ISO High Level Steering Group on CALS HLSGC N36 Rev.1, 97-05-25, p. 1 of 99
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ISO High-Level Steering Group on CALS (HLSGC)
Report to ISO Technical Management Board (TMB)
[cleaning-up of lay-out by UN/ECE, Rev. A] 25 May 1997 ISO High Level Steering Group on CALS HLSGC N36 Rev.1, 97-05-25, p. 2 of 99
TABLE OF CONTENTS
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY...... 5 A. BACKGROUND AND SCOPE OF THE HLSGC...... 6 B. THE HLSGC METHODOLOGY...... 7 C. PRINCIPLES FOR SELECTING STANDARDS ...... 8 D. IMPLEMENTING THE STRATEGY...... 9 E. BENEFITS OF THE STRATEGY ...... 10 F. FRAMEWORK FOR CALS STANDARDS...... 11 G. STRATEGIC RECOMMENDATIONS...... 12 REC. 1: PROMOTION AND CLARIFICATION OF ELECTRONIC BUSINESS THROUGH A MODEL AND A HANDBOOK...... 12 REC. 2: CONSISTENCY AND INTEROPERABILITY OF INFORMATION STANDARDS...... 12 REC. 3: INTEGRATED PRODUCT DATA, INCLUDING SUPPORT FOR LOGISTICS ...... 12 REC. 4: BUSINESS DATA EXCHANGE PROMOTION AND MIGRATION STRATEGY...... 12 REC. 5: A SINGLE SUITE OF INTEGRATED TECHNICAL DOCUMENTATION STANDARDS...... 13 REC. 6: PROCESSING MULTIPLE LANGUAGES, CHARACTER SETS AND ENCODING ...... 13 REC. 7: NEEDS FOR DIFFERENT LEVELS OF STANDARDISATION ...... 13 REC. 8: PROMOTION OF ISO AND IEC STANDARDISATION ...... 13 REC. 9: RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN EXTERNAL STANDARDS DEVELOPERS AND ISO...... 14 REC. 10: FOLLOW UP OF RECOMMENDATIONS ...... 14 REC. 11: PROPOSED ORGANISATION ...... 14 H. TECHNICAL RECOMMENDATIONS ...... 15 REC. 1: PROMOTION AND CLARIFICATION OF ELECTRONIC BUSINESS THROUGH A MODEL AND A HANDBOOK ...... 15 Rec. 1.1: Virtual Enterprise model and Handbook for Electronic Business ...... 15 Rec. 1.2: Standard for programme management information ...... 16 Rec. 1.3: Standards requirements...... 16 REC. 2: CONSISTENCY AND INTEROPERABILITY OF INFORMATION STANDARDS...... 16 Rec. 2.1: Integrated Information Model ...... 17 Rec. 2.2: Impact on existing standards...... 17 REC. 3: INTEGRATED PRODUCT DATA, INCLUDING SUPPORT FOR LOGISTICS ...... 17 Rec. 3.1: Modular data architecture ...... 17 Rec. 3.2: Support for the product lifecycle...... 18 REC. 4: BUSINESS DATA EXCHANGE PROMOTION AND MIGRATION STRATEGY...... 18 Rec. 4.1+2: Promotion of UN/EDIFACT ...... 19 Rec. 4.3: Simplifying the use of UN/EDIFACT...... 19 Rec. 4.4: Future UN/EDIFACT requirements...... 19 Rec. 4.5: Future EDI requirements ...... 19 REC. 5: A SINGLE SUITE OF INTEGRATED TECHNICAL DOCUMENTATION STANDARDS...... 20 Rec. 5.1: Text, graphics and images including page format and output...... 20 Rec. 5.2: Interactive electronic documentation ...... 21 Rec. 5.3: Video, audio and virtual reality ...... 22 Rec. 5.4: Common source database ...... 22 REC. 6: PROCESSING MULTIPLE LANGUAGES, CHARACTER SETS AND ENCODING ...... 23 Rec. 6.1: Character sets...... 23 Rec. 6.2: Application independence...... 23 Rec. 6.3: Cultural issues ...... 23 ANNEX A: ISO TMB RESOLUTION 48/1996 ON HLSGC ...... 24 ANNEX B: CRITERIA FOR SELECTING PILOT PROJECTS...... 25 ISO High Level Steering Group on CALS HLSGC N36 Rev.1, 97-05-25, p. 3 of 99
ANNEX C (INFORMATIVE): CONSOLIDATED RAPPORTEURS REPORTS...... 26 ANNEX C1: GLOBAL ELECTRONIC COMMERCE...... 27 1. GLOBAL COMMERCE IN THE YEAR 2010...... 27 1.1. Electronic commerce and CALS...... 27 1.2. Global electronic commerce is about transactions from producer to consumer ...... 28 1.3. The life cycle of the transactions...... 28 1.4. Transactions have a cost to be included into economic dimension of global electronic commerce...... 30 2. TOWARDS GLOBAL COMMERCE...... 31 2.1. Business processes ...... 32 2.2. Information exchange ...... 32 2.3. Information systems ...... 32 3. OBJECTIVES...... 33 3.1. Purpose...... 33 3.2. Scope ...... 33 4. PRINCIPLES...... 33 4.1. The set of practices and standards should address the global transaction chain...... 33 4.2. The economic entities should lead...... 33 4.3. The deliverables should be timely ...... 33 4.4. The organizational set-up should be open, decentralized and bottom-up driven ...... 34 4.5. Multilingual approach ...... 34 ANNEX C2: HANDBOOK FOR ELECTRONIC BUSINESS...... 35 ANNEX C3: NEEDS FOR STANDARDS, GUIDES, AND PROFILES ...... 38 1. INTRODUCTION...... 38 1.1 Purpose...... 38 1.2 Scope ...... 38 1.3 Applicability ...... 38 1.4 Background...... 38 2. CALS STANDARDIZATION NEEDS ANALYSIS...... 39 2.1 General...... 39 2.2 Standards...... 39 2.3 Guides ...... 40 2.4 Profiles ...... 40 3. SUMMARY ...... 41 4. RECOMMENDATIONS ...... 41 ANNEX C4: STANDARDS FOR CALS WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE IN ISO AND IEC ...... 42 ANNEX C5: VIRTUAL ENTERPRISE MODEL ...... 46 1. SCOPE ...... 46 2. ANALYSIS...... 46 3. BENEFITS...... 47 4. RECOMMENDATIONS ...... 47 ANNEX C6: CONSISTENCY OF STEP, PLIB, EDIFACT, SGML ...... 48 ANNEX C7: PROCESSING MULTIPLE LANGUAGES, CHARACTER SETS AND ENCODING...... 50 ANNEX C8: MIGRATION TO UN/EDIFACT...... 56 1. SCOPE OF THE DOMAIN, PROBLEM ANALYSIS...... 56 1.1 Scope of the domain...... 56 1.2. Analysis of the problem...... 56 a. The ANSI ASC X12 syntax...... 57 b. The Japanese CII syntax ...... 58 2. RECOMMENDATIONS ...... 59 3. BENEFITS EXPECTED...... 61 ANNEX C9: PROJECT MANAGEMENT (ISSUE # 9)...... 62 ANNEX C10: LOGISTICS...... 65 ANNEX C11: TECHNICAL DOCUMENTATION, MARKET PLACE...... 71 ISO High Level Steering Group on CALS HLSGC N36 Rev.1, 97-05-25, p. 4 of 99
ANNEX C12: IMPROVEMENT OF REQUIREMENTS RESPONSIVENESS OF STANDARDS BODIES.....74 1. INTRODUCTION...... 74 2. RE-ENGINEERING JTC1 - AN EXAMPLE OR MODEL ? ...... 75 2.1 Perceived Values/Benefits of International Standards ...... 76 2.2 International Standardization activity - ISO/IEC JTC1’s Pro’s:...... 76 3. OPTIONS TO QUICKLY ADOPT EXISTING SOLUTIONS IN INTERNATIONAL STANDARDS...... 77 3.1 Fast track, ISPs, PAS Transposition, Normative Referencing ...... 77 4. RECOMMENDATIONS ...... 77 a) Recommendations emphasized in context with CALS...... 77 b) Other generic issues for standards organizations...... 78 ANNEX A (OF ANNEX C12): FAST TRACK IN JTC1 ...... 78 ANNEX B (OF ANNEX C12): BUSINESS TEAM CONCEPT OF JTC1 / FOCUS GROUPS IN ITU-T...... 80 ANNEX C (OF ANNEX C12): PROPOSAL FOR A JTC1 BUSINESS TEAM PILOT ON ELECTRONIC COMMERCE ...... 81 ANNEX D (OF ANNEX C12): JTC1 MODEL FOR GII STANDARDS CATEGORIZATION ...... 85 ANNEX E (OF ANNEX C12): JTC1 SUBCOMMITTEES AS OF MARCH 1997...... 89 ANNEX F (OF ANNEX C12): JTC1 NP ACCEPTANCE CRITERIA ...... 90 ANNEX C13: EUROPEAN INDUSTRY DEMANDS FOR AN INTEGRATED APPROACH TO ELECTRONIC COMMERCE...... 93 ANNEX C14: STATUS OF THE BSR (BASIC SEMANTIC REPOSITORY) PROJECT - MAY '97 ...... 95 ISO High Level Steering Group on CALS HLSGC N36 Rev.1, 97-05-25, p. 5 of 99
Executive Summary As industry is becoming increasingly global, with international collaboration in the development and manufacture of products for sale in the worldwide market, electronic business is making a vital contribution to reducing product lead times, reducing costs of production and ownership, improving quality and delivering new and innovative customer services. Although launched in the US to support the defence industry, CALS has now expanded to be relevant to international industry, in both civil and military sectors. Indeed, CALS International has been set up to guide the future directions of CALS in an international environment, steered by senior industrialists. The key lessons learned from CALS include the need to address the fundamental barrier to communication resulting from conflicting understanding or interpretation of information - whether in digital or paper form - and to avoid the costs resulting from multiple conflicting standards. The emerging global requirement from industry is therefore a set of standards which will support electronic business including CALS, within an enterprise, and interoperability across a wide range of business associates. In order to achieve this objective, the HLSGC convened a meeting of national bodies and regional and international organisations interested in CALS, which identified twelve major areas of concern to be addressed in providing the necessary standards for industry. Expert reviews of each of these areas were undertaken, and the results were used to develop eleven strategic recommendations for standards development and process improvement. These strategic recommendations provide high-level statements of the key standards action items to be addressed, and cover: · Development of a handbook for Electronic Business, supported by a reference model · Consistency and interoperability of information standards · Integrated product data · Business data exchange · Integrated technical documentation · Support for multiple languages and character sets · Need for different levels of standardisation · Promotion of ISO and IEC standards · Relationship between external standards developers and ISO · Improved responsiveness of standards bodies Each of the standards recommendations is supported by a number of more detailed technical actions, which will need to be implemented to achieve the strategic objectives. This report provides a common direction for the selection, and, where necessary, development of a set of standards to support Electronic Commerce in a global environment. It forms the basis of assigning existing national and international resources to meet the agreed objectives, and for ensuring continuing coordination of the activities across all the organisations that are involved. The benefits of the recommended approach include the facilitation of international business, improved market access for companies of all sizes, increased process flexibility within individual enterprises leading to opportunities for innovation, and effective use of resources for standardisation. The ISO TMB is invited to endorse the strategic directions recommended in the report and initiate the proposed actions in collaboration with the other bodies identified in the report. ISO High Level Steering Group on CALS HLSGC N36 Rev.1, 97-05-25, p. 6 of 99
A. Background and scope of the HLSGC As industry is becoming increasingly global, with international collaboration in the development and manufacture of products for sale in the worldwide market, it is becoming increasingly dependent on electronic communications to remain competitive. Electronic business makes a critical contribution to reducing product lead times, reducing costs of production and ownership, improving quality and delivering new and innovative customer services. Exploitation is growing dramatically, and leading to demands for interoperability between different electronic environments. CALS is an initiative which was originally launched to improve the logistics support for the US military services, through the electronic delivery of technical information and maintenance manuals. It soon became apparent that the principles of CALS are applicable throughout the lifecycle of all types of product in an electronic business environment. Although launched in the US, CALS has now expanded to be relevant to global industry, in both civil and military sectors. Indeed, CALS International has been set up to guide the future directions of CALS in an international environment, steered by senior industrialists. The evolution of CALS standards to date has been undertaken in the US using an open, consensus-based process involving the interested parties from Government, industry, vendor, academic and standardisation bodies, principally in the US, to identify requirements and select standards. The result is a set of standards and profiles that are frequently based on their international equivalents, but where the international standards allow multiple options, particular options have been selected to promote interoperability. Different business sectors and countries or regions are making other selections of standards or options, to meet their own local needs. However, the growth of electronic business and the network of international trade means that individual enterprises are often called upon to support multiple standards, causing unnecessary cost to industry and barriers to trade. Other key drivers include a growing demand from military customers to achieve greater cost effectiveness by exploiting existing civil standards, in preference to more costly military- specific standards. The emerging global requirement from industry is a set of standards which will support electronic business including CALS, within an enterprise, and interoperability across a wide range of business associates. Such an evolution is of course exactly parallel to the normal development of standardisation in any field. A common recognition of this problem by the ISO Technical Management Board led to a decision to establish the High-Level Steering Group on CALS (HLSGC) - see Annex A. The following groups have been involved in the HLSGC: · National bodies of Belgium, France, Germany, Japan, Netherlands, Sweden, UK, US · International CALS Congress · UNICE CALS Industry Group · The European Association of Aerospace Industries - AECMA · NATO CALS Office · UN/ECE - UN/EDIFACT · ISO BSR project · ISO TC46 , TC154, TC184 · ISO/IEC JTC1 · IEC TC93 ISO High Level Steering Group on CALS HLSGC N36 Rev.1, 97-05-25, p. 7 of 99
B. The HLSGC methodology In order to achieve its mission, the High-Level Steering Group convened a meeting of all parties currently active in the area of CALS and CALS-like standards to identify the key business requirements and areas of concern from the marketplace. Twelve major areas of concern were identified and expert rapporteurs were nominated to prepare issue papers for review by the HLSGC: 1. Objectives and vision for CALS standards 2. Definition of the need for a handbook for electronic business, and proposed content 3. The needs for standards, profiles and guides to give a modular and adaptable system for industry, based on experiences 4. Overview of specific standardisation tasks to be undertaken within ISO, IEC, JTC1, and other organisations, taking into account existing activities 5. Extended enterprise models to identify processes which require standards 6. Consistency of STEP-SGML-UN/EDIFACT-PLIB 7. Processing multiple languages, character sets and encodings 8. Migration issues for national EDI standards such as X.12 and CII to UN/EDIFACT 9. Need for standards for project management 10. Logistics standards 11. Technical documentation 12. Recommendation for action to improve responsiveness of standards bodies to industry requirements The resulting position papers are attached to this report as Annexes C.1-C.12, together with further viewpoints from UNICE and the ISO Basic Semantic Repository Team. The reports were circulated to all HLSGC members for comment, with a major review being undertaken by the International CALS Congress. The wide range of viewpoints received is an indication of the scope and complexity of the problem. The position papers and comments were used as the basis for developing a set of strategic recommendations, supported by more detailed technical recommendations for selecting and, where necessary, developing, the suite of standards, profiles and guidelines to meet the business requirements as understood by the HLSGC. They also highlighted a number of other tasks that are critical to the successful development and implementation of the resulting standards, such as strong consensus between users on the requirements, and making every effort to use existing work wherever possible. ISO High Level Steering Group on CALS HLSGC N36 Rev.1, 97-05-25, p. 8 of 99
C. Principles for selecting standards The standards needed to support the industry requirement fall into several categories, for which the following principles were applied: · Existing ISO or IEC standards that can be used without change · Existing documents that can be used to fulfil part of the requirement. In this case, there may be a need to remove or specifically identify any national, regional, sector-specific or market-specific elements in the documents to ensure that any impact on interoperability is clearly understood. · Standards currently under development. In this case, there is a clear need to ensure that the resulting standard meets the needs of industry as part of the overall suite of standards identified by the HLSGC. Some existing standards work may need to be cancelled to avoid duplication and conflict. · New work items. Where no standardisation work exists, the development should be assigned to existing international standards groups where it matches their scope. If the work does not fit within the scope of any one existing group, it should be handled through a Business Team (as defined for, but not restricted to, JTC1) · Profiles. Any of the above standards may need to have additional information supplied in order to remove unnecessary options which could otherwise lead to problems of interoperability. Such information should be held separately to the base standards. The use of conflicting profiles is to be avoided. · Registration authorities. The open access to agreed lists of valid values within a standard which need to be maintained on a frequent basis should be entrusted to a registration authority, ensuring that there is adequate funding to sustain the service. · Guidelines. Guidelines are appropriate where there is a need to define best practice or preferred approaches, rather than rigid specification of processes Adequate provision should be made for testing the implementation of standards, with publication of conformance testing methods alongside the relevant standards, to be used as the basis for self-validation. Where standards are unproven, pilot projects are strongly recommended in order to validate the standards in a practical environment, before completing the development, in order to ensure that the results are usable by industry. For particular combinations of standards where interoperability is essential, pilot projects are also strongly recommended to validate both the design and practical implementation. ISO High Level Steering Group on CALS HLSGC N36 Rev.1, 97-05-25, p. 9 of 99
D. Implementing the strategy The current development process for CALS standards is characterised by its comparative speed and agility, and the extensive involvement of the end users in specifying the requirements to be met by the standard. The corresponding international standardisation activity is spread over a number of autonomous standards organisations, such as ISO, IEC and UN/ECE, as well as other groups. These three organisations have an existing MoU covering EDI matters, which represents part of the scope of the HLSGC work. The challenge to the formal international standardisation community is to improve its processes for the development of draft specifications to provide at least the same level of service, along with the complementary advantages of international consensus and recognition. It should of course be noted that such pressures on standards bodies are coming from many directions, resulting in initiatives such as the JTC1 re-engineering activity. CALS standards are closely related to rapidly-changing IT capabilities, demanding a flexible and dynamic process, with broad consensus on industrial/commercial requirements at the start of the process, use of consortia for completing any development rapidly, and use of a consensus process for approving the result. The active involvement of tool vendors at all stages is essential if the process is to result in effective implementation in products. · Consensus on requirements The set of standards required by industry spans many different ISO, IEC and other standardisation groups, and includes some requirements that are outside the scope of any current standards activity. New requirements should be developed by groups involving all the interested parties, leading to a business plan identifying how each standards requirement is to be met, in a form that can be adopted by individual standards bodies. The business plans should indicate: · Scope and content · Relationship to existing standards and development/pilot activities · Allocation of any development required, including resource requirements · Plans for pilot project · Strategy for migration · Timescale for delivery Groups such as the ICC have a very important role in providing a broadly-based consensus on user requirements and priorities. · Development Where new developments are required, the use of project teams or consortia with clearly defined tasks, deliverables and timescales should be considered for initial R&D and preparation of the draft International Standard for release into the public domain. Funding should be based on mutual business benefit, to avoid conflicts of interest. Deliverables should be phased to allow testing and validation of experimental standards, involving tool vendors, suppliers and customers. If specifications are developed by consortia or with the support of consortia, appropriate cooperation with and representation in standards organisations should be sought to facilitate subsequent adoption of the specifications as an International Standard. This cooperation can be accomplished in many ways, e.g. through formal liaisons, participants active in both organisations, e-mail cooperation, up to utilising mechanisms such as PAS transposition. Testing of the new development should be undertaken through planned pilot projects, again with identified resources. The characteristics of pilot projects are summarised in Annex B. These pilot projects are beyond the scope of a standards organisation, but may involve the same consortia as the development. · Approval by consensus This should be achieved through existing international standards body mechanisms. ISO High Level Steering Group on CALS HLSGC N36 Rev.1, 97-05-25, p. 10 of 99
External bodies, such as the ICC, also have a valuable role throughout the process in undertaking market development to achieve a critical mass of users and vendors. It is noted that these proposals are broadly in line with the re-engineering approaches adopted by ISO/IEC JTC1, UN/ECE-CEFACT.
