Modeling and Executing Production Processes with Capabilities and Skills using Ontologies and BPMN

Current challenges of the manufacturing industry require modular and changeable manufacturing systems that can be adapted to variable conditions with little effort. At the same time, production recipes typically represent important company know-how that should not be directly tied to changing plant configurations. Thus, there is a need to model general production recipes independent of specific plant layouts. For execution of such a recipe however, a binding to then available production resources needs to be made. In this contribution, select a suitable modeling language to model and execute such recipes. Furthermore, we present an approach to solve the issue of recipe modeling and execution in modular plants using semantically modeled capabilities and skills as well as BPMN. We make use of BPMN to model \emph{capability processes}, i.e. production processes referencing abstract descriptions of resource functions. These capability processes are not bound to a certain plant layout, as there can be multiple resources fulfilling the same capability. For execution, every capability in a capability process is replaced by a skill realizing it, effectively creating a \emph{skill process} consisting of various skill invocations. The presented solution is capable of orchestrating and executing complex processes that integrate production steps with typical IT functionalities such as error handling, user interactions and notifications. Benefits of the approach are demonstrated using a flexible manufacturing system.Comment: To be submitted to ETFA 202

An AutomationML model for plug-and-produce assembly systems

This paper aims to support the creation of high performance ‘Plug-and-Produce’ systems by proposing a new semantic model that targets the use of AutomationML (AML). In this direction, the focus is narrowed to the self-description of equipment modules that highlights the use of ‘Skill’ concept. An insight description on how the concept of ‘Skill Recipe’ can be used to execute the equipment ‘Skills’ to fulfil the product's assembly requirements is also provided. This is viewed as a critical concept to achieve high performance in ‘Plug-and-Produce’. To translate the base semantic definitions, we have developed new libraries that are fully compliant with the AML standard. The main purpose of using AML in this context is to bridge production and other engineering domains. An overview of the literature that covers the past and current trends in data exchange and standards is presented, while pointing out the existing challenges and limitations. The vision of this paper is to support the standardization effort of integrating information for design, build, ramp-up and operation of production systems. Hence, this approach elucidates the use of existing AML concepts to model and instantiate Product, Process and Resource (PPR), and the underlying definitions such as: ‘Skills’, ‘Skill Recipes’ and ‘Skill Requirements’. Finally, this paper illustrates the implementation of this approach in AML with a help of an industrial case study demonstrated within the openMOS project

Engineering framework for service-oriented automation systems

Tese de doutoramento. Engenharia Informática. Universidade do Porto. Faculdade de Engenharia. 201

Workflow repository for providing configurable workflow in ERP

Workflow pada ERP dengan domain fungsi yang besar rentan dengan adanya duplikasi. Membuat workflow repository yang menyimpan berbagai macam workflow dari proses bisnis ERP yang dapat digunakan untuk menyusun workflow baru sesuai kebutuhan tenant baru Metode yang diusulkan: Metode yang diusulkan terdiri dari 2 tahapan, preprocessing dan processing. Tahap preprocessing bertujuan untuk mencari common dan sub variant dari existing workflow variant. Workflow variant yang disimpan oleh pengguna adalah Procure to Pay workflow. Variasi tersebut diseleksi berdasarkan kemiripannya dengan similarity filtering, kemudian dimerge untuk mencari common dan sub variantnya. Common dan sub variant disimpan menggunakan metadata yang dipetakan pada basis data relasional. Deteksi common dan sub variant workflow mencapai tingkat akurasi sebesar 92%. Ccommon workflow terdiri dari 3-common dari 8-variant workflow. Common workflow tersebut memiliki tingkat kompleksitas lebih rendah 10% dari model sebelumnya. Tahapan processing adalah tahapan penyediaan configurable workflow. Pengguna memasukan query model untuk mencari workflow yang diinginkan. Dengan menggunakan metode similarity filtering, didapatkan common dan/atau sub variant yang memungkinkan. Pengguna dapat menggunakan common workflow melalui workflow designer untuk melakukan rekomposisi ulang. Penyediaan configurable workflow oleh ERP mencapai tingkat 100% dimana apapun yang diinginkan pengguna dapat disediakaan workflownya oleh ERP, ataupun sebagai dasar membentuk workflow yang lain. Berdasarkan hasil percobaan, tempat penyimpanan workflow dapat dibangun dengan arsitektur yang diajukan dan mampu menyimpan dan menyediakan workflow. Tempat penyimpanan ERP mampu mendeteksi workflow yang bersifat common dan sub variant. Tempat penyimpanan ERP mampu menyediakan configurable workflow, dimana pengguna dapat memanfaatkan common dan sub variant workflow untuk menjadi dasar mengkomposisi workflow yang lain. =================================================================================================== Workflow in ERP which covered big domain faced duplication issues. Scope of this research was developing workflow from business process ERP which could be used for required workflow as user needs. Proposed approach consisted of 2 stages preprocessing and processing. Preprocessing stages aimed for finding common and variant of sub workflow based on existing workflow variant. The workflow variants that were stored by user were procured to pay workflow. The workflows was filtered by similarity filtering method then merged for identifying the common and variant of sub workflow. The common and sub variant workflow were stored using metadata that mapped into relational database. The common and variant of sub workflow detection achieved 92% accuracy. The common workflow consisted of 3- the common workflow from 8-variant workflow. The common workflow has 10% lesser complexity than its predecessor. Processing was providing configurable workflow. User inputted query model to find required workflow. Utilizing similarity filtering, possible the common and variant of sub workflow was collected. User used the common workflow through workflow designer to recompose. Providing configurable workflow ERP achieved 100%, where any user need would be provided by ERP, as workflow or as based template for creating other. Based on evaluation, repository was built based on proposed architecture and was able to store or provide workflow. Repository detected workflow whether common or variant of sub workflow. Repository ERP was able to provide configurable ERP, where user utilized common and variant of sub workflow as based for creating one of their need

