A List of Responders
Virtual Manufacturing Background Project
artg@VNET.IBM.COM
Overview of NIIIP
The National Industrial Information Infrastructure Protocols, the NII-
IP, facilitate the creation of Virtual Enterprises using "commercial off
the shelf" (COTS) products. NIIIP itself is a consortium of 19 organizati
ons, partially funded by ARPA, which is working in primarily in survey areas
1-6, 9, 12, adn 13. Its simulations are primarily of the Virtual Enterpris
e process itself, rather than in particular industrial processes.
The protocols provide COTS products with the definition of compo-
nent interfaces, described in the Object Management Group's CORBA
Interface Definition Language (CORBA IDL). Once a COTS product
supports some portion of interface protocol
it can then operate in concert with other such
products to provide the functions prescribed for the operation of the
Virtual Enterprise. The NIIIP functions are grouped across 13 differ-
ent components to facilitate such packaging.
As one approach toward achieving a broad-based shared ontology, NI-
IIP endorses the use of ISO STEP Product Data Modeling and Servic-
es. The adoption of such models and services simplify task of runtime
mediation by having gained "upfront" industry-level agreement on
common terminology and computable representations of product
components. Standard models in automotive, electrical, drafting, 3-D
configuration management, etc. are provided.
To account for business processes, NIIIP employs agent technology
to model the organizational structure of the VE, and of all of the con-
tributed resources in it. NIIIP agents respresenting organizational en-
tities are concerned with time, quality, and price/cost. NIIIP agents
representing resources are concerned with the best interests of the the
"resource". Since the interests of organizational components and re-
sources will rarely converge, NIIIP prescribes a third party Negotiator
to foster agreement.
To support repeatable processes, NIIIP employes state-of-the-art
workflow technology, and is working with the Workflow Managment
Coalition to develop and support standards development in this area.
>From the CAD Framework Initiative, CFI, NIIIP has adopted a robust Task and
Session model, that coordinates the flows or work between disparate frameworks
and products.
To facilitate wide-spread connectivity, the NIIIP builds upon many features of the
Internet, enhancing them as needed, for example with new security features and ob-
ject-orientation, to work within the "NIIIP Infrastructure".
Information about NIIIP is available from http://www.niiip.org.
A List of Responders
Virtual Manufacturing Background Project
Virtual Manufacturing Home Page