E. Benefits of the strategy The recommended strategy provides a number of benefits to the user and developer of standards alike. · The use of international standards facilitates business cooperation for multinational/ extended/collaborative enterprises, independent of individual company processes. This in turn offers increased business process flexibility, while guaranteeing market access · The integrated approach to planning leads to a modular structure of standards, with agreed levels of capability and corresponding conformance definitions, which can be implemented element by element as justified within an individual enterprise, while retaining the interoperability of system elements. · The process offers clearly defined tasks for development/adoption of standards, with timescales, so that industry can plan for implementation with confidence. This approach is particularly important for the support of pilot and production implementations of the standards. · The proposed approach focuses scarce resources on the most effective route for standards development, by eliminating competing/duplicating tasks and the need for companies to support multiple standards committees to achieve a particular objective. · The global approach provides a basis for guaranteeing competition and marketplace support · Elimination of contradictory standards avoids inconsistent recommendations · Reduced need to implement conflicting standards within industry, minimising the costs of implementation and the need to sustain different operational procedures. · Companies implementing the strategy should benefit from increased access to global markets, where international standards are used, and ensuring fair competition. · Clear role for standards bodies, including ISO, IEC, JTC1 and UN/ECE ISO High Level Steering Group on CALS HLSGC N36 Rev.1, 97-05-25, p. 11 of 99
F. Framework for CALS standards The scope of the area influenced by CALS standards is extensive, and the HLSGC recognised the need for a CALS reference model to provide a framework for standardisation within which the various standards can be related. This is one of the tasks that is recommended as a priority in the work programme. A preliminary reference model has been developed in order to provide a structure and context for the recommendations in the report.
Product/project data Guidelines Supply Chain Lifecycle Business Processes
Interface Information View Standards
Repository Sharable Information
Performance Standards Representation Information Products IT Services
The overall scope of the framework for standardisation needs to cover the range of business processes required through the supply chain and the lifecycle of the product, and the various views of sharable information needed to support each of those processes. Information standards should address the whole lifecycle and cross sectoral requirements. Each of the views needs to have a defined representation which can be transmitted using appropriate IT services. The framework should address: · Common understanding of the data and relationships to be shared through the life cycle, including configuration management. · Product data management through the product lifecycle, including requirements definitions · Extraction and delivery of information products · Requirements for supporting the definition, conduct and management of business processes, including commercial transactions and programme management ISO High Level Steering Group on CALS HLSGC N36 Rev.1, 97-05-25, p. 12 of 99
G. Strategic Recommendations The HLSGC has identified eleven key strategic recommendations for action by the TMB, and other groups. Where appropriate, these are supported by technical recommendations for action by ISO (and IEC) technical committees, and other organisations.
Rec. 1: Promotion and clarification of electronic business through a model and a handbook. The HLSGC recommends that a generic Electronic Business reference model is developed to provide a common concept for the different elements in a virtual enterprise, the different lifecycle phases of a product and a project, and the associated information requirements. The generic model may be specialised to include sector-specific requirements. The reference model can be used to identify ongoing requirements for standardisation, and to assist industry sectors and individual enterprises in identifying how to exploit both de jure and de facto standards to support electronic business. A complementary Handbook for Electronic Business should be published to provide information to industry on how to implement the standards in a consistent manner.
Rec. 2: Consistency and interoperability of information standards The HLSGC recognises the need for a single clear and unambiguous set of data definitions and relationships as the basis for defining sharable sets of data for the different processes in the electronic business, in order to achieve modularity, consistency and interoperability between the various standards used. It is therefore recommended that a single focus be established within the framework of an extended MoU between ISO, IEC and UN/ECE memorandum as the coordination authority for the structured integration of information for Electronic Business.
Rec. 3: Integrated product data, including support for logistics HLSGC recommends that the current set of STEP definitions for product data be extended to support the information requirements of the full product lifecycle, and developed to converge with the integrated information under Recommendation 2. As a priority, the information requirements for in-service support, maintenance and product data management should be developed.
Rec. 4: Business data exchange promotion and migration strategy The HLSGC endorses UN/EDIFACT as the standard for the exchange of business data, and recommends that responsibility for UN/EDIFACT and other EDI standardisation activities be focused under a single group to facilitate a coherent approach to the migration from existing national standards to UN/EDIFACT, and the development of more advanced exchange mechanisms, based on the integrated information developed under Recommendation 2. A roadmap for future development should be prepared, indicating key capabilities. ISO High Level Steering Group on CALS HLSGC N36 Rev.1, 97-05-25, p. 13 of 99
Rec. 5: A single suite of integrated technical documentation standards The HLSGC has identified a high-priority requirement for a single suite of standards for the different types of information content, which can be stored in a common source database - possibly distributed - from which documents can be assembled. The assembly mechanism shall be backed up by an integrated suite of standards which shall support different types of delivery mechanisms - paper, electronic or interactive electronic presentation for the information content. The basic standards for the graphic, image and audio/video objects, shall have no, or a strictly limited number, of profiles. The short term goal is to establish the standards for text, graphics, images, page format and page output, followed by the common source database and the interactive electronic document standards. The long term goal is to support the extraction of technical documentation from the integrated set of information defined in Recommendation 2.
Rec. 6: Processing multiple languages, character sets and encoding The HLSGC recommends that a consistent ISO/IEC policy is established to support the inclusion of any multi-octet character strings, and occurrences of different language encodings in a single data set.
Rec. 7: Needs for different levels of standardisation The HLSGC recommends that standards are established where it is necessary to define minimum requirements for interoperability across different applications, that repositories are established to provide open access to lists of internationally recognised values, and that guidelines are used to capture best practice with examples.
Rec. 8: Promotion of ISO and IEC standardisation The HLSGC recommends that existing standards bodies should be used as the focus for developing and maintaining the required integrated set of standards for Electronic Business, and encourages the rapid adoption of business planning and practices to facilitate the rapid response required by industry. The TMB should encourage all necessary action to improve the standards development process. Standards organisations should be encouraged to: · pilot new working methods, including virtual work groups (working with e-mail, mail reflectors, conference disks, groupware); · use on-line and WWW technology as appropriate to save time and reduce cost; utilise Fast Track, PAS Transposition, Normative Referencing, as appropriate, to quickly adopt standards; · integrate the rapid specification development procedure (e.g. the process established by IETF) into its own procedures; · pilot the concept of Business Teams and/or focus groups and share the experience; · cooperate with the industry, e.g. as represented by the ICC, with relevant consortia/fora, etc. to ensure that standards are market driven; · minimise or eliminate duplication; · provide for a staged (phased) specification development process to allow implementation and testing prior to completion and final approval of a standard; ISO High Level Steering Group on CALS HLSGC N36 Rev.1, 97-05-25, p. 14 of 99
Rec. 9: Relationship between external standards developers and ISO Recognising that many of the key standards for supporting Electronic Business have been developed by consortia outside the ISO process such as the Internet Society, HLSGC recommends that ISO/IEC should facilitate the adoption of standards which have achieved broad market acceptance, and to integrate the rapid development procedures within its own operations.
Rec. 10: Follow up of recommendations Recognising that the requirements of CALS cover not only ISO but also IEC, ITU, JTC1 and UN/ECE, TMB is recommended to initiate the following actions in collaboration with the other bodies: · For tasks within the scopes of existing TCs, the Technical Management Board should confirm the technical recommendations and request the corresponding TCs to respond within six months stating · how they intend to fulfil the requirements (taking full advantage of opportunities offered by existing standards, including PAS, and the use of project teams) · the proposed delivery timescales · any barriers to achieving the required results · For tasks that do not fall within existing ISO TCs, Joint Business Teams should be established to define the necessary actions and recommend allocation of any necessary work · At the end of the period, the TMB should review the responses and recommend any further actions required to complete the programme · The TMB should ensure that organisations such as the ICC that have contributed to the work of the HLSGC should be kept informed of results and further actions so that they can ensure adequate liaison with the process. · The International CALS Congress should be encouraged to collaborate with standards development organisations, and to participate in the definition of requirements.
Rec. 11: Proposed organisation The HLSGC recommends that the existing Memorandum of Understanding on edi between ISO, IEC and UN/ECE be extended to cover the scope of Electronic business, and to include the participation of all other interested organisations such as the ICC and NATO. The management group of this extended MoU will be responsible for assuring the follow up of the HLSGC recommendations. ISO High Level Steering Group on CALS HLSGC N36 Rev.1, 97-05-25, p. 15 of 99
H. Technical Recommendations
The HLSGC has identified the following groups of technical recommendations to support each of the strategic recommendations 1-6 above. These recommendations identify the necessary changes to the existing work programme to achieve the suite of standards, profiles and guidelines to meet the business requirements as understood by the HLSGC. The description of each group covers current activities and target positions, required deliverables (standardisation, guidelines and other supporting material), target dates, tactics, task assignment and migration issues where relevant.
Rec. 1: Promotion and clarification of electronic business through a model and a handbook Recognising that one of the major barriers to effective extended global manufacturing enterprises is the inconsistency of the meaning and interpretation of information, there is a priority need to establish common concepts and provide guidance to help enterprises form and participate in Virtual Enterprises. · The common concepts should be based on a generic reference model of a virtual enterprise, which can be refined to meet the needs of particular sectors. · The complementary guidance needs to cover through-life business modelling, the standards to support a model, and how to implement those standards within a particular business scenario. This guidance should be in the form of a handbook easily understood by business leaders (e.g. program/product managers) at all stages in the supply chain. The model and handbook will serve as a repository of experience and can be used to identify further standardisation requirements or opportunities as they emerge. One such requirement is a standard for exchanging programme management information.
Rec. 1.1: Virtual Enterprise model and Handbook for Electronic Business The common concepts for CALS should be based on an agreed Virtual Enterprise reference model, covering the complete product lifecycle, the supply chain including the customer, and the associated information requirements. The model should allow users to identify their business processes, information flows and data sharing requirements and the standards applicable to support those requirements. It is recognised that a generic model may require additional refinement to meet the needs of specific sectors. The handbook should complement the Virtual Enterprise model, providing guidance on how to apply the generic model and any sector profiles to a specific virtual enterprise to: · create a model for the specific enterprise · select the appropriate standards to support the business model · exploit the standards successfully · take advantage of lessons learned from previous implementations ISO High Level Steering Group on CALS HLSGC N36 Rev.1, 97-05-25, p. 16 of 99
Recommendation 1.1: It is recommended that ISO initiates a multi-disciplinary business-oriented forum involving the International CALS Congress, NATO, ISO TC184 SC4 and SC5, IEC/ACET, CEFACT and other interested parties such as the US CALS ISG and NCALS to develop a handbook on Electronic Business for industrial use, together with executive level presentation materials, supported by a generic Virtual Enterprise model and any sector-specific extensions to define common concepts for Electronic Business, to act as the basis for consistent implementations of standards to support such business on a global scale. The work on the model should begin in 3Q1997, leading to a first release of the model within six months. Work on the Handbook should begin in 4Q1997, leading to a first release of the Handbook within one year. Additional recommendations for further work on maintenance of the handbook, training materials and implementation tools may result from the task.
Rec. 1.2: Standard for programme management information The exchange of the information needed to manage the progress of a complex, multicompany collaborative project is a key requirement, where there are currently no international standards available. It is emphasised that the scope of this activity excludes the definition of the programme management process. Recommendation 1.2: It is recommended that ISO establish a business-oriented team involving representatives from a range of sectors to define the requirements for standards and guidelines for programme management
Rec. 1.3: Standards requirements The recommendations of this report are based on the assessments of the ISO High-Level Steering Group on CALS, and it is recognised that the development and subsequent evolution of the Virtual Enterprise reference model may lead to further specific standards development requirements. Recommendation 1.3: It is recommended that the standardisation requirements of CALS and Electronic Commerce should be reviewed at intervals not exceeding two years in order to ensure that industry requirements are being addressed. The work should be undertaken by the follow-up organisation identified in Recommendation 11, again involving those organisations who have contributed to the HLSGC.
