Descrizione del progetto
Semantic-based knowledge systems
Supercharging company management procedures
European researchers have developed a new system for implementing management tools that could radically improve how companies organise and run a business.
As a result of the work of the SUPER project, companies will be able to change business processes quickly, and respond rapidly to changing market conditions. European companies using the system can potentially become more competitive, efficient and profitable, according to the researchers.
Executives organise their business to respond to economic conditions, market trends and corporate best practice. The downsizing era of the early 90s was quickly replaced by the desire to nurture and hoard precious human resources in the late 90s and early 2000s.
Tough milestones
In recent times, outsourcing non-core business functions has become a trend. There are dozens of others: just-in-time manufacturing, supply-chain organisation, process-oriented management. All are milestones in the evolution of business practice.
Each milestone makes competition tougher. Companies need to respond quickly to remain competitive. Worse, the response often requires a fundamental reorganisation of the business, and the way it does business.
But modern business processes, like order fulfilment, supply-chain management and product development, are only possible because they have enterprise applications, vast computer programs, to support them.
When you change the process, you must change the underlying information system. The applications are huge, complex, expensive and widespread.
Adapting them can quickly become complicated, costly and time-consuming. So the computing engineer, not the business manager, decides how new business practices are implemented.
Filling the knowledge gap
But researchers on the SUPER project had a larger vision: create a system that lets business experts and strategists tailor enterprise applications to suit their needs.
The SUPER team will use semantic web services to enable tailored information systems. Semantic technologies tell a machine not only what a piece of data is called, but what it means, too. Semantics looks at the underlying significance of information.
Using semantics for searching and extracting data is a huge leap forward because, up to now, computers could essentially store and search information, but people had to sort it.
The current process has led to a 'knowledge gap' – the deficit between a computer's capacity to query vast stores of information and people's capacity to sort through the results.
In the near future, machines armed with semantic technologies will be able to produce data of very high quality, with less sorting required by people.
Competitive boost
SUPER’s team will develop systems to apply this powerful emerging approach to business processes. The system will be unique and could give Europe an enormous competitive boost.
For example, a telecommunications company wants to introduce digital content on demand. Usually, the company will create or adapt a system to fulfil the many steps in that business goal.
But using the SUPER model, the business experts establish the goals and set the individual steps, while the SUPER platform locates the service required to complete each step. The services can include digital asset management, ordering, fulfilment, delivery, quality of service and billing.
Testing times
Currently, SUPER’s researchers are testing the platform among consortium partners. The results of the trial will be available at the end of this year.
SUPER’s technology represents a huge business opportunity. At present, the market for enterprise applications is worth €75bn. All business IT combined is worth €132bn.
Business Process Management focuses on managing the execution of IT-supported business operations from a business expert¿s process view rather than from a technical perspective. The underlying motivation for BPM is that organizations need to continuously align their running business processes, as executed within multiple heterogeneous systems, with the required processes as derived from business needs. BPM has gained significant attention in both research and industry, and a range of BPM tools are available. However, the degree of mechanization in BPM is currently very limited. The major obstacle preventing a coherent view on business processes is that the business processes are not accessible to machine reasoning. Additionally, businesses cannot query their process space by logical expressions, e.g. in order to identify activities relevant to comply with regulations.Founded on ontologies Semantic Web technology provides scalable methods and tools for the machine-readable representation of knowledge. Semantic Web Services (SWS) make use of Semantic Web technology to support the automated discovery, substitution, composition, and execution of software components (Web Services). BPM is a natural application for Semantic Web and SWS technology, because the latter provide large-scale, standardized knowledge representation techniques for executable artefacts. Our proposal is to combine SWS and BPM, and develop one consolidated technology. Specifically, we will create horizontal ontologies which describe business processes; vertical telecommunications oriented ontologies to support domain-specific annotation for our chosen economic sector; and a suite of tools based on the results of the SEKT and DIP IPs. Together with the other SDK projects this will further strengthen the global leadership of EU-funded technology development.
Campo scientifico
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesknowledge engineeringontology
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencessoftware
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringinformation engineeringtelecommunications
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesinternetsemantic web
Invito a presentare proposte
FP6-2004-IST-4
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Meccanismo di finanziamento
IP - Integrated ProjectCoordinatore
69190 Walldorf
Germania