Process and data fragmentation-oriented enterprise network integration with collaboration modelling and collaboration agents

Abstract

With the process of globalisation and the development of management models and information technology, enterprise cooperation and collaboration has developed from intra-enterprise integration, outsourcing and inter-enterprise integration, and supply chain management, to virtual enterprises and enterprise networks. Some midfielder enterprises begin to serve for different supply chains. Therefore, they combine related supply chains into a complex enterprise network. The main challenges for enterprise network’s integration and collaboration are business process and data fragmentation beyond organisational boundaries. This paper reviews the requirements of enterprise network’s integration and collaboration, as well as the development of new information technologies. Based on service-oriented architecture (SOA), collaboration modelling and collaboration agents are introduced to solve problems of collaborative management for service convergence under the condition of process and data fragmentation. A model-driven methodology is developed to design and deploy the integrating framework. An industrial experiment is designed and implemented to illustrate the usage of developed technologies in this paper.

Keywords:

• enterprise network
• service convergence
• service-oriented architecture (SOA)
• web service
• system integration
• collaborative management

Additional information

Funding

This work is sponsored by the China High-Tech 863 Program, No. 2001AA415340 and No. 2007AA04Z1A6, the China Natural Science Foundation, No. 61174168, the Aviation Science Foundation of China, No. 20100758002 and 20128058006, and the Tsinghua Asian Research Centre 2010 Youth Project C1.