Rec. 2: Consistency and interoperability of information standards The evolution of information exchange for different classes of information in an enterprise has led to the creation of a number of different exchange standards, leading to gaps, overlaps and inconsistencies. In an extended electronic enterprise, it is no longer possible to draw a clear and unambiguous distinction between the different classes of data, since the same information is often used within, or to link different business functions. In order to support interoperability, there is a clear need to establish a set of information and its fixed relationships which can be shared between different functions without leading to inconsistency. This information will need to be carefully structured to facilitate the identification and use of information objects which can be shared and exchanged between multiple functions and processes. ISO High Level Steering Group on CALS HLSGC N36 Rev.1, 97-05-25, p. 17 of 99
Rec. 2.1: Integrated Information Model None of the existing standards organisations that are active in this area have the scope to fully address the issue. Recommendation 2.1: It is recommended that a single organisation be set up within the framework of an extended MoU between ISO, IEC and UN/ECE to act as the coordination authority for developing an integrated, modular architecture of information for Electronic Business. The architecture shall include as a minimum: · Clear, unambiguous definitions of the information, capable of interpretation into multiple languages · Fixed relationships between elements of information · Hierarchies of information elements · Identification of information that should be maintained through registration authorities The architecture needs to incorporate the modelling capabilities of STEP, the emerging BSR, the UN/EDIFACT directories and other information models such as the NATO CALS Data Dictionary, the IEC TC93 core interoperability model and the work on ISO 11179 and IEC 61360. The work should begin immediately, with existing activities being invited to participate in establishing the group in a neutral environment.
Rec. 2.2: Impact on existing standards The information architecture group recommended in 2.1 will need to interact closely with other standards developers, who will in turn need to cooperate with the new group. Recommendation 2.2: It is recommended that the TMB requests all ISO and IEC Technical Committees involved with digital information definition to amend their work programmes, scopes and strategic policy statements to include the necessary interface to the group established under Recommendation 2.1. Affected groups will include ISO TC184 SC4, IEC TC3, TC52 and TC93, ISO TC 37, TC46 , TC68 and TC154 and the group responsible for the BSR. The recommendation should be implemented in parallel with recommendation 2.1.
Rec. 3: Integrated product data, including support for logistics The ISO STEP standard provides a set of integrated information resources which are used as the basis for defining data sharing and exchange mechanisms in a particular application context. As the number of such contexts increases, it is vitally important that the same information definitions are used for the same function in different contexts, to avoid duplication and overlap. It is particularly important to ensure that consistent product data management and configuration management information is defined. For the CALS environment, the planned extensions to STEP to cover the complete product lifecycle are of high priority for many users of complex engineering products in both civil and military sectors.
Rec. 3.1: Modular data architecture The current STEP data architecture needs to be viewed in the broad context of Recommendation 2 to ensure that data models can be easily reused to support common information requirements for different applications, within both STEP and other standards. ISO High Level Steering Group on CALS HLSGC N36 Rev.1, 97-05-25, p. 18 of 99
Recommendation 3.1: It is recommended that TC184 SC4 progressively adopts a more modular structure for the STEP data model, to facilitate the development of sharable data definitions for multiple business functions. Each data module should include a user-orientated definition of the function of the data contained within the module, together with appropriate testing instructions for implementations. Definitions of data modules which are common to other standards should be addressed as joint tasks. A particular requirement is for a common configuration management data model to be used throughout the standard. The modular structure needs to be developed in conjunction with the overall enterprise data model described in Recommendation 2. TC184 SC4 is requested to report on progress towards this objective as part of its annual report to the TMB.
Rec. 3.2: Support for the product lifecycle The scope of STEP covers the product lifecycle from design through manufacture to support, operational use and eventual disposal, but developments to date have focused on the design and manufacturing processes. Activities such as the NATO CALS Pilot Project #1, have identified an urgent need to address the information requirements of in-service support and maintenance. Recommendation 3.2: It is recommended that TC184 SC4 be requested to develop a detailed definition of the information requirements for in-service support and maintenance, and an action plan for developing the extensions to the existing STEP standard. The work shall incorporate: · the requirements developed by the ICC and by NATO as part of their proposed NWI and the data model developed by the Air Transport Association, and take account of existing STEP parts and work by IEC TC56. · Integration with the existing STEP product definition The action plan should be made available by October 1997.
Rec. 4: Business data exchange promotion and migration strategy In a world where global communication is fast becoming a reality, the need for a single international standard for the electronic data interchange (EDI) is critical as it facilitates the dialogue between different nations and provides a common reference point for business. The continued use of sectoral and national standards, or even such variations of the same standard, will in the long term become a hindrance to international trade. UN/EDIFACT is being recognised as the single international standard for EDI. Optimum benefits of UN/EDIFACT for the global free trading will only be achieved if it can adapt itself to catering for user requirements in a reasonable timeframe (rapid response to change requests, data modelling, standardised implementation guidelines ISO High Level Steering Group on CALS HLSGC N36 Rev.1, 97-05-25, p. 19 of 99
Rec. 4.1+2: Promotion of UN/EDIFACT The formal adoption and implementation by industry will greatly help in achieving the objective of a single EDI standard. Recommendation 4.1: In order to establish UN/EDIFACT as the single international standard for EDI supporting trade and industry for the global transaction chain, while recognising the differences in sectoral, national and regional processes, it is recommended to ISO and UN/CEFACT to secure the interoperability of EDI by avoiding sectoral, national and regional versions wherever possible in order to support the globalisation process. It is also recommended that ISO, together with NATO, ICC and other organisations, should formally adopt UN Recommendation 25 and implement the UN/EDIFACT standard. UN/EDIFACT messages and directories are regularly updated to meet user needs and audited prior to publication. Comments received during the ISO approval process should not delay the publication of the standard but should be fed back to the UN/EDIFACT maintenance procedure for evaluation and inclusion in future directories Recommendation 4.2: Where industry requires adoption of UN/EDIFACT messages or directories as ISO standards, it is recommended that ISO use the fast-track procedure without amendments.
Rec. 4.3: Simplifying the use of UN/EDIFACT The cost for small and medium enterprises involved in the negotiation of interchange agreements prior to implementation hinders the development of EDI. This negotiation process also tends to lead to company specific implementations, which is contrary to the objective of providing an open environment. Recommendation 4.3: It is recommended that UN/EDIFACT continue to develop and promote recommended user guides for message implementation (also called implementation conventions, or implementation guides). The user guides required by the CALS community should be linked to the business scenarios developed in the Reference Model described in Recommendation 1.
Rec. 4.4: Future UN/EDIFACT requirements There is the possibility to reference in messages external binary information rather than defining specific data elements. This approach is not compatible with Recommendation 2, and requirements for new messages, segments and data elements should be addressed as part of the process of developing an integrated data dictionary. Recommendation 4.4: It is recommended that extensions to the information content of UN/EDIFACT should be achieved through the addition of well-defined data elements. The data elements need to be developed in consideration with the overall enterprise data model described in Recommendation 2.
Rec. 4.5: Future EDI requirements ISO/IEC JTC1/SC 30 was established to develop Open-edi, which is aimed primarily at lowering the barriers for the establishment of EDI links between business partners by minimising the need for multiple bilateral interchange agreements. This will be done by providing standardised trade procedures that can be used on an industry-wide and cross sector basis. ISO High Level Steering Group on CALS HLSGC N36 Rev.1, 97-05-25, p. 20 of 99
Other aspects of EDI are handled in UN/ECE, ISO TC154 and ISO/IEC JTC1/SC 14. This distribution of effort leads to fragmentation of resources, confusion among new participants, and an extended communications chain. Recommendation 4.5: It is recommended to ISO, IEC and UN/ECE that the standardisation work being carried out on EDI should be rationalised. To that effect, it is recommended that the work of ISO/IEC JTC1/SC 14, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC 30, ISO/TC 154, and CEFACT should be examined with a view to consolidating all the standardisation efforts together, within the framework of the ISO-IEC-UN/ECE MoU.
Rec. 5: A single suite of integrated technical documentation standards To fulfil the urgent need for a set of basic standards for technical documentation creation, interchange and distribution, there is a strong need for a closer co-operation between the ”standards developers” within ISO, IEC, JTC1, US CALS ISG and AECMA. The developer´s and user´s communities recognise the need for the following areas of standardisation: · Text, graphics and images including page format and output · Video, audio and virtual reality · Common source database · Interactive electronic documentation and in the long time perspective (3 to 5 years) · Integration of technical documentation into the overall information model
Rec. 5.1: Text, graphics and images including page format and output These standards are the basic standards to create and distribute technical documentation. Most of the standards are available and working. However the number of profiles or variants or interpretations of the graphics standards has to be clarified and minimised. There is also a need for a cost-effective reuse of DTDs and DTD components already in use. A simple means to output DTD instances is needed to get acceptance of the powerful DSSSL standard. ISO High Level Steering Group on CALS HLSGC N36 Rev.1, 97-05-25, p. 21 of 99
Recommendation 5.1: It is recommended that ISO (JTC1/SC18 and SC 24) together with NATO, ICC and the SGML community jointly create a task force which shall co-ordinate provision of the full suite of technical documentation standards. The necessary steps to fulfil the following shall be taken: · Text shall be handled using SGML and XML. An international registry/repository for DTDs, tagsets and constructs shall be established. Support for all necessary languages and character sets shall be established - see recommendation 6. · Vector and vector/raster graphics shall be handled using CGM with as few profiles as possible to support different levels of functionality. · A limited number of raster graphics standards and profiles shall be adopted. Both tiled and untiled formats of binary data shall be covered. Unnecessary standards shall be eliminated. · Image data for colour and grey-scale still-pictures shall use the JPEG standard. No further action is needed beyond the normal development of the standard. · Page format and output shall be accomplished using DSSSL and SPDL. A simplified version of DSSSL, DSSSL-Online (Light), has to be developed to facilitate and speed up the use the DSSSL concept. Members of the task force should be drawn from the existing ISO/IEC groups. The detailed work shall be done within the existing ISO/IEC committees. The work shall be finished not later than 8 months after the approval to set up the joint task force.
Rec. 5.2: Interactive electronic documentation In order to harmonise the different national and international efforts in the interactive electronic documentation arena there is a strong requirement for common standards for creation and distribution of IETM/P. Recommendation 5.2: It is recommended that the task force established for Recommendation 5.1 should also consider the issues related to interactive electronic documentation with the objective to: · Create a single IETM/P metafile standard for defining the structure and interactions of an interactive electronic document, independent of the tools used to create it, which can be used with a number of different presentation devices. The standard should be independent of the content of the underlying files, to avoid the need to recreate the complete metafile each time one element of it is changed. The work should be based on the emerging ISO/IEC 15464 SMSL (Standard Multimedia Scripting Language) standard and ISO/IEC 13522 MHEG (Coding of Multimedia and Hypermedia information objects) standard. The metafile should take into account the navigation related aspects of MIL-PRF-87269, and of AECMA 1000D. The work done by the MID project to establish a common exchangeable definition of the user interactions with an IETM/IETP should also be taken into account as well as the work going on in SP-HIS. ISO 10744 HyTime should form the basis of defining the structure of interactive electronic technical publications, based on a common source database. · Define a minimum standard set of functions for a view package for interactive documents, covering rules and guidelines for the composition of information for display, including basic rules for user interactions. The information should be obtained from an IETM/IETP metafile. The work should be based on the requirements for the general content, style, format and user interaction features given in MIL-PRF-87268. The equivalent requirements given in AECMA 1000D should also be taken into account. ISO High Level Steering Group on CALS HLSGC N36 Rev.1, 97-05-25, p. 22 of 99
The work shall be finished not later than 18 months after the approval to set up the joint task force. The results of the activity shall be taken into consideration in completing Recommendation 5.1. In the initial issue of these IETM/P standards, links to product data in e.g. PDM databases shall be taken care of by linking to external processes.
Rec. 5.3: Video, audio and virtual reality These standards, MPEG and VRML, are well accepted or under final acceptance. No further actions are needed with these standards, except for their recognition as part of the CALS Technical Documentation standards suite. Recommendation 5.3: It is recommended that MPEG and VRML are recognised as the standards for video information and virtual reality respectively.
Rec. 5.4: Common source database In order to facilitate the reuse of technical documentation data (e.g. text, image and video objects) in a global market place, it is necessary to establish rules or standards for identifying objects. There is also a need for a common method of storing the objects. Recommendation 5.4: It is recommended to establish a joint ISO, NATO, ATA, US CALS ISG (SP-HIS) and AECMA task force which shall establish a standard for a common source database, CSDB, for all types of technical documentation. The CSDB shall be able to handle text, raster and vector graphics, image, audio and video as well as virtual reality information in the form of data modules or information objects, and shall be linked to and derived from a configuration-managed product definition forming part of the overall enterprise model described in Recommendation 2. The resulting data modules and its objects can be compiled into traditional documents, electronic publications and interactive electronic publications. The work shall be based on the modular documentation concept of AECMA 1000D and those parts of MIL-PRF-87269 relating to data elements. The work shall be finished not later than 18 months after the approval to set up the joint task force. Co- ordination is recommended with the planned restructuring work of AECMA 1000D into a generic part and specific parts for aerospace, land and sea. ISO High Level Steering Group on CALS HLSGC N36 Rev.1, 97-05-25, p. 23 of 99
Rec. 6: Processing multiple languages, character sets and encoding Within the global trading environment, the supplier chain will inevitably cross national boundaries and lead to the use of local character sets and cultural conventions. Existing international standards do not provide full support for such character sets and conventions, which by their nature should be independent of individual applications. In addition, the inclusion of multiple character sets in any one set of product information becomes an essential requirement.
Rec. 6.1: Character sets The multi-octet character sets in the ISO/IEC 10646 standard do not support the full range of character sets used internally in nations, and the extension mechanisms to be used by ISO should be consistent with that used by UNICODE. Recommendation 6.1: It is recommended that ISO/IEC establish a consistent policy for encoding multi-octet character sets. In addition, ISO/IEC 10646 should be reviewed to incorporate more national character sets, and to separate out merged national standard character sets. This must be undertaken in cooperation with the UNICODE organisation to ensure compatibility for the code extensions, and to establish a migration path for existing information.
Rec. 6.2: Application independence The use of the content of character strings to control the processing of the information can limit the use of multi-octet characters sets. Recommendation 6.2 It is recommended that all ISO digital data standards that may include character strings should be modified if necessary to be independent of the content of the string.
Rec. 6.3: Cultural issues The basic philosophy of supporting local cultural variations is described in ISO/IEC TR 11017, using the methods of internationalisation and localisation. Recommendation 6.3: It is recommended that an additional study be undertaken of the feasibility and implications of applying the principles of ISO/IEC TR 11017 to support cultural variations in ISO standards. ISO High Level Steering Group on CALS HLSGC N36 Rev.1, 97-05-25, p. 24 of 99
ANNEX A: ISO TMB RESOLUTION 48/1996 ON HLSGC
Resolution 48/1996 The Technical Management Board, endorses the proposed terms of reference for the high-level steering group to study the needs of CALS in relation to the transition of the military sector to an increasing use of civilian standards and the increasing use CALS methodology in the non-military sector, i.e. in the widest sense from project management to electronic commerce, decides to establish the high-level steering group under the TMB with members from · ISO member bodies particularly involved in CALS (e.g. USA, Russia, Japan, Germany, UK, France, ...) · Regional or international organisations dealing with CALS (e.g. NATO, Departments of Defence, the International CALS Congress, AECMA), notes and accepts the offer from AFNOR (France) to provide a chairman for the high-level group. appoints Mr H. Martre to this post and requests the group to recommend to the TMB any activities to be undertaken by ISO in relation to the standardisation needs of CALS in time for the meeting of the TMB in June 1997."
