage of internet technologies in production occurs, such as active technologies, web service and industrial frame- works. They allow new production systems and concepts, driven by the direct, IP-based networking of all information and automation systems. Consequently, the general conditions of MES changes.

MES are designed as a link between the ERP solution and the production process of a company. They are to support the production order handling in line with the pretended objectives. In a market study 18 MES have been checked concerning their planning and control strategies.