business process integration - aalto · business process design implementation testing general...

17/09/20071

SoberITSoftware Business and Engineering Institute

HELSINKI UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY

T-86.5161 Special course in Information Systems integration

Business Process Integration

SoberIT, 4.krs

Paavo Kotinurmi

17/09/2007



Objectives

Learning about integration within and between organisations

What can we accomplish with current state-of the art technologies?

What are the difficult issues in practical integrations?

Get deep into some current issue in the integrations

Understanding for being educated buyer, consultant or seller,

business process analyst

Learning to write a scientific report and present it

Academic writing and citing

Helps to move to master’s thesis

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Course positioning (not the only possibility)

T-86.5141Enterprise Systems Achitecture

T-86.5161Special course in integration

T-86.5165Seminar in EIS: SOA

T-86.5300ICTEC

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Passing the course

Passed lecture diaries

Seminar report (plan, draft, submit, final)

Reviewing 1 other report (submit)

Filling out the feedback forms

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Grading

Seminar report (0,1,2,3,4,5)

Report

Presentation

Reviewing (passed,+1 to grade)

Lecture diary (pass)

All parts must be passed for a grade

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Schedule and deadlines

First 6 weeks of weekly lectures on Business Process Integration

Weekly lecture diaries DL at 9am the following Monday after

each lecture

October: Research plan presentation

Background, problem, objectives and scope

How many credits are targeted (8 recommended)

What, how and when is group about to study? Expected results,

bullets of main points and rough structure of the final deliverables.

Main literature sources listed

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Schedule and deadlines5th November at 9am draft to teachers

Should be more complete structure with some parts ready. Ready document, which will be improved by comments given by course staff.

The quality of this reflects the final grade.

Submitted version (10th of December at 9 am)

Final report ready for publication, presented within course

This report will be peer-reviewed

After this one should have time for making the possible changes according to the review

Final version (7th January)

Final report to be published in course web-pages

This report is the one graded.

Project presentations (14th of January)

There are corporate people involved in the crowd

Presentation affects grade

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Reviewing reports

Course staff will provide comments for early drafts to

show what issues included in reviews (process similar to

master’s thesis meetings with professor)

The objective is to improve the reports not just criticize

(not opposing ! )

The reviews should be electronically send to both the

course staff and the its writers

The use of Word-comments or similar means is

recommended

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Course project work topics

Topics will be presented next week

What is the situation now?

Technical overview in the point of view of application developer

Company studies – many related to business processes and integration in general.

Literature reports and hands on experience with some tools and methods.

Proof-of-concept applications

Own topics possible but not recommended

2-3 topics have company guidance, then also more theoretical ones

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Learning diary

Can be posted as a blog, but can also be sent by e-mail

Weekly diaries have specific tasks

E.g. reading an article and commenting it

Discussion of different essential concepts (for example choreography vs.

orchestration, relation of process and document)

Positioning lessons learned to previous studies & experience (e.g. see

http://www.coun.uvic.ca/learn/program/hndouts/bloom.html for competence

levels)

Raising out points/giving feedback from previous or upcoming lectures

Missing a lecture means extra work considering the diary

Length of roughly one A4 worth of text

Weekly during the lectures – then one per submission of a report version

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1st learning diary

Write about following topics

Your expectations of the course (what do you expect to

learn)

Where do I need this stuff in the future

Read and comment at least 2/4 of the papers linked to the

course pages

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Contact information

General questions on credits, topics, lectures

[email protected]

The course pages will be updated frequently and contain

up-to-date knowledge! It’s the main information channel

of the course.

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Introduction toBusiness Process Integration

Paavo Kotinurmi

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Outline

Why integration?

Process of agreeing on implementation details

Examples of standards

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Trends in B2B integration

There is increasing need for agility

Business – IT alignment, gap is closing – but in general is still huge

Standards & tools are getting better

More complex products, less time from concept to market, shorter product life-

cycles

More partners involved – supply chains increasingly complex and companies

networking deeply

Business process integration a hot topic

Companies recruit people that understand business and IT

Integration related Master’s Thesis are very common place

Business Process Management, Service-Oriented architectures and Enterprise

Architectures on everyone’s agenda – enables more model-driven behaviour

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Why integrations ?