Terms of reference In close cooperation with other international organisations such as IEC, ITU, UN-ECE..., develop recommendations for an organisation structure and a work programme for ISO TCs (including ISO/IEC JTC1) in order to help the military and civilian sectors converge towards coherent practices and standards in the environment of Electronic Commerce, and submit these to the TMB by the end of 1997. To this end, the group shall take into consideration the results of existing work (e.g. by NATO, CEN) as well as the recommendations from the International CALS Congress, and shall: 1) collect and analyse the requirements from the industrial sector and input from the CALS methodology or comparable practices providers related to all relevant aspects so that a harmonious link can be created between the military and civilian partners; 2) recognise from 1) above, the impact on existing programmes (e.g. re-organisation of the current programme ; revision of existing standards ; proposed new work items to ISO TCs (including ISO/IEC JTC1) ; revisiting the existing TC structures, or if applicable, setting up new ones). ISO High Level Steering Group on CALS HLSGC N36 Rev.1, 97-05-25, p. 25 of 99
ANNEX B: CRITERIA FOR SELECTING PILOT PROJECTS
· One or more pilot projects will be undertaken for each priority standards development identified by the ICC · By definition, an ICC-endorsed pilot project will be a multi-national programme · The programme managers will have an existing commitment to implementing specific aspects of CALS, irrespective of the use of the programme as an ICC-endorsed CALS pilot · The viability of exploiting CALS within an ICC-endorsed pilot must be fully acceptable to the programme managers, and the participating organisations · The pilot should address specific features of the ICC standards strategy, related to business functions within the proposed pilot programme, and for which the business objectives and anticipated benefits are clearly understood and quantified · The pilot programme managers and participating organisations should be committed to implementing the common international non-proprietary solution to the problem, developed through collaboration under the ICC with industry-wide applicability · The timescales for operation pilot implementations should be defined by the pilot programme manager (short-term = 0-2 years, medium term = 2-4 years, long term = 4-6 years) · The project plan for each activity will outline the type of resources and facilities which the various participants in the pilot will be expected to provide - this may include participating organisations, the programme manager and the management of the individual companies which supply to the pilot programme · The pilot programme managers must commit to publishing details of benefits and lessons learned, and to make these available to the rest of industry · Due account should be given to the technical and practical complexity of implementing the pilot in a real and representative international business environment · Due account should be given to the availability of the necessary standards, and the project plan for the development of those underlying standards · The development project should have the resources (specialist and financial) to commit to support the pilot programme managers, and be prepared to commit to providing the agreed international solution in timescales defined by the programme managers · Priority should be given to pilots where the experience and benefits are generally and easily applicable to other multi-national programmes ISO High Level Steering Group on CALS HLSGC N36 Rev.1, 97-05-25, p. 26 of 99
[ISO logo]
ANNEX C (INFORMATIVE): CONSOLIDATED RAPPORTEURS REPORTS
Annex C1 Global Electronic Commerce (HLSGC N18 rev1) Dr. C. Cosgrove-Sacks, Director, UN/ECE Annex C2 Definition of the need for a handbook for electronic business, and proposed content (HLSGC N19 Rev1) Mr. J.R. Crawford, Manager Lookheed Martin Federal Systems, EC/CALS Annex C3 Needs for standards, guides and profiles (HLSGC N20 Rev1) Mr. G. Ellis, ANSI Annex C4 Overview of specific standardization tasks to be undertaken within ISO, IEC, JTC1 and other organisations (HLSGC N 21 rev1) Mr. H. Mason, UCIG/AECMA Annex C5 Virtual enterprise model (HLSGC N 22 rev1) Mr. M. Kerr, BSI Annex C6 Consistency of STEP/Plib/EDIFACT/SGML (HLSGC N 23 rev1) Mr. J. Pons, Deputy Manager Aerospatial, Chair of ISO TC 184 Annex C7 Processing multiple languages, character sets and encodings with annex on cultural items (HLSGC N 24 rev2) Mr. S. Tanaka, ICC [International Chamber of Commerce] Annex C8 Migration to UN/EDIFACT (HLSGC N 26 rev1) Mr. M. Conroy, AFNOR Annex C9 Project Management (HLSGC N 27 rev1) Mr. P.Y. Vilcoq, Dassault Aviation, AFNOR Annex C10 Logistics standards (HLSGC N 28 rev1) Mr. J.J. Dunford, Manager NATO CALS Office Annex C11 Technical documentation/Market place (HLSGC N 29 rev2) Mr. C.J. Wilen, Saab AB, SWEDCALS/SIS Annex C12 Improvement of requirements responsiveness of standards bodies (HLSGC N 30 rev2) Mr. W. Koch, IBM DE, JTC1 Annex C13 European Industry demands for an integrated approach to Electronic Commerce Annex C14 Status of the BSR
Note: These contributions are presented here as background information, under the responsibility of individual rapporteurs. [Each Annex 1 to 12 is the report of each Issue’s rapporteur]. ISO High Level Steering Group on CALS HLSGC N36 Rev.1, 97-05-25, p. 27 of 99
High level steering group on CALS “Commerce at light speed” A Synergy for global improvement ANNEX C1: GLOBAL ELECTRONIC COMMERCE
Table of Contents: see pp.2ff
1. Global commerce in the year 2010 1.1. Electronic commerce and CALS Electronic commerce can be defined as a way of conducting business by applying information and communication technologies (ICT) to exchange data between independent organisational computer information systems in order to complete a business transaction. Electronic commerce draws on all ICT applications which can be utilised in transactions between one trade participant and another.
Within electronic commerce, while most initiatives concentrate on the medium such as INTERNET which is seen as “the vehicle of a new, global digital economy which envelops the physical world and will develop new models of commercial interaction as businesses and consumers participate in the electronic market place”, the CALS concept takes this objective a step further and addresses the more complex business functions by: · improving and reengineering the models of industry interactions between business processes in order to attain faster, more accurate and lower cost operations which can be implemented within computer systems and · allowing integration of enterprises worldwide by the exchange of technical and business information between organizations.
The CALS initiative has the potential to revolutionise production and commerce by providing consistent principles to support production AND commercial transactions between two economic entities, regardless of the enterprises and the countries in which the producer and the consumer reside. Furthermore, CALS by addressing the improvement and reengineering of business processes, can make available a set of principles and procedures which can then be promoted, not only in developed countries or countries having full capabilities of ICT, but also to any country striving to improve its enterprise and commercial practices and procedures, independent of the level of use of automated tools.
Governments can have a profound effect on the growth of commerce and by their action, can facilitate trade or inhibit it. The United Nations Centre for the Facilitation of Procedures and Practices in Administration, Commerce and Transport (UN/CEFACT) has been established to promote measures and procedures to facilitate trade to support the ability of business, trade and administrative organizations to exchange products and services effectively. UN/EDIFACT is one of these means managed by CEFACT to achieve these goals.
Recognizing the important role of industry and trade in economic growth worldwide, it is critical that in order for global commerce to be effective by the year 2010 the global transaction chain from production to delivery should be addressed.
To achieve this objective, it is essential to make full use of the potential synergy between CALS and UN/CEFACT to provide the solutions to lower transaction costs and facilitate new arrangements between producers and consumers that would make the global transaction chain easier and more transparent. ISO High Level Steering Group on CALS HLSGC N36 Rev.1, 97-05-25, p. 28 of 99
1.2. Global electronic commerce is about transactions from producer to consumer The global transaction is fundamentally about the exchange of value from the production to delivery of a product or service. Participants adopt the different roles as producers/buyers/sellers in specific business scenarios. Intermediaries play a key role in the transactions, either through adding value or as information providers.
The global transaction chain (also called value chain between two economic entities) which covers all the processes, from production to delivery, can be described as consisting of the following processes: · Engineering develop products & processes · Manufacturing manufacture products & services · Commercial manage buying and selling of products & services · Logistics manage storage and distribution and can be represented by the following diagram:
GLOBAL TRANSACTIONS - VALUE CHAIN
ENGINEERING MANUFACTURING COMMERCE LOGISTICS
Develop products & Manufacture products & Manage buying & selling Manage storage & processes services of products & services distribution
Vis-à-vis this global transaction, the CALS community appears as a determining player for providing the necessary practices, experience and standards to make “commerce at light speed” effective. It is by addressing also the commercial components of the global transaction chain that the CALS initiative will make full use of the potentials of the new concepts and technologies.
1.3. The life cycle of the transactions
Information needs to be managed independently of business processes
In order to perform a market transaction, a firm must find out who they wish to do business with, inform the potential business partner that they would like to do business and under which conditions, write contracts, agree on product specifications, product design, terms of delivery, delivery schedules, payments, insurance, transport details etc.
During the life cycle of that market transaction, information builds up and business processes are carried out. It can start with a product specification, engineering data, request for a quote and can be finalised with the information needed for a debit advice/invoice and payment order. Thus, over time, information is accumulated as business processes are performed as it shown in the following diagram ISO High Level Steering Group on CALS HLSGC N36 Rev.1, 97-05-25, p. 29 of 99
Business life cycle documentary function processes
receiver sender (buyer) (seller)
technical order drawing invoice
time Information (data) .
As the life cycle of a production process can span over years and for better management and maintenance of the systems, it is important that the information and its semantic content be defined and managed independently form these processes. The UN/EDIFACT messages give then a view of the required information for specific business processes.
The business processes and the negotiation zones should be facilitated
A reason for the complexity of the transactions is the fact that parties have to know about each others “way of doing business” before they can start exchanging data. The more participants are involved in the transaction, the more negotiations and agreements on the business processes and ways of exchanging information are required. We call this the negotiation zone.
This negotiation zone between participants in a transaction can lead to the existence of several slightly different business procedures and result in different implementations.
In the case of commerce, the transaction chain diagram below shows that the negotiation zones between all participants includes agreements between the buyer and seller and that furthermore, each party has to negotiate the links with their third parties (in our case study this typically includes as a minimum includes banks, insurers and carriers or freight forwarders). ISO High Level Steering Group on CALS HLSGC N36 Rev.1, 97-05-25, p. 30 of 99
. countr y A countr y B
Factory Information Broker Bank Bank
Exporter Importer
Insurer Carrier Carrier Carrier Forwarding Insurer Customs agent agent Customs Customs Insurer
flow of goods flow of information negociation zones
When we look at the information flow in the transaction chain, we see that it involves many more correspondents than the flow of goods. Many of the variety of participants involved in the trade chain see nothing but information passing through their hands. The network of communications between the parties involved in the transaction chain therefore reaches a high level of complexity.
By streamlining the procedures the CALS concept could facilitate the international trade and flow of goods.
The full potential of information exchange and ICT should be made
The advantage of electronic transfer of information is delayed by the level of the rationalisation of information systems, whether internal or external to firms. As the OECD report on “The economic dimension of electronic data interchange (EDI)” notes, little progress has been made as regards interfaces between internal and external information systems: “In addition to lacking interfaces to receive transactions electronically, few of these internal systems are designed to take advantage of electronic transaction exchange” (OECD,1996).
The CALS information technology, management methods and international standards should address this issue.
1.4. Transactions have a cost to be included into economic dimension of global electronic commerce The global transaction covers the engineering, manufacturing, commercial, organisational, and functional requirements for the production and exchange of products, services and its associated information. This transaction generates expenses associated with the production and trade activities and they are called “transaction costs” by Coase (“The nature of the Firm”, 1937). ISO High Level Steering Group on CALS HLSGC N36 Rev.1, 97-05-25, p. 31 of 99
At the micro economic level of an individual firm, example of costs which need to be considered as transaction costs are the necessary coordination required between the various functions (e.g. payment, transport, ordering, market search ), rationalisation of information systems, maintenance of the computer systems and applications, management of the information during the life cycle of the transaction etc. Between firms, example of transaction costs are the complexity of business processes and their implementation, exchange of information such as engineering data for product specifications, bar coding systems for the tracking of parts, electronic fund transfers, legal arrangements and contracts, etc.
In its simplest form, the price of a service or good is made up of the cost of production plus transaction costs plus profit to the firm. The highest price at which goods can be sold is determined by customer demand and competition. The higher the transaction costs are, the fewer firms can make a profit at market price, and the fewer firms compete in the market place.
Of course, if the transaction costs exceed the market price so that there is no profit for the firm, the transaction will not take place (unless there are public subsidies). In this way, the transaction costs affect not only contractual arrangements but also what type of goods or services are produced.
In fact, a large part of what we think of as economic activity or technical innovation is designed to reduce transaction costs in order to allow economic exchanges.
For the extended enterprise model to have real relevance, it is important that the CALS concepts, practices and standards address the issue of the reduction of the global transaction cost.
2. Towards Global commerce Optimum benefits from the global free trading for the year 2010 will only be achieved when the international standardization process addresses the reduction of the costs generated by the global transaction chain.
The increasing aid provided by the use of computers in running projects and for manufacturing products, as well as the ground gained first of all by logistic support then by concurrent engineering makes the CALS community appear as a determining player to seek out those standards which are effectively applicable in the market.
The full benefit of global commerce will only be achieved by making available to the trade community the necessary standard framework and principles to facilitate consistent and predictable business processes and information exchange between producers and consumers.
By coordinating with UN/CEFACT, CALS would encourage Governments to support the efforts of the industry and private sector organizations to cooperate and develop mechanism to facilitate the successful operations of the global transaction chain. Furthermore, a CALS and UN/CEFACT cooperation could ensure that Governments address the legal and regulatory issues identified by the Electronic Commerce initiative, and promote simpler procedures and commercial practices in a transparent and harmonized legal environment.
The following technical issues could be a base for cooperation between CALS and UN/CEFACT and by contributing to the reduction of the transactions cost could facilitate the growth of commerce.
It should be recognized that, in order to address the financial and legal issues effectively, a closer cooperation between the CALS-UN/CEFACT and the Global Electronic Commerce Initiative under the G7 framework should be sought. ISO High Level Steering Group on CALS HLSGC N36 Rev.1, 97-05-25, p. 32 of 99
2.1. Business processes More and more information and communication technologies allow direct access by end-users to information demand, elimination of routine tasks as well as non value added tasks. A major impact is that tasks which were typically assigned to well-trained staff are now performed by individual users which require that the business rules need to be standardized in order to be executed and enforced by automated systems. Therefore global trade will require the development of standard business models which can be implemented and enforced by computer applications,
Reduction of transaction costs generated by the business processes can be achieved by simplifying and streamlining business processes and information flows. For example, by moving away from transaction based controls towards audit based principles linked to risk assessment with the use of information and communication technologies.
In order to provide the private sector, user community and standard setting organizations with an extended enterprise model that will present a clear picture of the business process and associated standards in industry and trade, it is necessary to build on existing developments and the outline approach already undertaken by some trade and industry communities.
2.2. Information exchange UN/CEFACT supports activities dedicated to improving the ability of business, trade and administrative organizations to exchange products and relevant services effectively. This is achieved by: · analysing and understanding the key elements of international transactions and working for the elimination of constraints; · developing methods to facilitate transactions, including the relevant use of information technologies; · promoting both the use of these methods, and associated best practices, through channels such as government, industry and service associations; UN/CEFACT is a unique centre of development and competence and the adoption of the single standard UN/EDIFACT for global use.
Reduction of transaction costs generated by the information exchange can be achieved by securing coherence and consistency between engineering and commerce data, especially between STEP, Plib, UN/EDIFACT and SGML. This should be done by co-operating with the interested parties, such as ISO and ITU, in recognition that this work has broad application in the areas beyond commerce.
The explosive growth of ICT and INTERNET has created a new need for sharable information – this is a difference in scale rather than in kind of standards activity. The interoperability across the product life cycle, throughout the business processes and the supply chain can be secured by standardizing the basic building blocks of information which are the data elements. By providing a common data dictionary which spans all relevant applications it supports the data harmonisation and makes data definition independent from processes.
2.3. Information systems Addressing the issue of the rationalization of information systems to take full advantage of electronic transaction exchange such as reducing technology costs by providing users with global interfaces which support their commercial functions, “testing” the usefulness of the international standards by reference to the participation of major tool vendors is seen as key for making use of the full potential of ICT. ISO High Level Steering Group on CALS HLSGC N36 Rev.1, 97-05-25, p. 33 of 99
3. Objectives The objective of the CALS initiative should be to ensure that a single set of internationally-acceptable and proven CALS practices and standards, which are effectively applicable in the market and are made available internationally. This single set of practices and standards should permit effective interoperability leading to reliability, security, reduce costs and lead time reductions.
