White PapersCollaborations within the engineering sector are a means of reducing risk in the development and support of highly complex or novel products over the product lifecycle. The collaborators often include tier-1 suppliers, system integrators, component suppliers, engineering consultancies, maintenance companies, and product disposal companies.
The size and scope of collaborations may vary considerably over the product lifecycle. In a consortium, each partner can focus on its core competencies but must align the complex collaboration processes with the rest of the collaboration. The virtual organisation (VO) model is therefore a good fit to these many different collaborations, whether they are legally bound as a joint venture, or through a set of contracts and co-ordinated behaviours between a customer and its chain of suppliers.
An assured environment for collaborative engineering using web services David Golbya1, Michael Wilsonb, Lutz Schubertc, Christian Geuer-Pollmannd aBAE SYSTEMS Advanced Technology Centre, Filton, UK, bCCLRC,UK, cHLRS, University of Stuttgart, Germany eEuropean Microsoft Innovation Centre, Aachen, Germany Abstract: This paper describes an application of the TrustCoM environment to support secure contract based collaboration between companies using managed web services. The application scenario describes a consortium of engineering companies that seek to upgrade a customer s fleet of aircraft to provide in-flight internet capabilities. The environment supports the consortium to collaborate so as to take advantage of the market opportunity. In order to reduce the risks of collaboration, the environment provides assurances of the past performance of consortium members, of the current performance of each member to meet their contract and service level agreements, and the secure control of access to resources. As a result of a member s performance, the consortium dynamically reconfigures itself and initiates a collaborative business process that enlists new members to join and contribute to the negotiations with the customer. Keywords: Virtual Organisations, TrustCoM Project, Collaborative Business Process, Federated Security, Service Level Agreements, Service Oriented Architecture 1. Introduction Collaborations within the engineering sector are a means of reducing risk in the development and support of highly complex or novel products over the product lifecycle. The collaborators often include tier-1 suppliers, system integrators, component suppliers, engineering consultancies, maintenance companies, and product disposal companies. The size and scope of collaborations may vary considerably over the product lifecycle. In a consortium, each partner can focus on its core competencies but must align the complex collaboration processes with the rest of the collaboration. The virtual organisation (VO) model is therefore a good fit to these many different collaborations, whether they are legally bound as a joint venture, or through a set of contracts and co-ordinated behaviours between a customer and its chain of suppliers. The aim of the TrustCoM project is to devise a software environment built upon a sound conceptual framework for such VOs which will provide an infrastructure to 1 Corresponding Author: David Golby, Advanced Technology Centre, BAE Systems PLC, PO Box 5, Filton, Bristol, BS34 7QW, UK; E-mail: david.golby@baesystems.com Untitled Documentsupport companies flexible response to market opportunities, reduce lead times to market by maximising the benefits of the concurrent engineering approach, while minimising entry cost to collaborations and ensuring that all interaction within the collaboration is secure. The project will deliver a conceptual model, system architecture with software profiles [1], and a reference implementation which will be evaluated through a set of industrial demonstrators [2]. The industrial demonstrators include scenarios on eLearning and collaborative engineering (CE) - the subject of this paper. The TrustCoM framework and software environment must address issues from many disciplines including legal, socio-economic, security, contract and service level agreements, business process and industrial application domains. This paper presents the CE scenario and assesses the benefits of TrustCoM technologies to CE in general. We focus on the design phase of the product lifecycle, though the general ideas are applicable to other phases as well. 2. Assured Environment Issues Within an engineering collaboration, the business risks reduced by collaboration should not be replaced by other risks inherent in the collaboration itself. To maintain collaboration, it is necessary to transfer data between collaborators, and to inspect services and resources which are embedded within each others local IT infrastructure. The decision makers who use this information may range from high level policy makers to engineers who need additional information from their partners if they are to execute their tasks correctly. For example, the management of production processes can be aided if information on the status of a supplier and the progress of an order through the multi-tier supply chain can be correctly monitored. A designer may require critical interface and behaviour information on a partner s subsystem in order to optimize the design of the particular subsystem that he is responsible for. Finally, product and asset information will be needed throughout the operational and decommissioning phases for training, maintenance and product disposal. TrustCoM reduces the risks inherent in collaboration by addressing the complete collaboration life cycle, and providing assurances at each stage of its operation. The selection of partners is based on assurances of their previous performance in a role their reputation or supplier qualification. A collaborative business process model (BPM) provides transparency to all collaborators of each others roles. Service level agreements (SLA) provide assurances of the performance on time, to quality and cost of each collaborator in their role. A contract provides the assurance of contingencies should a collaborator fail to fulfil their role. Claims-based access control is used to provide assurances of the identity of each party, and the authorisation for access to the services and resources that they need to undertake their role and only access to those services and resources and no others. 3. Architecture and Standards Conformance The TrustCoM architecture is designed to provide the required assurances, monitor conformance to contract, SLA and BPM, and enforce access controls whilst also minimising the initial costs of adopting it, and maintaining flexibility for each collaborator who may be involved in many other activities at the same time.