Manual processes

data transfer needs is high

frequency of data transfer (volume) is high

risk of human errors is high system-to-system integration efforts are financially justifiable

Integrated processes

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B2B Integration methods: human involvement

Phone andEmail

ERP A

company a

ERP B

company b

WWW-browserERP A

company a

ERP B

company b

Standard messages, XML

ERP A

company a

ERP B

company b

Humans as integrators

Common user-interface

Interoperating information systems

Picture: Jukka Borgman, TKK

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Motivation for e-business standards

Reuse in integration among business partnersXML alone is not enough, computers have problems in these things

<e-business/> <date>17.09.2007</date><eBusiness/> <date>09/17/2005</date><E-business/> <xs:date>2007-09-17</xs:date>

XML provides a syntax way to represent information

Need standard to define commonly understood business documents

e-business standards often don’t just standardize the business documents, but define also the inter-company business processes and how the business documents can be securely transported over the Internet

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PDM system

CRM solution

Supply Chain Mgmt

eCommerce

Enterprise Resource Planning system

Siebel

WWW

I2eMatrix

SAP R/3

pakki

Other Legacy application

Point-to-point integration

Finnish government counted3500 information systems

ERP often replaces tens of applications

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EAI services

PDM system

CRM solution

Supply Chain Mgmt

eCommerce


Siebel

WWW

I2eMatrix

SAP R/3

Pakki

Legacy application

Integrated enterprise

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EAI services

PDM system

CRM solution

Supply Chain Mgmt

eCommerce


Siebel

WWW

I2eMatrix

SAP R/3

Pakki

Legacy application

Semantically integrated enterprise ?!?

transformation

transformationtransformation

transformation

transformation

Is the transformation mess still n(n-1)/2?

Or is the so called canonical format as universal transformation target in the middle 2*n?

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High-level B2B integration architecture

Company A

RosettaNetGatewayserver

EAI

ERP

PDM

WMS

10:s of applications

EDI operator

Company B

RosettaNetGatewayserver

ERPs

PDMs

WMSEDI operator

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Technology framework for EAI/B2Bi

Business process Integration

Private PublicEAI Data Integration B2B Trade

Application integration Services

Native data

Multiple Platforms

Diverse Protocols

Partner management Services

Standard data (XML)

Platform independence

Primarily HTTPS, SOAP

Yee, Apte

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These need to agreed on in B2B Integration

Roles

Business processes

Interactionsequence

Format

Business documents

Structure Semantics

Messaging

Transportprotocol

SecurityPackaging

Private process(Company -specific)


Private data models in Information systems

Private data models in Information systems

Supported capabilities of B2B servers, VANs

Supported capabilities of B2B servers, VANs

“Clock-speed”

Public process

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Outline

Why integration

Process of agreeing on implementation

details

Examples of standards - RosettaNet

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General process, the first time integration

Business process design implementation testing

General PhasesBusiness process analyses and how it supports integrationSolution design and back end integration conceptImplementation to back-end systemsTesting

Timescales and needed efforts vary a lotsometimes need to acquire, learn to use new systems,sometimes only getting the information needed and sending it

Read also: The CISCO case study

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First-time integrations

Business process analyses and how it supports integrationOwn process, inter-company process, what is possible, overall security issuesThe general concept, objectives, schedulesHow many partners will be integrated (1 vs. 100/200 suppliers)

Solution design and back end integration conceptMore specific requirements, specific partners (1-4) involvedWhat public processes, data exchanges neededHow current Information systems support this – what more is neededPlanning the implementation phase, specific security issues

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First-time integrationsImplementation to back-end systems

In some cases even implementing new back-end systemsThe number of affected users affects. If integration scheduled and happens in background a lot easier than e.g. changing usage logic, adding new functions for users and/or changing user interface

TestingAll possible situations and exceptions with partnersDifferent environments often used: e.g. design, quality assurance and ProductionAt this point, the users are involved and educated to work with the systems to support the processBasic secure transport testing one small part

After this phase, the first (1-4) integration in use

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Process times in first time integrations