They should cover the global transaction chain, address the issues of the reduction of the transaction cost and be provided timely to meet the needs of electronic commerce.
3.1. Purpose The purpose of the CALS initiative is to make both public and private sector commerce requirements become, to the optimum extent possible, analogous to, and as simple as, their inter firm equivalent and therefore simplify the task of industry and commerce.
By doing so, it will respond to the challenge of the Global Information Infrastructure (GII) and promote effective cooperation between the private sector and standard setting bodies.
It will also provide an educational and promotional environment capable of demonstrating an effective unfolding of the global transaction chain from start to finish and showing the benefits to global commerce.
3.2. Scope The scope of this single set of internationally agreed practices and standards is the global transaction chain and should cover engineering, manufacturing, commerce, logistics as well as the support functions such as finance etc..
4. Principles To ensure that the single set of internationally-acceptable CALS practices and standards respond to the private and public sector requirements and are effectively applicable in the market, they should conform to the following set of principles:
4.1. The set of practices and standards should address the global transaction chain While recognizing the differences in sectoral, national and regional processes, the set of CALS standards and practices supporting trade and industry should cover the global transaction chain, avoiding sectoral, national and regional versions in order to support the globalization process.
4.2. The economic entities should lead The industry, trade and private sector enterprises are economic entities which must continue to lead for the promotion of better and simplified business practices and information exchange. Therefore, the set of CALS standards and practices should meet the requirements of business whether in the civil or military market places, and whether the enterprises are global, national, or SMEs.
Governments on the other hand,, through their public procurements activities, are also major economic entities and should be encouraged to promote these practices within their area of competence. Where government involvement is needed, it should aim at enforcing the trade facilitation approach.
4.3. The deliverables should be timely Because business cannot wait, this set of standards and practices should be developed in a timely manner. This can only be achieve by applying to the standards development and standards setting infrastructure the same principles as promoted by the CALS concepts in industry. ISO High Level Steering Group on CALS HLSGC N36 Rev.1, 97-05-25, p. 34 of 99
4.4. The organizational set-up should be open, decentralized and bottom-up driven The HLSG CALS initiative should result in a decentralized with a flexible and effective reporting and monitoring structure and be responsive and bottom-up driven through new working methods making full use of modern communication techniques.
By being open to any interested organization it should foster effective cooperation between agencies and experts and shall encourage its individual efforts to contribute to the common goal of the initiative.
4.5. Multilingual approach It is not acceptable to plan and operate standards in the English language only. In order to achieve truly global electronic commerce, the approach should be multilingual and the resulting single set of standards and practices should be developed in support of a multilingual environment. ISO High Level Steering Group on CALS HLSGC N36 Rev.1, 97-05-25, p. 35 of 99
Annex C2: HANDBOOK FOR ELECTRONIC BUSINESS
1. SCOPE
The basic premise of CALS has been, and continues to be, that clearly defining the requirements for information about a product throughout its life cycle and translating those into standardized digital formats can yield significant benefit on the quality, cost and schedules for that product. While originally addressing the environment of a public body (i.e. defence agency) and industrial supplier, the CALS paradigm has evolved and merged with the requirements of the private industrial sector as well. Additionally, CALS and it extended electronic enterprise paradigm have been adopted globally as a means to extending the traditional concept of a physical enterprise to one that is electronic in nature, and quite different in concept and operation than the industrial enterprises of the past. Such concepts as distributive collaborative engineering, electronic bidding, virtual supplier networks and twenty four hour global operations are a reality in the modern global marketplace. In order to successfully support these concepts and survive in the marketplace, industrial concerns at all levels must meet the requirements to exchange and utilize both product and process information electronically. This information must be based upon internationally recognized standards so that communications can occur effectively with customers, suppliers or new business partners anywhere in the world. The enterprise scope for this handbook is: · Industrial Manufacturing Enterprise · Large Scale Programme · Extended Electronic Enterprise · Global Environment
The standardization scope for this handbook is: · Transactions associated with the product throughout its life cycle; · Technical Information in support of a product throughout its life cycle; · Financial Process Definitions that effectively utilize the information throughout the product life cycle.
The ISO Electronic Business Handbook should answer the question: “How can an Industrial Programme use ISO standards to support a large scale global project?”
2. ANALYSIS
The lessons learned from the CALS experience has demonstrated that not only are information standards necessary, but they must satisfy certain criteria to be useful. First they must be independent of technology. This is necessary to avoid costly translation or re-engineering of the information if it is imbedded in a certain technology. Second they must be accepted by the marketplace so that there are tools to support their use. These two criteria are often at odds, typically because the standardization process follows the marketplace developments, and vendors will resist standardization since it can often have the effect of neutralizing a product differentiator. The third criteria is implementation. As standards take on more difficult objectives, the standards themselves become more complex and sophisticated to the extent that end-users cannot, and perhaps should not, be required to be standards experts to effectively use them. This important criteria has hindered CALS in the past, and as Information Technology (IT) advances at the phenomenal rate that it has, this criteria will be transformed into one called “interoperability”. Once this is achieved, all an end user needs to know is that an IT tool supports a particular standard (e.g. SGML, EDI, STEP). Standards and IT tools do not solve the problem of understanding information, and CALS eventually identified that the Achilles Heel of the extended enterprise is the inconsistencies and incongruities of the meaning of information around the globe. In fact some of the most important IT tools in the future will make communication more easier through information standards, translation capabilities, and more dynamic ways of using them. The three areas of standardization that the handbook should focus on are: · Data Definitions · Messaging Languages · Process Models ISO High Level Steering Group on CALS HLSGC N36 Rev.1, 97-05-25, p. 36 of 99
There are barriers to successfully implementing a broad standardization approach to the virtual enterprise. While this list is not intended to be exhaustive, it is representative of the lessons learned by the CALS community. While they should be considered outside the scope of the Handbook on ISO standards, they should be noted so that users of the Handbook are aware of them.
Technology:
Today’s technology does not permit wide-spread collaboration based upon digital standards in several key industrial areas such as CAD/CAM/CAE, simulation, robotics, etc. In some cases this is based upon the timing as when a technology will become available, and in other cases the resistance of the marketplace to standardize. There is also the issue of the enabling the entire supplier base to be capable of utilizing technology as it rapidly evolves. The Handbook should identify the relationship of the standards and the marketplace technologies.
Legal/Contractual:
The legal and contractual complexities of world-wide extended enterprises are complex and difficult to remedy due to laws, treaties and differences in trading practices. Areas such as intellectual property rights, contractual relationships between/among trading partners, and shared information become difficult to address in a multi- national environment.
Cultural:
An issue which merits special mention is the multi-lingual and multi-cultural aspects of Electronic Business. Facilities for multi-lingual Web pages, automatic cross-indexing of multi-lingual servers and automated language translation facilities are emerging, but resistance to change and difficulties of understanding need to be addressed in an electronic business context.
Interoperability:
The term can be used in a wide variety of ways. In the context of the Handbook it should be applied to the standards themselves. The standards have dependencies and should therefore have consistencies between them with respect to data definitions and messaging languages. Even such technologies such as workflow management tools need a method to exchange and translate workflows between the members of the extended enterprise. The Handbook should identify how the standards work together to support the extended enterprise.
Security:
There are many contexts for security, but in the case of the Handbook it refers to data and message security, not physical system security. This is a difficult area internationally since it also involves national security and criminal investigative areas. This is an area where the marketplace, governments and standardization experts are all competing. The complexities of implementing a standards-based security programme are typically unique to the programme and the environment it is operating in. It is far too complex a topic for the Handbook. ISO High Level Steering Group on CALS HLSGC N36 Rev.1, 97-05-25, p. 37 of 99
3. RECOMMENDATIONS
The ISO Handbook for Electronic Business will be a valuable tool for businesses needing ISO standards to support their enterprise information management. It is also an important tool for ISO to articulate the relationships and usage’s of its valuable standards in solving business problems in an integrated and interoperable manner. The recommendations are: · Develop an ISO Electronic Business Handbook based upon the HLSGC Business Model · The Handbook should define what ISO standards are required to support the model · The Handbook should provide guidance on the usage of those standards · The Handbook should address marketplace technologies not addressed by ISO standards · The Handbook project should solicit and include a cross-section of industrial enterprises, as well as experts from the standards community
4. BENEFITS
The use of information technology to exchange complex design and technical information between designers, production engineers, sub-contractors, together with the use of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) for the interchange of commercial and contractual material, yields significant cost and time-saving benefits throughout the entire life cycle of a product. The closer involvement of sub-contractors and other third parties, which is implied by CALS, eventually changes the nature of these relationship in most businesses into teaming realtionships in “virtual enterprises”. If the customer is beginning to embrace CALS then the supplier, too, must be prepared to make the move and interface electronically. If the supplier is in the defence market place, it may become contractually obliged to supply information in CALS format. Companies, by adopting a joint CALS industrial strategy, can transform themselves from regional to national or global players. ISO High Level Steering Group on CALS HLSGC N36 Rev.1, 97-05-25, p. 38 of 99
Annex C3: Needs for Standards, Guides, and Profiles
1. Introduction 1.1 Purpose This document presents guidelines for evaluating which Continuous Acquisition and Life-cycle Support (CALS) standardization activities the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) should undertake on the basis of experiences from the United States CALS Industry Steering Group (ISG) Standards Division. It does not set requirements for specific standards, nor does it attempt to prioritize standardization projects. 1.2 Scope This document takes into consideration those CALS standardization areas that have been addressed by the U.S. CALS ISG including data format, database, data exchange, and management and control process standards, guidelines, and profiles. It is based on experience with standards developed by industry and national, as well as international, bodies. 1.3 Applicability Although this document might prove useful to some standards development bodies, it is intended only for the use of the members of the HLSGC in crafting recommendations to ISO for an organization structure and a work program for ISO Technical Committees (TCs) in order to help the military and civilian sectors converge toward coherent practices and standards in the environment of Electronic Commerce. 1.4 Background CALS was originally a U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) initiative that, among other things, promoted more efficient and effective communication of technical data among the DoD military components and weapon systems development and support contractors through the use of digital data. The main focus of CALS in the early years was the selection or development of data format and interchange standards. DoD identified the U.S. CALS ISG as the single point of contact for consolidating industry inputs to the DoD CALS Program. Because CALS quickly grew beyond the U.S. and beyond military-related applications, the ISG has gained extensive experience with CALS standardization. The ISG developed a consensus-based approach for reviewing standardization documents prepared in response to DoD requirements. DoD had a documented process for submitting standardization requirements to the drafting committees when CALS started, and the ISG soon developed a process for industry to suggest standardization requirements to DoD. This arrangement proved to be very inefficient. In 1990, the ISG revised its process in order to satisfy DoD standardization program criteria, and invited Government participation in order to reduce excessive coordination and duplication of effort. The ISG now has participants from user, standardization, vendor, academic, and Government communities, and a consensus- based requirements documentation process. This revised process has worked so well that Government representatives now use it rather than the DoD process to submit their requirements. In recent months, the U.S. CALS ISG has even been approached by several countries to establish a requirements collection process to address unique military CALS requirements. Under the ISG process, requirements are drafted in the form of a target capability (TCAP) that is posted and circulated for public comment. These comments are then used in a meeting open to the public to develop, align, harmonize, and prioritize standardization project proposals for presentation to DoD. These meetings have historically been attended by an approximately equal number of Government and industry representatives with ten to twenty percent of the participants from countries other than the United States. This process and the mix of participants has provided the U.S. CALS ISG with some interesting insights into what makes a successful CALS standardization process. The remainder of this document presents some of the insights that the HLSGC might find useful in developing its recommendations to ISO. ISO High Level Steering Group on CALS HLSGC N36 Rev.1, 97-05-25, p. 39 of 99
2. CALS Standardization Needs Analysis 2.1 General The U.S. CALS ISG has learned that a formal mechanism, through which both industry and Government representatives that use the standardization documents can submit their standardization requirements for action, is absolutely essential, but rarely sufficient, for a successful CALS standardization project. Just as important is a formal, consensus-based mechanism whereby users and consumers of the standards can participate in harmonizing and prioritizing the requirements and can obtain feedback on the rationale for proposed standardization projects without necessarily participating in drafting the standard. This is particularly true for CALS where the overall objective is to create a more collaborative environment through open data sharing. Many of the organizations (e.g., small manufacturing companies) that need to be brought into the environment have very valid requirements but very few resources to apply to a standardization effort. These organizations are perfectly willing to use a specified ISO standard, but it does not promote the collaborative environment unless the standard satisfies their requirement. “Users and consumers of the standards” includes both the community that applies the standards to solve specific collaboration problems (e.g., SGML authors or product engineers) and the vendor community that is developing tools to assist in applying the standards (e.g., producers of SGML editing software or computer- aided design systems). In fact, the ISG has found that unless at least two separate vendors are willing to endorse a specific standardization project or solution, the standardization effort is typically doomed to failure regardless of the desires or needs of anyone else in the remainder of the community. This mechanism provides a forum through which both the vendor community and the standardization community can better understand the needs of the end-user, or consumer. One might expect that the interjection of a consensus-building process that extends to organizations beyond the members of standards-making bodies would only increase standardization response times. However, in the ISG experience, the time is recovered during the standards implementation process if not during the standards development or revision process. The end-user, or consumer, community understands which of its problems are being addressed by the standardization effort and which vendors will be supporting the solution. The vendor community is assured of receptive customers and can comfortably start developing updates to its tools before a standard is finalized. The standards-making bodies are better able to assign resources and set milestones for standardization projects. This user/consumer involvement in requirements setting is the most cost effective way to incrementally develop and field standardization solutions when time and/or resources do not allow for a total solution originally. It ensures support for the standard while the standard is under development. The ISG found that relying on a vote by members of the standards-making bodies does little, and frequently may be counterproductive, in promoting acceptance and implementation of new standards. 2.2 Standards Standards are the key to CALS implementation, but the ISG has found that standardization is much more beneficial and easier to apply in some areas than others. In general, the ISG subscribes to the U.S. DoD desire to replace process standards with performance standards. The most broadly accepted ISG standardization efforts have been those that assist the users/consumers in managing interfaces. The core CALS data format standardization documents for raster, text, vector, and engineering data are good examples. Although generally supported, results from interchange packaging standardization projects have not been widely implemented, and many implementations have been tailored so much that they preclude interoperability beyond a pre-specified set of sites. MIL-STD-1840 is an example of this case. Although MIL-STD-1840 is generally accepted as an excellent standard for packing data for transfer, most tools for processing MIL-STD-1840 are custom-built, and the use of the standard is narrowly focused. Most ISG standardization efforts that have dealt with how to perform functions, such as early versions of the Contractor Integrated Technical Information Services (CITIS) standardization documents, have been soundly rejected by the user/consumer community and subsequently abandoned by the ISG. The ISG has been able to identify on-going standardization efforts to support its requirements for interfaces. Furthermore, the ISG, using the consensus-based requirements process, has been reasonably successful in inserting CALS standardization requirements into these efforts. In most cases, the ISG has been able to adopt the standard after minimal coordination with the corresponding standards-making body. Despite the promise of standardization activities such as Hypermedia/Time-based Structuring Language (HyTime) and Document ISO High Level Steering Group on CALS HLSGC N36 Rev.1, 97-05-25, p. 40 of 99
Style, Semantics and Specification Language (DSSSL), working with groups developing various industry standards (possibly even two or more competing standards in some cases) may be more timely and more palatable for end-users, or consumers, in the near-term. One of the most troublesome areas faced by the ISG has been the selection of mutually-exclusive implementation options allowed by some of the data format standards. Many times, the standards do not allow the selection of a specific option to be transmitted with the data (i.e., it is governed by a separate agreement), and when they do allow it, it is frequently difficult to automate the processing of the data (e.g., most raster standards do not accommodate specification of encoding directions for raster files as a part of the data transmission). Whenever possible, mutually-exclusive implementation options should be avoided in a standard. Whenever necessary to allow mutually-exclusive options in a standard, the standard should provide a mechanism for completely automating the data processing using information contained in the data stream. 2.3 Guides Much of the process-based standardization work conducted or investigated by the ISG has been moved to handbooks and guides. This appears to have been a satisfactory method of preserving lessons-learned contained in the former process standards. This method permits the innovation desired by both industry and Government while providing an informal, but de facto, measure of goodness in the absence of well-articulated innovation. Obtaining consensus has become much easier with little or no degradation in vendor support of the recommended process. 2.4 Profiles By far, the majority of the standardization activity in the ISG has been in area of profile development. The military performance specifications currently maintained by DoD in conjunction with the ISG are actually profiles of international and national standards. The ISG has found that as long as standards contain implementation options, the development of profiles will be the single most important standardization function undertaken by users/consumers. It is important that the end-users, or consumers, in the CALS community continue to play the central role in profile development. However, lack of timely international endorsement of these profiles is resulting in a proliferation of CALS implementations that cannot interoperate. ISO has created several new processes for streamlining approval of profiles; however, these processes are not clearly understood by most users/consumers. Furthermore, users/consumers who do have an appreciation of the processes, generally perceive the ISO evaluation criteria as too restrictive. The ISG feels that the lack of understanding of users is primarily a problem of education rather than a problem with the process. The ISG Standards Division has undertaken activities to teach users/consumers more about the process and to involve them more directly in on-going profile development. However, the allegation that the evaluation criteria of new profiles are too restrictive may have some merit. The ISG Standards Division believes that allowing more granularity in the profiles will go a long way toward resolving this complaint. Reasons for selecting differing options from a given standard are rarely technical. Many options included in standards are a result of pragmatic business issues surrounding the selection of a specific implementation. This fact should be acknowledged and profiles should be associated with more specific industry segments or more narrowly defined functional applications. An increase number of profiles will certainly be the result, but availability of the predefined profiles has proven to reduce the number of differing implementations within CALS and will significantly reduce interoperability problems among differing implementations. ISO High Level Steering Group on CALS HLSGC N36 Rev.1, 97-05-25, p. 41 of 99
3. Summary The following summarizes the experience and opinion of the U.S. CALS ISG on the basis of its Standardization experience in the CALS environment: 1. Enough groups and organizations are currently working with standards that support CALS. No additional organizations are required to satisfy CALS standardization requirements, but additional work must be focused on coordinating with on-going work on industry and de facto standards. 2. Greater numbers of users/consumers and vendors must be involved in the standardization requirements review and prioritization process, and the process should be more consensus-based than majority rule- based. 3. Interface and performance standards are widely accepted when users/consumers are directly involved in the standardization requirements process. 4. Process descriptions are more broadly accepted when presented as guidelines than when standardized. 5. Paradoxically, more profiles with more narrowly defined applicability have the potential for reducing the total number of incompatible implementations and interoperability problems.
