A stakeholder-based analysis of the benefits of network enabled capabilities

Realisation of the benefits sought from Network Enabled Capability (NEC) requires industry and UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) to work effectively together with a shared vision. Earlier studies have revealed disparate understandings of the NEC concept and a lack of agreement on its definition. Furthermore, although the benefits of NEC have been intuitively recognised, it is not clear that these benefits have been metricated in a fashion suitable to justify the investment needed in research and development for their realisation. This paper reports on a workshop involving military users and industrial systems engineers that sought to identify and prioritise the benefits of NEC through which NEC development may be assessed. It also draws on the outcomes of other interactive workshops on the perception of NEC by stakeholders organised within the framework of NECTISE research programme. The motivation for this paper is to disseminate NEC benefits on which there is industry and user consensus to encourage the generation of meaningful measurements of NEC value in the future. The outcomes have revealed considerable coherence between the stakeholder groups in recognition and priority of the benefits, although these benefits were all of an operational (military) nature. This indicates a good prospect for industry engagement in the NEC aspiration and metrics are now needed to measure the effectiveness of using NEC in different contexts such as military and industry. The benefits are also included in the impact of NEC on the systems engineering discipline, but in order to achieve them systems engineering may be required to change or adapt new practices

NEC themes: a conceptual analysis and applied principles

This paper deals with essential principles of Interoperability, Agility, Collaboration and Knowledge applied in the context of Network Enabled Capability Through Innovative Systems Engineering (NECTISE). Using empirical investigations these concepts have been identified as NEC-readiness themes and they contribute significantly to the realisation of NEC. Based on a systemic analysis and application of theoretical principles, the approach described in this paper contributes towards the demonstration of NEC as well as the identification of a limited set of critical features for capability planning and systems design. Some research questions are derived and discussed and a gap analysis strategy is proposed. These themes also defined as critical features have been investigated in a variety of contexts The main contributions of this paper are related to the mapping the themes to the military capability model and formalisation of the relationships. The purpose of such an exercise is to exploit learning from other (mainly civil) domains in the military context, with regard to the readiness themes which overlap with a limited set of critical features for design within a NEC context

An enterprise modeling and integration framework based on knowledge discovery and data mining

This paper deals with the conceptual design and development of an enterprise modeling and integration framework using knowledge discovery and data mining. First, the paper briefly presents the background and current state-of-the-art of knowledge discovery in databases and data mining systems and projects. Next, enterprise knowledge engineering is dealt with. The paper suggests a novel approach of utilizing existing enterprise reference architectures, integration and modeling frameworks by the introduction of new enterprise views such as mining and knowledge views. An extension and a generic exploration of the information view that already exists within some enterprise models are also proposed. The Zachman Framework for Enterprise Architecture is also outlined versus the existing architectures and the proposed enterprise framework. The main contribution of this paper is the identification and definition of a common knowledge enterprise model which represents an original combination between the previous projects on enterprise architectures and the Object Management Group (OMG) models and standards. The identified common knowledge enterprise model has therefore been designed using the OMG's Model-Driven Architecture (MDA) and Common Warehouse MetaModel (CWM), and it also follows the RM-ODP (ISO/OSI). It has been partially implemented in Java(TM), Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) and Corba/IDL. Finally, the advantages and limitations of the proposed enterprise model are outlined

Modeling the linkage between systems interoperability and security engineering

Industry, finance, and other business activities are increasingly reliant on computer networks and systems, which demand effective interoperability of systems. But this also demands effective systems security, which poses a major challenge to the socio-technical interactions enabled by interoperable tools. This paper addresses modeling of the linkages between interoperability and security in the model design stage of systems development. It considers current interoperability frameworks and the manner in which they may be combined with security standards and desirable characteristics to create trusted, robust systems that are central to the operation of network enabled large scale applications. An holistic approach for interoperability and security is presented based on systems requirements modeling and model based architecting principles

The influence of the concept of capability-based management on the development of the systems engineering discipline

This paper explores the implications of a capability-based conceptual approach on the development of the systems engineering (SE) discipline. It deals with the identification of some potential limits and gaps of traditional SE approaches and demonstrates the need for new and innovative developments which support the concept of capability based engineering, especially as applied in the military domain and networking environments. The innovative approaches include partnership for capability planning and service descriptions for capability representations. The paper also presents a very brief assessment of the state-of-the-art of cognate domains such as capability based planning alongside requirements engineering and management, and considers the extent to which they address capability based concepts. The related concepts of system of systems (SoS) and the endeavour to extend SE to SoS are necessarily addressed

Towards a meaningful manufacturing enterprise metamodel: a semantic driven framework

This paper presents a deep investigation and an interdisciplinary analysis of the collaborative networked enterprise engineering issues and modelling approaches related to the relevant aspects of the semantic web technology and knowledge strategies. The paper also suggests a novel framework based on ontology metamodelling, knowledge model discovery, and semantic web infrastructures, architectures, languages, and systems. The main aim of the research enclosed in this paper is to bridge the gaps between enterprise engineering, modelling, and especially networking by intensively applying semantic web technology based on ontology conceptual representations and knowledge discovery. The ontological modelling approaches together with knowledge strategies such as discovery (data mining) have become promising for future enterprise computing systems. The related reported research deals with the conceptual definition of a semantic-driven framework and a manufacturing enterprise metamodel (ME_M) using ontology, knowledge-driven object models, standards, and architectural approaches applied to collaborative networked enterprises. The conceptual semantic framework and related issues discussed in this paper may contribute towards new approaches of enterprise systems engineering and networking as well as applied standard and referenced ontological models

Modeling the linkage between systems interoperability and security engineering

Industry, finance, and other business activities are increasingly reliant on computer networks and systems, which demand effective interoperability of systems. But this also demands effective systems security, which poses a major challenge to the socio-technical interactions enabled by interoperable tools. This paper addresses modeling of the linkages between interoperability and security in the model design stage of systems development. It considers current interoperability frameworks and the manner in which they may be combined with security standards and desirable characteristics to create trusted, robust systems that are central to the operation of network enabled large scale applications. An holistic approach for interoperability and security is presented based on systems requirements modeling and model based architecting principles