CIMOSA — Overview and status

Starting from the identification of the increased need for enterprise integration and real-time and up-to-date information, the paper briefly describes the CIMOSA concept, the enterprise modelling solution for identification of available information and its use in the operational processes of the manufacturing enterprise. CIMOSA has been developed by the ESPRIT Consortium AMICE and has been validated together with the ESPRIT projects CIMPRES, CODE and VOICE in multiple case studies and pilot implementations. Validation results have been used to improve the technical specifications of CIMOSA. Exploitation of CIMOSA has been started in the area of enterprise modelling, modelling tool developments and further enhancement of industrial pilot implementations of the Integrating Infrastructure. These efforts are being complemented by promotional activities aimed at increasing enterprise integration awareness and acceptance and support of standardisation activities on national, European and international level. Enterprise integration has not yet become the common industrial goal, nor the specific day-to-day operational tool in the manufacturing community that it should be. Lean enterprises, business re-engineering, concurrent engineering, management of change — identified as current management concerns — should be viewed as subsets of enterprise integration. The engineering of the enterprise has to be become an engineering discipline in its own right in order to solve the many problems in the operation of enterprises of the future.