4. Recommendations The HLSGC should consider the following in drafting its recommendations to ISO: 1. Set up a requirement for technical committees to formally review the status of related standardization efforts in standards-making bodies outside ISO, and make a determination of the ability to adopt or adapt the work before investing ISO resources in a CALS standardization effort. 2. Investigate using the International CALS Congress, supported by various national CALS industry groups, to involve more users/consumers in the development, review, and prioritization of CALS standardization requirements. 3. Establish communications between technical committees and users/consumers through national CALS industry and government groups. 4. When faced with a choice, apply CALS standardization resources to the development of interface and performance standards. 5. Relegate all process standardization products to guides unless either a standard is called for by users/consumers through a broad-based, open consensus process or there are clearly identifiable interoperability problems that will be solved with the standard. 6. Consider approval of differing profiles of a given standard, and reduce overlap by requiring the applicability to be more narrowly defined. ISO High Level Steering Group on CALS HLSGC N36 Rev.1, 97-05-25, p. 42 of 99
Annex C4: Standards for CALS What needs to be done in ISO and IEC
Scope The scope of this item is to identify specific standards tasks to be undertaken in ISO and IEC in order to obtain a comprehensive suite of standards for industry to use to support its business operations, including those in a CALS environment. This scope is designed to avoid duplicated standards implementations by industry and customers alike. This document provides basic principles for selecting and, if necessary, developing, the required suite of standards to meet the business requirements expressed by the HLSGC, and a synthesis of the current standards developments that are relevant to CALS. It also identifies a number of other tasks that are critical to the successful development and implementation of the resulting standards. Analysis The set of standards required by industry spans many different ISO and IEC groups, and includes some requirements that are outside the scope of any current standards activity. The standards required to support the industry requirement fall into several categories, and should be handled according to the following principles: · Existing ISO or IEC standards that can be used without change · Existing documents that can be used to fulfil part of the requirement. In this case, there may be a need to remove or specifically identify any national, regional, sector-specific or market-specific elements in the documents to ensure that any impact on interoperability is clearly understood. · Standards currently under development. In this case, there is a clear need to ensure that the resulting standard meets the needs of industry as part of the overall suite of standards identified by the HLSGC. Some existing standards work may need to be cancelled to avoid duplication and conflict. · New work items. Where no standardisation work exists, the development should be assigned to existing international standards groups where it matches their scope. If the work does not fit within the scope of any one existing group, it should be handled through a Business Team (as defined for, but not restricted to, JTC1) · Profiles. Any of the above standards may need to have additional information supplied in order to remove unnecessary options which could otherwise lead to problems of interoperability. Such information should be held separately to the base standards. The use of conflicting profiles is to be avoided. · Registration authorities. The open access to agreed lists of valid values within a standard which need to be maintained on a frequent basis should be entrusted to a registration authority, ensuring that there is adequate funding to sustain the service. · Guidelines. Guidelines are appropriate where there is a need to define best practice or preferred approaches, rather than rigid specification of processes Adequate provision should be made for testing the implementation of standards, with publication of conformance testing methods alongside the relevant standards, to be used as the basis for self-validation. Where standards are unproven, pilot projects are strongly recommended in order to validate the standards in a practical environment, before completing the development, in order to ensure that the results are usable by industry. For particular combinations of standards where interoperability is essential, pilot projects are also strongly recommended to validate both the design and practical implementation. ISO High Level Steering Group on CALS HLSGC N36 Rev.1, 97-05-25, p. 43 of 99
Recommendations The following actions are recommended for the TMB : · For tasks within the scopes of existing TCs, the Technical Management Board should confirm the technical recommendations and request the corresponding TCs to respond within six months stating · how they intend to fulfil the requirements (taking full advantage of opportunities offered by existing standards, including PAS, and the use of project teams) · the proposed delivery timescales · any barriers to achieving the required results · For tasks that do not fall within existing ISO TCs, Joint Business Teams should be established to define the necessary actions and recommend allocation of any necessary work · At the end of the period, the TMB should review the responses and recommend any further actions required to complete the programme · The TMB should ensure that organisations such as the ICC that have contributed to the work of the HLSGC should be kept informed of further actions so that they can ensure adequate liaison with the process. · The International CALS Congress should be encouraged to collaborate with standards development organisations, and to participate in the definition of requirements. · The TMB should encourage all necessary action to improve the standards development process. Standards organisations should be encouraged to: · pilot new working methods, including virtual work groups (working with e-mail, mail reflectors, conference disks, groupware); · use on-line and WWW technology as appropriate to save time and reduce cost; utilise Fast Track, PAS Transposition, Normative Referencing, as appropriate, to quickly adopt standards; · integrate the rapid specification development procedure (e.g. the process established by IETF) into its own procedures; · pilot the concept of Business Teams and/or focus groups and share the experience; · cooperate with the industry, e.g. as represented by the ICC, with relevant consortia/fora, etc. to ensure that standards are market driven; · minimise or eliminate duplication; · provide for a staged (phased) specification development process to allow implementation and testing prior to completion and final approval of a standard; The TMB may wish to consider establishing a working group to assist them in the implementation of these recommendations, should they be accepted. This is envisaged as a short-term activity, operating until the requisite tasks and liaisons are established within the permanent bodies. ISO High Level Steering Group on CALS HLSGC N36 Rev.1, 97-05-25, p. 44 of 99
Benefits · Increased access to global markets, where international standards are used, and ensuring fair competition · Focusing of scarce resources on the most effective route for standards development, by eliminating competing/duplicating tasks and the need for companies to support multiple standards committees to achieve a particular objective. · Clearly defined tasks for development/adoption of standards, with timescales, so that industry can plan for implementation with confidence. This approach is particularly important for the support of pilot and production implementations of the standards. · Elimination of contradictory standards, to avoid inconsistent recommendations · No requirement to implement duplicated standards within industry, eliminating the costs of implementation and the need to sustain different operational procedures. Outstanding issues The following tasks are identified in the rapporteur submissions, and do not fall within the issues identified at the first meeting: · Systematic approach to business, covering agreed common terminology, guidelines and other aspects (may be partly covered by handbook or standards/guides items) · Promotion of ISO standards · Information security issues · encryption · Secure data exchange/transactions/financial exchanges · secure system management · trusted third party services · Transportation mechanisms - Internet as an ISO standard · Quality of software development - convergence of SEI/CMM and ISO/SPICE · Enterprise model - need it be standardised, or is it the working model for the rest.
Annex A (of Annex C4) Relevant standards ISO 639 Codes for the representation of the names of languages ISO 3166 Code for the representation of the names of countries ISO 4217 Code for the representation of currencies ISO 7372: 1986 Trade Data Interchange - Trade Data Element Directory ISO 8601 Data elements and exchange formats, representation of dates and times ISO 8613 : 1989 Information processing - Text and office systems - Office Document Architecture (ODA) and interchange format - Parts 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7 & 8 ISO/IEC 8632 : 1992 Information technology - Computer graphics - Metafile for the storage and transfer of picture description information (Part 1: Functional specification, Part 3: Binary encoding) ISO High Level Steering Group on CALS HLSGC N36 Rev.1, 97-05-25, p. 45 of 99
ISO 8879 : 1986 Information processing - Text and office systems - Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) ISO 9069 : 1988 Information processing - SGML support facilities - SGML Document Interchange Format (SDIF) ISO 9735:1988 Amendment 1:1992: Electronic data interchange for administration, commerce and transport (EDIFACT) ISO 10303 STEP - STandard for the Exchange of Product model data ISO/IEC 10610-1:1993 Information Technology - International Standardised Profile FOD11 - Open Document Format: Simple document structure - Character content architecture only - Part 1: Document Application Profile (DAP) ISO/IEC DIS 10179 Document Style Semantics and Specification Language (DSSSL) ISO/IEC DIS 10180 Standard Page Description Language (SPDL) ISO 10421 Preparation and layout of international terminology standards ISO/IEC ISP 10607 FTAM File Transfers Access Management (FTAM) ISO/IEC ISP 10609 Connection-mode Transport Service over connectionless-mode Network Service ISO/IEC ISP 10611 Message Handling Systems - Common Messaging - MHS Service ISO/IEC ISP 10612 Relaying the MAC Service using Transparent Bridging ISO/IEC ISP 10614 Relaying the X.25 Packet Level Protocol CSMA/CD-Permanent Access PSDN Virtual Call (VC)(to provide the OSI Connection-mode Network Service) ISO/IEC ISP 10615 Directory data definition common directory use ISO/IEC 10744 Hypermedia and time based structuring language (HYTIME) ISO/IEC 10918 Coding of digital continuous-tone still picture images (JPEG) ISO 11179 Information Technology - Basic data element attributes ISO/IEC 11181-1:1993 Information Technology - International Standardised Profile FOD26 - Open Document Format: Enhanced document structure - Character, raster graphics and geometric graphics content architectures - Part 1: Document Application Profile (DAP) ISO/IEC 11182-2:1993 Information Technology - International Standardised Profile FOD36 - Open Document Format: Extended document structure - Character, raster graphics and geometric graphics content architectures - Part 2: Document Application Profile (DAP) ISO/IEC ISP 11190 FTAM Use of the Directory ISO/IEC 11544 Coding of bi-level and limited bits-per-pixel pictures (JBIG) ISO/IEC ISP 12061 Distributed Transaction Processing ISO/IEC ISP 12062 Message Handling Systems - Interpersonal Messaging ISO/IEC 12087 Image Processing and Interchange (IPI) ISO/IEC 13522 Coding of multi-media and hypermedia information objects (MHEG) ISO 13584 P-LIB Standard Parts Libraries ISO/IEC 13818 Coding of moving pictures and associated audio (MPEG2) ISO/IEC 15464 Standard Multimedia Scripting Language UNTDID Trade Data Interchange Directory (Version 97.A) ISO High Level Steering Group on CALS HLSGC N36 Rev.1, 97-05-25, p. 46 of 99
Annex C5: Virtual Enterprise Model
1. Scope The purpose of this paper is to identify the requirements for, objectives of, and outline approach to, a Virtual Enterprise Model for CALS.
There are two requirements that are intended to be addressed by the model:
Firstly, there is a need for a generic reference framework that will assist the standards community in identifying the processes and data flows within a Virtual Enterprise (VE) that would benefit from standardisation. This generic framework will assist in identifying areas where there is a lack of standardisation, and areas where there may be multiple, competing standards.
Secondly, there is a need for guidance to enterprises establishing a Virtual Enterprise to help them identify the process flows and data sharing requirements between the various members of the VE, and thereby the standards that may be used to support those processes and data flows. In this capacity, the model will act as an accompanying guide to the proposed CALS Handbook for Electronic Business.
To address these two requirements, it is envisaged that the model will comprise the following elements: a) A generic model applicable to all virtual enterprises. Given its wide applicability, this model will necessarily be at a very high level. At this level, it is likely that only broad families of standards may be identified (e.g. oSTEPo for product data, oEDIFACTo for business data). b) Specific sector profiles or "templates" that may apply to particular industrial sectors such as Aerospace, Automotive, Electronic, Construction, etc. These models will be more detailed and may identify specific standards such as STEP Application protocols or EDIFACT message sets. c) Guidance on how to use the generic model and sector profiles to create a model for a specific VE. At this level, it should be possible to identify the actual business processes that will be involved in the exchange of data across the VE, detailed data elements and the applicable standards.
2. Analysis There are a number of enterprise modelling exercises that have been undertaken in the arena of CALS that may provide relevant input to this activity. These include: · ETSI and JTC1 GII scenarios and frameworks · MIL HDBK-59 · IntegroCALS DuPont Reference Model · US CALS/EC continuum model · ESPRIT projects (FREE, AIT, others) These sources and other work done in this area should be used as input to the model. The following discussion represents an initial view of the model, and does not fully take into account the work referenced above.
There are three main axes of a virtual enterprise that the model needs to address:
Life cycle
The major phases and processes in the product life cycle. The generic model will identify only the phases, the sector profiles will identify general processes within each phase, and a VE specific model will identify specific processes applicable to that VE. The major phases currently envisaged are: Concept, Development, Production, Support, and Disposal. ISO High Level Steering Group on CALS HLSGC N36 Rev.1, 97-05-25, p. 47 of 99
Supply chain
The different members of the VE and the relationships between them. These relationships are defined in two ways: the atopology A of the VE which defines which members are related to which others in supplier/customer/partner relationships, and the type of relationship - for example "Design to specification", "Supply to specification" and "Supply standard part". The generic model will identify the types of supply chain relationships that are possible, and the sector profiles will give examples typical of the sector.
Data
The various types of data that are created and shared or exchanged throughout the life cycle. At the generic level these will be different classes (for example: Contract, Programme, Product Definition, Production, Accounting, Distribution, Support). Each sector profile will give more specific examples within each class. VE specific models will have specific data elements identified.
The key element of the model will be a set of decision tables that will identify for each life cycle phase (and process): · The classes (and types) of data created or used at this phase (or process). · The types of supply chain relationship for which this data should be shared or exchanged between members of the VE. · The applicable standards that may be used to support the data exchange.