Forum Session at the First International Conference on Service Oriented Computing (ICSOC03)

The First International Conference on Service Oriented Computing (ICSOC) was held in Trento, December 15-18, 2003. The focus of the conference ---Service Oriented Computing (SOC)--- is the new emerging paradigm for distributed computing and e-business processing that has evolved from object-oriented and component computing to enable building agile networks of collaborating business applications distributed within and across organizational boundaries. Of the 181 papers submitted to the ICSOC conference, 10 were selected for the forum session which took place on December the 16th, 2003. The papers were chosen based on their technical quality, originality, relevance to SOC and for their nature of being best suited for a poster presentation or a demonstration. This technical report contains the 10 papers presented during the forum session at the ICSOC conference. In particular, the last two papers in the report ere submitted as industrial papers

Web service composition : architecture, frameworks, and techniques

OASIS defines Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) as a paradigm for organizing and utilizing distributed capabilities that may be under the control of different ownership domains. One approach to realize SOA is Web services. A Web service is a software system that has a machine processable Web Services Description Language (WSDL) interface; other systems interact with it using SOAP messages in a manner prescribed by its description. Descriptions enable Web services to be discovered, used by other Web services, and composed into new Web services. Composition is a mechanism for rapid creation of new Web services by reusing existing ones. Web services have functional, behavioral, semantic, and non-functional characteristics. These characteristics have to be considered for composition, as they provide essential information about the services. In order to compose Web services with these characteristics, they have to be described appropriately. However, the existing techniques do not consider all these aspects together for description and composition. This thesis proposes a business model, also referred to as architecture, a description framework, and a composition framework for Web service composition. Techniques for matching, categorizing, and assembling the composite services are also proposed as a part of the composition framework. The architecture, frameworks, and techniques describe, discover, manipulate, and compose Web services by taking into account all their characteristics. The standard Web service business model is extended by the proposed business model to support Web service composition. In the model, based on their demand, the requested Web services are composed by the Web service composer. In the proposed architecture, Web services are described using the description framework languages. The proposed framework combines Semantic Annotations for WSDL and XML Schema (SAWSDL) for functional and semantic description, Message Sequence Charts (MSC) for behavioral description, and a simple and new Non Functional Specification Language (NFSL) for the non-functional properties description of Web services. It uses Higher Order Logic (HOL) for formalizing and integrating the three languages. The role of Web service composer in the architecture is realized by the composition framework. It essentially defines the architecture of the composer. In this framework, matchmaking, categorization, and assembly techniques are used to create the requested composite service. These techniques manipulate the Web services at HOL-level. The formal matchmaking technique discovers the primitive Web services by using a HOL theorem prover. The categorization and the assembly techniques manipulate the matched services and orchestrate the composite service. The concepts of the model, frameworks, and techniques are implemented, and their working is illustrated using case studies. Prototypes of the model's components (extended registry and extended requester) and the composition framework are developed, and their performance is analyzed. Case studies to illustrate the description and the composition frameworks are also presente

Dynamic service orchestration in heterogeneous internet of things environments

Internet of Things (IoT) presents a dynamic global revolution in the Internet where physical and virtual “things” will communicate and share information. As the number of devices increases, there is a need for a plug-and–interoperate approach of deploying “things” to the existing network with less or no human need for configuration. The plug-and-interoperate approach allows heterogeneous “things” to seamlessly interoperate, interact and exchange information and subsequently share services. Services are represented as functionalities that are offered by the “things”. Service orchestration provides an approach to integration and interoperability that decouples applications from each other, enhancing capabilities to centrally manage and monitor components. This work investigated requirements for semantic interoperability and exposed current challenges in IoT interoperability as a means of facilitating services orchestration in IoT. The research proposes a platform that allows heterogeneous devices to collaborate thereby enabling dynamic service orchestration. The platform provides a common framework for representing semantics allowing for a consistent information exchange format. The information is stored and presented in an ontology thereby preserving semantics and making the information comprehensible to machines allowing for automated addressing, tracking and discovery as well as information representation, storage, and exchange. Process mining techniques were used to discover service orchestrations. Process mining techniques enabled the analysis of runtime behavior of service orchestrations and the semantic breakdown of the service request and creation in real time. This enabled the research to draw observations that led to conclusions presented in this work. The research noted that the use of semantic technologies facilitates interoperability in heterogeneous devices and can be implemented as a means to bypass challenges presented by differences in IoT “things”