Quotes from some research project partner companies:

“New EDI processes 2-6 months assuming EDI message in place”

“RosettaNet processes 6-12 months, even more”

(Existing EDI RosettaNet a lot shorter and not considered first time)

”It is easily at least a 0.5-1 year project when integrations started from

scratch”

“Creating process, concept design and then the back-end system

implementation takes the longest and is the most critical part”

Need for more model-driven behavior to cut the time (Business

process management standards)

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Deploying B2B integration to tradingpartners

Deployment process characteristics

Relatively little implementation work,

perhaps half a day

Requires a lot calendar time, typically

about 1 month but can range from 2

days to year

Different for customers and suppliers

Two different viewpoints to the same

deployment process:

1) information flow and involved

parties

2) activities

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Business Unit

Processexpert

B2Bi team leader

Technical process manager

Business Unit

Processexpert

B2Bi team leader

Technical process manager

Need for Integration

Integration request

Integration request

Integration request

Integration request

Resource allocation Resource allocation

Technical specifications

Dummy testmessages

Process understanding

Real testmessages

Typical process phases to integration deployments

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Integration maintenance and project-level integration 1/2

Continuous operation of integrations may require slight modifications

after successful setup:

Technical reasons such as expiring certificates or changing IP addresses

Business reasons such as starting to work with customer’s new site

When something breaks or changes on own side or on partner’s, testing

is required – this is major problem when hundreds of trading partners

are integrated

The implementation effort of a small change is typically small, but

deploying the change to all partners can take considerable work

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Integration maintenance and project-level integration 2/2

Changing or on/off business relationships resolved by relying on the

back-end process updates. B2Bi team may not be even aware of the

current status of business relationship.

Current B2B integrations concern continuous business processes such as

order fulfillment but there are needs for project-oriented integrations

Projects vary in type, by location, different project phases require

different processes, security requirements can vary

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Process challenges Internal consistency in private processes and information systemusage

“one global process, but process can be interpreted in many ways, the consistency needs to be improved”

missing specifications about reporting, what data to exchange, when, how to administrate the data

buying software (e.g. ERP or PDM system) without thinking about processes does not solve problems

Cross-industry processes, e.g. number of electronics in cars increasing. Harder to have agreement on one way of working

“all issues that influence processes are challenges”

Read: the EHR case

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Capability for integrations – How good are the partners

Company 1 Company 2 Best Best attainableattainable

Time to Time to integrateintegrate

ProcessProcesscyclecycle--timetimee.ge.g. . forecastforecast

Data Data modelmodelrichnessrichness

BetterBetter

WorseWorse

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General current Integration Architecture – Where flexibility

PDM

ERP

…

…EAI

B2BServer

InternetEAI(SOA)

Back-end systems changes are expensive and slow. EAI offers tools for managing heterogeneity. Data semantics & process descriptions critical

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Outline

Why integration

Process of agreeing on implementation details

Examples of standards - RosettaNet

17/09/2007



RosettaNet

RosettaNet is a non-profit organization that directs business process and

supply chain standardization. It is especially strong in the electronics

industry even though it is not limiting itself to any particular industry.

Subsidiary of GS1 (formerly UCC and EAN International )

Over 500 members (HP, Cisco, Intel, Microsoft, Nokia, Sun…)

Electronic Components (EC),

Information Technology (IT),

Semiconductor Manufacturing (SM),

Solution Provider (SP)

Telecommunication (TC) (Quite recent)

Logistics (LG) (Quite recent)

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RosettaNet

Standardizes inter-company “public” processes (PIPs)

The related messages (DTD + Message guidelines) = Business

documents (lately also XML Schemas)

Standard messaging framework (RNIF – supports also other

messaging standards).

Defines dictionaries (RNTD and RNBD) and codes (GTIN and

DUNS)

RN technical dictionary only really industry specific part

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RosettaNet messaging principle

Internet & XML

RosettaNet defines processes and a framework for how data gets passed over the Web and certain handshake criteria.

Company A

SAPERP

Company Specific processing

BaanERP

Company BCompany Specific

processing

Translate to/from RosettaNet standards from/to Company A system data set.