For example: In the life cycle phase "Product Definition", there may exist a process "Specify product structure". Where a supply chain relationship of "Supply to design" exists, it will be appropriate to exchange data of class "Product Definition", type "Product Structure", using the standard "STEP AP203".
Further refinements of the model may address issues such as data ownership (i.e. which partner creates the data, who uses it).
3. Benefits The main benefits to be derived from the model will be:
Guidance to the standards community on the requirements of CALS Virtual Enterprises for data sharing, and therefore the standards required. The various sector profiles will provide a common approach across multiple industries, using a common terminology, but giving each industry its own "flavour" of the model.
As a companion to the proposed Handbook for Electronic Business, the model will help individual enterprises plan their CALS and standards strategy, and also assist in the identification of data sharing and exchange requirements for a specific virtual enterprise scenario.
4. Recommendations Using the outline approach identified above, and incorporating material from the sources identified above, a CALS Virtual Enterprise model should be developed, harmonised closely with the Handbook for Electronic Business. To develop such a model will require significant work from the standards community and also industrial users and associations, in particular in the development of sector profiles. Given the scope of this work, sources of funding for the activity could be sort from consortia and programmes such as the European ESPRIT programme, DARPA/NIST in the USA, etc. Management of the activity is a candidate work item for the International CALS Congress. ISO High Level Steering Group on CALS HLSGC N36 Rev.1, 97-05-25, p. 48 of 99
Annex C6: Consistency of STEP, PLIB, EDIFACT, SGML
Scope of EDI and issues
The domain of Electronic Data Interchange includes any type of data related to a product and associated processes.
It is the common practice to make a distinction between the following types of data: · Product data, consisting in the fundamental definition of a product through its life-cycle, including the use of component libraries. · Presentation data, consisting in the presentation of a given viewpoint on product information such as documentation. · Business data, covering ordering, invoicing, contracts, inventory…
Standardized representations of data are being established for the transfer, storage and archiving of these three classes of data, each of which adressing a subset of the overall scope. The primary activities are: · STEP : ISO 10303 "Product data representation and exchange" (ISO TC184/SC4), · PLIB : ISO 13584 "Parts library" (ISO TC184/SC4), · SGML : ISO 8879 "Standard generalized markup language" and ISO 9096 "SGML document interchange format" (ISO/IEC JTC1/SC18), · EDIFACT : ISO 7372 "Trade data element directory" and ISO 9735 "Application level syntax rules" (ISO TC154).
Other related standardization activities can be mentioned, such as: · MANDATE for manufacturing management data (ISO TC184/SC4), · EDIF and VHDL for electronic elements (IEC TC93), · CGM for picture description information (ISO/IEC JTC1/SC24), · BSR "Basic Semantic Repository" (ISO), and · initiatives such as HTML or VRML…, or · Product Life Cycle modelling (NATO CALS project).
A number of gaps and overlaps appears in the definition of these standards.
In the global enterprise environment, it is no longer possible to draw clear and unambiguous boundaries between these classes of data.
The interoperability of the various information systems is a need. It can be achieved through the use of the relevant standards and will be facilitated by a better understanding of how the standards interact together.
A consistent set of international standards for the definition of information that is used in the enterprise is required. ISO High Level Steering Group on CALS HLSGC N36 Rev.1, 97-05-25, p. 49 of 99
Recommendations
In view of ensuring consistency between EDI standards, the following recommendations can be addressed to the standardization committees.
· An approach for the management of the standardization programmes of the relevent technical committees and the evaluation of the consistency of the produced standards, should be put in place, through the creation of an advisory function.
· Technical committees should be requested to identify any possible and existing areas of overlap between standards, existing gaps, and to recommend actions to be taken to that respect.
· Efficient communication has to be established or reinforced between the committees and organizations developping the various standards, exploiting the liaison mechanism, and creating joint working- and ad hoc groups as necessary.
· Standardization committees should be requested : · to develop and adopt common methodology for semantic representation and data modeling, based on the existing concepts defined in BSR N101, ISO 10303-11 (Express language) and ISO/IEC 11179, and · to provide bridges between this methodology and the existing concepts.
· Standardization committees should be requested : · to contribute to the establishment and the review of a Common Dictionary, by extending the existing BSR to accomodate product and presentation data, and · to use this repository to develop the specific standards in their scope, when applicable (EDIFACT/TDID, STEP Ressources, …)
· Standardization committees should be requested : · to encourage and facilitate prototype implementations of under-development standards, · to provide implementation guidelines and conformance testing methodologies, · to demonstrate the capability of inter-working with other standards.
· International Standardization efforts should take into account the results of the industrial experimentation projects and prototype developments coming from the CALS initiative or any other research and pre- standardization initiatives in the world. (NATO PP#1 NH90 project, ESPRIT projects …).
Benefits
Reducing the gaps and the inconsistencies between overlapping data standards will facilitate the development of efficient data communication and management tools and will allow information to be moved freely accross boundaries between nations, enterprises, applications and organizational elements.
From a standardization point of view, this would lead : · to an improved efficiency for the development of standards in the field of EDI, · to a better adequation to and coverage of the industry needs by standards, and therefore, · to better accepted and implemented standards in a multi-sectorial environment.
References
1/ Status of the BSR and proposal for 1997/98 - D. Hill, BSR project 2/ CEN BT/WG77 N61 "Standards for business in a global CALS environment" ISO High Level Steering Group on CALS HLSGC N36 Rev.1, 97-05-25, p. 50 of 99
Annex C7: Processing multiple languages, character sets and encoding
1. Introduction Many countries become understand the importance of the CALS systems in order to increasing agility, productivity and reliability of the products and development processes of the industries in the countries. So many companies in many countries are becoming want to use CALS systems. In other word CALS systems should be usable by every companies all over the world. The business activities become more and more internationally. Also the industries activities which are developing products become more and more internationally. Moreover the relations among the contractors, the venders of assembly and the suppliers of the parts become more and more complex and such relations will become like the chains and so it is called 'Suppliers' Chain'. It is very important to establish the suppliers' chain internationally, to maintain it, and to change the structure or members of that chain easily and timely. The international suppliers' chain will be usually containing many scale of companies, very small ones to very large ones, and also it will be established from many companies in many countries, and in those countries they will be using alphabetic languages or non-alphabetic ones. And is it easy or not to establish, maintain and control the international suppliers' chain will become fatal issues of the success of the businesses. In other word, the success of the international business and the multiple national projects will depend how to easily and timely establish, maintain and control the international suppliers' chain. There may be sometimes difficulty to establish such international suppliers’ chains because of the difference of cultures among the members countries. Especially the handling mechanisms of 'languages' and 'cultural items’ related issues are very important. Up until now CALS related standards has been developed mainly in United State and European countries. So there are, sometimes, lack of the handling mechanisms of multiple-octet characters, and usually no consideration about how to handle the cultural issues, this function is known as the internationalization and localization. Many countries have their own languages which are not expressed by Latin alphabet characters and many languages are able to expressed only by the multiple-octet characters. Because of these reason, there may be some difficulties how to use these international standards in many countries. So in this section we want to clarify the problems and what kinds of cares are necessary when developing the international standards which can be used by many countries, especially the countries which have their own languages and which is not expressed by Latin alphabet characters .
2. Scope In this section, 'processing of multiple languages' means only the documentation related processing and exchange of documents via communication mechanisms such as mailing systems, file transfer systems, etc.. Such as the automatic translation between different languages, recognition of voice, hand written characters, and other natural languages related issues will be not discussed in this section. Because techniques of the automatic translation of the natural languages are pre-mature to internationally standardize but if the translation is limited to only between item names or restricted to the specific industry and commercial sectors then there may be some techniques such as using the BSR or the Mediator techniques, or other specific techniques. Of course the automatic translation techniques of the natural languages are very important so research activities of the techniques are recommended. And also the techniques of the recognition of voice, hand written characters are pre-mature to internationally standardize for the natural languages which have many pronunciations and many characters. Moreover it is possible to process these matters in the front end and the back end processors, and the main processor only handle coded characters stream as the data. There are many issues expressed by 'processing of multiple languages', but if those issues will be able to handled by the front end processors and the back end processors and they may be able to transfer only encoded characters to/form the main processors which will be processing CALS standards related functions. And if encoded characters data stream from multiple character sets will be able to processed by the main processor ISO High Level Steering Group on CALS HLSGC N36 Rev.1, 97-05-25, p. 51 of 99 then there should some way to input and output, these are containing mailing, file transfer, data store and so on, these characters. For examples: · processing of documents which contains characters of multiple character sets; Main difficulties of this case is how to input and output the characters and so if the front end processors and back end processors have suitable input and output mechanisms for every character sets and those processors can transfer encoded characters to/from the main processor it will be enough to consider the functions which will be done in the maim processors and these functions are mainly how to handle the documents which are written in multiple languages. In Asian area there are research activities how to handle the multiple languages but it is just started and pre-mature to internationally standardize. · store of characters of multiple character sets in same data store, database and file; If the main processor will be able to process these data stream it will be not so difficult to make these issues possible because there are some mechanisms to identify which characters are member of which character sets · many other issues will be treated same way mentioned above So we can focus our discussions on how to handle the data stream which is constructed from characters belonging multiple-octet character sets. And in this section 'encoding' means only encoding scheme of characters. So encoding of images, graphics, and voice, etc. are excluded. There are also other types of encoding such as encryption, data compression and so called document transfer encoding, etc., and they are also excluded in this section. Because they are not so deeply depending different cultures of each country, especially character sets, or some are pre-mature to internationally standardize.
3. Analysis of problems As mentioned in Introduction, a clear problem is lack of the handling mechanisms of multiple-octet characters in the international standards. ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2-WG2 had developed an international standard ISO/IEC 10646(UCS: Universal Multiple-octet Coded Character Sets), especially in the BMP(Basic Multi-lingual Plane) there are many countries characters are encoded. Many countries hoped newly developed standards will have the mechanisms to handle the UCS, especially supports of the BMP, and also existing standards will be modified to add such mechanisms. But to support current BMP of UCS is not enough to processing all languages because it is merely a collection of the various, but not exhaustively, character sets used throughout the world and takes up the national standards character sets, as is, in reconstructed form. Usually many countries have other character set standards which are not merged into the BMP, for an example in the Japanese kanji case only so called level-1 standard character set is merged into the BMP but there are so called level-2 and level-3 standards character sets in Japan. There are same problems for the Chinese, the Korean and other many countries character sets. Moreover there are many countries, their character sets are not merged into the current BMP. So at this moment there are no internationally standardized solution for processing of multiple languages because there are no real universal character coded sets which contains all characters in the world. And it is needed to review the encoding scheme of character sets if it is preferable to process multiple language by one character code set, currently it will be ISO/IEC 10646. It is not so difficult to standardize functions to handle the UCS if in the standards the definition of processable character strings are made by ASN.1 notation. In this case, it may be enough to refer the latest version of ASN.1 standard or only add the UniversalString to definition of character strings. It is out of scope how to implement the actual systems based on these new international standards. But by a report of working group for Ideographics Character Interoperability of AOW(Asia and Oceania Workshop), it was not so difficult to modify existing implementation of OSI FTAM to support the UCS. If the standards are not using ASN.1 definition, it will be needed some considerations but which may be not so difficult. So it seems enough for handling multiple-octet character sets to support the UCS. But there are two big issues for this solution. One is migration from currently used character sets to the UCS because they are not compatible. It is very difficult, more exaggerately saying it will be impossible to do such migrations because ISO High Level Steering Group on CALS HLSGC N36 Rev.1, 97-05-25, p. 52 of 99 there are already exist much volume of data in data store. Because data are mixture of single byte coded characters and two bytes encoded characters and usually systems can not identify which is a one byte code and also which is a two bytes code. Usually users’ application can identify them. Users do not want migration of their data to the UCS or to the BMP. So some countries, who already developed the national standards for multiple byte character sets according to the ISO 2022 character sets enhancement mechanism and which are widely used in that countries, are heavily discussing how to realize the implementations of the UCS in the countries. Another is no more enough space to add new characters into the BMP. This issue will be solved by using other planes when to add many characters to the UCS. It is basic policy of the UCS to use multiple plane to supports many characters. But there is a serious problem that current BMP is compatible to the UNICODE, the de-facto standard of the multiple-octets and multi-lingual character set, and the UNICODE is also now under the consideration of expansion to add new characters, but the expansion mechanism is not same to above mentioned UCS expansion. So it should be continued to close contacts and discussions between ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2 WG2 and the UNICODE. Inc.. There is one more critical problem to processing of multiple languages. It is how to treat the countries specific cultural items. For an example, when to use date in documents according to the international standard and in which only yy/mm/dd type of the date presentation is allowed, many countries may claim and against that standards. There are many culture dependent items. The example of cultural items are listed in annex 1. The treatment of cultural issues is known as the internationalization and the localization and this basic philosophy is described in ISO/IEC TR 11017. POSIX group already discussed these issues. So in this paper we only point out the importance of the mechanisms of the internationalization and the localization.
4. Current status It is very difficult for many countries to use only English based(it means ASCII code based) information processing environments because it is very difficult to enforce the usage of only English based system for every users if they are in non alphabetic countries. In many countries if the international standards do not have handling mechanisms of their own languages and the cultural items, each country will develop the national standards to add the handling mechanisms of the own national language and cultural items. According such national standards almost every countries have information processing environments to process their own national languages and cultural items. But unfortunately sometime there are miss understanding of original international standards and then the national standards become incompatible to the international standards. It is needed very heavy efforts to modify the international standards to the national standards and also to develop the national standards based information processing environments. Even if in such cases almost every national standards keep the original functions in the international standards, it means almost every national standards are compatible to the international standards when processing ASCII code(ISO/IEC 646). So if there are needs of data interchange between different countries it will be able to do so by using ASCII code based data. It is enough for the persons who are very good at English but it is usually difficult to request English ability for every persons. In such case many companies in non alphabetic countries usually translate English documents into their own languages and after translation they will distribute the documents to appropriate sections and workers. It will be sometimes become very big time loss and very expensive for companies, especially for the small and medium scale enterprises. It will also become the reason of difficulties to establish international suppliers’ chain. It is sometimes happen that the national standards are compatible but actual implementations based on those standards are not compatible with implementations which are developed based on the international standards. There are some reasons why such cases occur. One is the nationals standards only seem compatible with international standards but actually they are not compatible. Another is the implementation techniques problems. Because the national standards which are developed based on the international standards are including expanded functions, in this case the handling mechanisms of own countries language processing, so at when implementing the system implementers sometimes add special flags or other variations to the systems even if when users are only using ASCII code. There are actual examples of such cases in some countries. In such cases many companies are using international versions for exchanging documents with foreign countries and to use domestic versions for in their countries. It usually becomes very big over head and also users will confusing which systems they should use. ISO High Level Steering Group on CALS HLSGC N36 Rev.1, 97-05-25, p. 53 of 99
There is another important problem which is the handling of each vender’s specific expanded characters and each user’s developed characters. Usually standardized character coded sets have some spaces in where no characters are encoded and each vender and user now freely using this spaces in order to add new characters which they want. This problem will be only solved to prohibit to use these characters if user want to exchange their documents with persons who are using the different systems. These characters should be only used between same venders and users system. There are appearing the systems which are supporting the UNICODE. But in many cases the UNICODE is only used as an internal processing code set and when do the functions of the input and output of the characters they are usually converted to/from the national standards character codes. Because the existing input and output devices can be only processing characters encoded number of the national standards character sets. Almost every character encoded numbers are different between the national standards and the UNICODE. It arises even if in the case of ASCII code if the pure UNICODE is used in the systems( in this case lower 7 bits are completely same to ASCII encoded number so only ignore upper 8 bits). It is possible to develop new input and output devices to process the UNICODE but many users already have such devices and it is very difficult to enforce them to buy new devices because of the change of using character sets of the systems. There are also appearing the systems which have some degrees of localization functions. But the supported functions are very limited so issues of handling of the localization still open issues for the computer venders.
5. Recommendations It is very important for non alphabetic languages countries to have capabilities of processing of multiple languages in every international standards. So ISO/IEC should clearly express their opinions how to treat this issue. In other words, ISO/IEC should establish consistent policy of how to define and develop multiple octet character sets and how to treat the occurrences of different encoded characters in the same data store and how to exchange such data stream via network systems. From the technical view points, following recommendations will be important and helpful to establish the policy. 1) The international standards, in which character strings will be processed, should be developed as character coded sets independent where the users will make their own data. But such as key words and some other fixed terms, expressions and items are excepted, it means such items may be defined in ASCII code. To realize such standards and systems it is needed some mechanisms how to designate the using character set, for example, in the case of file transfer it will be needed a new file type definition, in the case of MHS it will be needed to specifying a new contents type, and sometimes it will be needed to add negotiation process to identify the using characters set before sending actual data. 2) If it is difficult to realize above recommendation (1), the international standards should be developed to usable ISO/IEC 10646 as character coded sets. Moreover escape sequences in the data streams, which will change the character sets names following these sequences, should be appropriately handled in every implementations. 3) ISO/IEC 10646 should be reviewed to include more countries character coded sets and to expand merged national standards character coded sets. It is necessary much contributions from every countries who want to have their own language processing mechanisms in internationally standardized information processing environments. It is also needed to continue close discussions and cooperation with the UNICODE Inc. because currently the UNICODE seems de-facto standard in the fields of two-byte coded set. 4) It is preferable for the international standards to have the internationalization and the localization capability. So the more exhaustive studies and more concrete investigations of this technical area and the philosophy of the internationalization and the localization described in the document ISO/IEC TR 11017 will be needed. ISO High Level Steering Group on CALS HLSGC N36 Rev.1, 97-05-25, p. 54 of 99
Annex (of Annex C7): Cultural Items.
In this annex it is described examples of the cultural items. These items are not exhaustively listed.
List of examples of the Cultural Items:
1. Date (1) Format (2) Era System (3) Name of month in local Language (a) Full name in local expression (b) Short name in local expression (4) Name of day of week in local expression (a) Full name in local expression (b) Short name in local expression (c) Format (5) Week number
2. Time (1) Format (2) Zone and day-light saving time
3. Calendar (1) National holiday
4. Number format
5. Number rounding
6. Monetary amount expression (1) Currency sign (2) Format (3) Amount expression in word
7. Word representation of number
8. Hyphenation of word
9. ICON and symbols (1) Check marks
10. Writing direction
11. Character size and spacing (1) Character size (2) Line spacing
12. Preferred font style (1) Number typeface (2) Typical/popular typefaces (3) Consideration on typeface design matching information (4) Font attribute
13. Character attribute ISO High Level Steering Group on CALS HLSGC N36 Rev.1, 97-05-25, p. 55 of 99
14. Paper size
15. Page margin
16. Page layout (1) Page layout (2) Page number location
17. Business letter format/layout (1) Main letter copy (2) Envelope
18. Personal letter format/layout (1) Main letter copy (2) Envelope
19. Postal address format
20. Telephone number Format (1) Format (2) Country code
21. Measurement systems (1) Temperature measurement
22. Legal and regulatory requirements
23. Message and dialogue (1) languages of country (2) Application of English IT application (3) Yes and no (4) Character set
24. Person's name (mode of address) (1) Basic format of name (2) Transformation method in Latin character (3) Short form of name (4) Indexing of name (5) Women's name when married (6) Location of personal title and saluting (7) Title of saluting in local language and character
25. Color usage and significance (1) Color in national flag (2) Color for defined(significant) meaning (3) Color usage or general meaning of color
26. Taboo items ISO High Level Steering Group on CALS HLSGC N36 Rev.1, 97-05-25, p. 56 of 99
Annex C8: Migration to UN/EDIFACT.
Mike CONROY, Rapporteur Issue 8 HLSG CALS
1. Scope of the domain, problem analysis 1.1 Scope of the domain. Electronic data interchange has, over the last 20 years, seen its needs develop from individual enterprise proprietary standards through to industry specific standards on to cross industry standards to finally arrive at the need for international standards.
Propriety standards developed by an enterprise with enough leverage to ensure that its trading partners made use of it, quickly gave way to industry specific standards as industry-wide requirements became a necessity. Standards such as TDCC (US transportation) and TRADACOMS( UK distribution) became quickly prevalent in their respective countries.
As industry-wide standards developed the need for cross-industry coherence appeared. Industrial sectors such as transport, automobile, distribution, chemical, and electronics began to look for a standard which would handle this new requirement. In the United States this led to the creation of ANSI ASC X12 with the X12 syntax for electronic data interchange. In a similar vain Japan with the same cross-industry requirements exacerbated by the need to handle the Japanese language produced a syntax, known as CII, through the Center for the Informatization of Industry (CII).
The Economic Commission for Europe in the United Nations (UN/ECE), whose principal focus is to facilitate international transactions through the simplification and harmonisation of procedures and information flows, became aware in the mid-80’s that the development of different national cross-industry EDI standards would be a hindrance to the growth of global commerce. It consequently set up a working group called JEDI (joint EDI) which included all interested parties to come to an agreement on an international approach to the problem. This resulted in 1987 in the UN/EDIFACT standard which in 1988 became an international ISO standard (ISO 9735).
Europe has adopted this standard as a European standard as part of its standards rationalisation program. International organisations and user groups such as the CCC (customs), IATA (Air transport), EAN (distribution) and ODETTE (European automobile) have also begun to adopt the international standard and in many cases have fixed a date when the existing industry standard will no longer be developed (sunset date).
1.2. Analysis of the problem In the early 1990’s the national standards continued to be developed as it was felt that UN/EDIFACT did not provide the business functionality to enable the existing standards to migrate to it. The following major points have been identified at the time: 1. It did not have sufficient messages to be able to provide the functionality provided by existing messages or transaction sets. 2. It was unable to cater for different character sets and in particular the Japanese Kanji characters (characters requiring two data bytes). 3. It was not possible to transmit in the same package an object (frequently called « binary data ») which is associated with data in a particular message, for example to transmit a drawing associated with a request for quote message. 4. The maintenance process was felt to be too long and procedurally unclear. 5. The cost for a user to change to EDIFACT was prohibitive when compared to the existing advantages for such a change.
The UN/ECE has evolved dramatically over the last six years, growing from an organisation covering three geographic regions (Western Europe, Eastern Europe and North America) to six regions covering the world (Asia, Australia/New Zealand, Africa, with America becoming Pan-America). ISO High Level Steering Group on CALS HLSGC N36 Rev.1, 97-05-25, p. 57 of 99
It has increased the number of messages developed nearly exponentially going from the initial 2 messages in 1990 to some 145 messages today with over 60 messages in development.
It has reacted to the critics about the syntax by producing a first significant revision in 1992 to cover the Latin, Greek and Cyrillic alphabets. Over the last four years it has completely revised the syntax to produce a 9 part standard covering all the functionality required for EDI. This includes associated objects, interactive EDI and security. Currently four parts of this new revision are out for six month ballot in ISO.
Finally it has undergone an extensive business process reengineering exercise in order to provide more user participation in the EDIFACT decision making process. This exercise will lead to the creation of the CEFACT (The Centre for Facilitation of Practices and Procedures for Administration, Commerce and Transport) in March of this year (1997). This new organisation, under the responsibility of UN/ECE, will include UN/ECE member states, inter-governmental organisations and non-governmental organisations recognised by ECOSOC (The UN Economic and Social Council). Its main objective being an increased openness and transparency towards the different user communities, the empowerment in the decision making process of the technical groups, and an improved overall efficiency of the process.
These actions should in the near term enable the existing national EDI standards organisations to successfully respond to the reserves of their user communities and to evolve to a single international standard.
The situation on the possible migration to a single international standard by the two main national EDI standards organisations is as follows : a. The ANSI ASC X12 syntax. ANSI ASC X12 was one of the principal participants in the development of the EDIFACT syntax. In 1992 it balloted its members on whether or not to align on EDIFACT. The results of the ballot showed that 76% of the returned ballots (45% of the 626 ballots sent out) were in favour of EDIFACT alignment. This resulted in X12 fixing a sunset date of 1997 where development of new X12 messages would stop.
In 1995 a second vote held on the subject was carried and led to the abandon the sunset date. X12 is deeply entrenched among US commercial companies due to its larger number of transaction sets and agreements. The vote, however, did not in any way diminish the commitment of X12 to evolve towards EDIFACT as the creation of an alignment task group demonstrates. This alignment group amongst other tasks has been charged with solidifying and structuring the EDIFACT process modelling activity.
It is also worth noting that X12 sub committees, such as X12M are already migrating the transaction sets under their responsibility. X12M, who looks after some 28 transaction sets, has identified that 21 have already the same functionality as EDIFACT and is currently modifying the remaining 7 to match existing EDIFACT messages.
In the coming month’s the Alignment task group of X12 will be taking the pulse of the EDI community through a survey of the 900 odd members of X12 in addition to user groups outside of X12 in order to set an absolute sunset date.
Kendra Martin, Chair of X12 has said that « [X12 has] agreed to adopt EDIFACT, we have input into the process at every step of the way, a lot of messages being developed in EDIFACT are being developed in the United States and worked on within X12 [...]. What all the national standards bodies encourage is when there is an international standard out there that you want to use, that you simply adopt it [...]. We have a whole group under our alignment task group looking at trying to model the process that we should be using for working on and adopting international standards [...]. I think what we’re seeing is [alignment] is becoming a part of our day-to-day activity. All of our subcommittees have EDIFACT activity going on under them, we no longer work on X12 and think about EDIFACT later. It’s just kind of an accepted part of what we’re doing now, which certainly several years ago was not the case. » ISO High Level Steering Group on CALS HLSGC N36 Rev.1, 97-05-25, p. 58 of 99
In conclusion, even as the release of Version 4 of X12 with over 200 transaction sets is about to be published, new messages are still being developed in the X12 syntax. The UN/EDIFACT syntax has not yet managed to take over in the development of new X12 message requirements. Hopefully the survey results will enable the X12 management to provide a clear and unambigious way forward in the migration effort. Until a sunset date has been fixed there is no reason to suppose that new message development in X12 will stop. b. The Japanese CII syntax The CII syntax was created in 1987 because the X12 and EDIFACT syntax’s did not provide at that time the functionality, such as Japanese character sets and binary data, which was required by Japanese industry. EDIFACT which at that time was in its infancy could not satisfy the time constraints to provide a Japanese capable cross-industry EDI standard.
Some 50,000 companies (excluding financial institutions) operate EDI systems in Japan. However, most of these systems are proprietary in nature. over 2,500 of these companies currently use the CII syntax standard. Industrial sectors; such as electronics, electric wire and cable, electric machinary, iron and steel, petrochemicals, automobiles, electric power, gas, construction, transportation, textile, advertising and several other industrial sectors already use or have decided to adopt the CII syntax. UN/EDIFACT is rarely ever used, but in accordance with EDI progress in counterpart countries, UN/EDIFACT use is expected to gradually increase in international trade in the near future. CALS experimental projects, sponsored by MITI use the CII syntax as de facto national standard.
However, Japan, with the Japan Edifact Committee, did play a leading role in establishing the Asian EDIFACT Board in 1990. This committee has a membership of over 50 industrial end EDI-related institutions in addition to observers from the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI), the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Transportation.
Japan is working for and requires a global EDI standard scheme for national and international trade and it feels that with the evolution’s currently in process EDIFACT will become that standard. However, in practice many companies using CII standards might not migrate at all as their business requirements are totally satisfied by the CII syntax standard and they cannot find a merit of migration to EDIFACT functionally and economically.
Hideo NAKANISHI, Director of the Center for the Informatization of Industry (CII) which is responsible for the CII syntax considers that the « CII and UN/EDIFACT syntax rules are nearly identical, which means that mechanical conversion is technically possible. This was studied and confirmed by CII in early 1995. Alignment with UN/EDIFACT regarding standard messages becomes easier as national messages reflected on national business model would be developed under UN/EDIFACT message development scheme. Alignment should be accomplished when the UN/EDIFACT and CII-standard schemes are individually stabilised. ».
In an effort to harmonise cross sectorial use of data elements Japan set up the « BSR Committee of Japan » in Spetember 1996. BSR work should help in bridging between the national and international standards.
However, Mr. NAKANISHI has some reserves about the EDIFACT standard and mentions the critisms that have made against EDIFACT by theUN working group WP.4/GE.1/AC1. He also underlines some problems that he has identified in the new version of the syntax especially compared with the CII syntax :
1. The encription of data does not appear to be optimised and may eventually adversly effect performance.
2. The use of segments, segment groups and sections seems to provide unnecessary overhead as simply using a data tagging system appears sufficient.
3. Segment collisions have not yet been resolved.
4. Although the double-byte code has been implemented in version 4, it appears that the manner in which it has been implemented will cause problems when mixing double and single byte data. ISO High Level Steering Group on CALS HLSGC N36 Rev.1, 97-05-25, p. 59 of 99
5. The new standard has become very complex and consequently may generate interoperability problems with translators. This will lead to the need to develop an ISP for translators which is simply increasing the interoperability. Simplicity should be the rule with increased complexity the standard will have greater difficulty in penetrating the marketplace.
6. From the message point of view, UNSMs have interoperability problems. This being mainly due to the lack of the formel business model on which they have been developed. EDI cannot be implemented correctly in a single standard. Several standards covering different areas (modelling, messages, syntax, etc..) are necessary.
7. In the long term an EDIFACT syntax based on simpler concepts should be developed.
One of the other major problems which hinders the development of EDI is the prohibitive cost for small and medium enterprises involved in the negociation of interchange agreements prior to implementation. This negociation process also tends to lead to company specific implementations which is contrary to the objective of providing an open environment.
ISO/IEC JTC1 recognised this problem in the early 1990’s and set up a sub-committee, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC 30, to develop what is called Open-edi. This is aimed primarily at lowering the barriers for the establishment of EDI links between business partenars by minimising the need for multiple bilateral interchange agreements. This will be done by providing of standardised trade procedures which can be used on an industry-wide and cross sector basis.
The UN/EDIFACT standard provides standardised messages which are capable of transmitting the information necessary for a generic business function, it does not provide the semantics or the context for the use of these messages. This is provided through the bilateral interchange agreement.
The Open-edi effort is aimed at providing the semantics and context for the use of such messages, that is to say the business scenarios that describe the trade procedures used by several parties involved in a business transaction.
Open-edi is defined in the ISO standard 14662 as « EDI among autonomous multiple participants using public standards and aiming towards interoperability over time, business sectors, information technology systems and data types capable of multiple simultanious transactions, to accomplish an explicit shared business goal ».
It is clear that in the current context, the development of an Open-edi capability is essential for the progression and globalisation of EDI. Consequently particular effort and attention should be given to this ISO/IEC work.
2. Recommendations As can be seen from an analysis of input from the two of the main national standards making bodies in EDI, the evolution of the EDIFACT syntax and the modification of its organisation and procedures will help greatly in forwarding the case of adopting EDIFACT as the single international standard for EDI.
However, in order to continue to encourage the penetration of the EDIFACT standard in the world marketplace it would be beneficial to obtain a snapshot of the exact situation of the use of EDI and its associated standards worldwide. This snapshot should look at the situation from two perspectives : ISO High Level Steering Group on CALS HLSGC N36 Rev.1, 97-05-25, p. 60 of 99
1. From a pragmatic point of view establish what standards are really being used and their volume in traffic, the number of enterprises using them and current sectorial user group recommendations.
2. From a standards point of view establish what user groups have effectively migrated, or are in the course of migrating, whether or not they are recommending EDIFACT with their motivations, and what actions they have taken to stop development in the local standard. A useful add-on to this perspective could be to request suggestions on what aspects of EDIFACT and EDI in general need to evolved or standardised.
Recommendation 1 : ISO should request its member bodies to prepare such a survey from a basic strawman document developed by the HLSG.
Currently within the EDIFACT environment there is increasing interest in mod