Translate from/to RosettaNet standards To/from Company Bsystem data set.

source: RosettaNet

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Purchase order process (PIP 3A4)

Process PO

Send POCustomer

Send POSupplier

ProcessSales Order

Customer Supplier

Receive POAcknowledge

Send POAcknowledge

Send POResponse

Close

Send PO

Receive POResponse

Send POResponse

Acknowledge

Receive PO

Send POResponse

Receive POResponse

Acknowledge

Receive PO

CheckCustomer

CheckCredit

CheckAvailability

Create SalesOrder

Receive POAcknowledge

Send POAcknowledge

Send POResponse

Close

Receive PORequest

SelectSupplier

GenerateRFQ

SendRFQ

Select RFQResponse

SendPO

Close

Send PO

Receive POResponse

Send POResponse

Acknowledge

Receive PO

Send POResponse

Receive POResponse

Acknowledge

Receive PO

CheckCustomer

CheckCredit

CheckAvailability

Create SalesOrder


Public process(Standard)

Public process(Standard)


PO

CRM

SCM

ERP

Figu

re p

rovi

ded

by V

itria

Sys

tem

s

17/09/2007



New PIP composition effortCompanieswilling to

invest resources

PIP xYz

Codes and classifications

Technical Dictionary

GTIN DUNSUN/SPSC

Business Dictionary

RosettaNetexperts

Technical issues

Business issues

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Implementation – Trading Partner Agreement

CompanyA

CompanyB

TPA concerningPIP xYz

Technical issues

IP, Ports, firewalls

RNIF version used

Encryption, certificates

Schema compatibility

Business issuesWhat, when, how

Roles

Conditions (contracts, authorization)

Exceptional biz situation

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Run-time collaboration

Company A Company B

Gatewayserver

GatewayserverEAI

ERP

PDM

xyz

ERP

PDM

yxz

PIP in RNIFEnvelope

over InternetPIP

PIPCore

Data

extracted

PIP PIPData

extracted

17/09/2007



RosettaNet Partner Interface Process (PIP)

Encapsulate business processes

Specify structure and format of business document payloads

Specify activities, decisions, and roles for each trading partner

involved in a particular business activity

Distributed as downloadable .zip file from rosettanet.org

(Specification document, DTD(s) and message guideline(s) or

XML Schemas & BPSS)

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PIP clusters and segments

Cluster 0: RosettaNet Support Cluster 1: Partner Product and Service Review Cluster 2: Product Information Cluster 3: Order Management Cluster 4: Inventory Management

Enables inventory management, including collaboration, replenishment, price protection, reporting and allocation of constrained product

Cluster 5: Marketing Information Management Cluster 6: Service and Support Cluster 7: Manufacturing

17/09/2007



PIP clusters and segmentsSegment 3A: Quote and Order Entry

PIP 3A1: Request Quote PIP 3A2: Request Price and Availability

Provides a quick, automated process for trading partners to request and provide product price and availability.

PIP 3A3: Request Shopping Cart Transfer PIP 3A4: Request Purchase Order PIP 3A5: Query Order Status PIP 3A6: Distribute Order Status PIP 3A7: Notify of Purchase Order Update PIP 3A8: Request Purchase Order Change PIP 3A9: Request Purchase Order Cancellation PIP 3A10: Notify of Quote Acknowledgment PIP 3A11: Notify of Authorization to BuildPIP 3A12: Notify of Authorization to ShipPIP 3A13: Notify of Purchase Order InformationPIP 3A14: Distribute Planned Order

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PIP process definitions (3A2)

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YNYNN/AN/AN/AReceipt Acknowledgment1.2.1.

YNYYN/AN/A24 hrsPrice and Availability Response Action

1.2.

YNYYN/AN/AN/AReceipt Acknowledgment1.1.

YNYY24 hrsN/A24 hrsPrice and Availability Request Action

1.

Is Secure Transport Required?

Is Non-Repudiation Required?

Is Authorization Required?

Included in Time to Perform

Time to Respond to Action

Time to Acknowledge Acceptance Signal

Time to Acknowledge Receipt Signal

Name#

Table 4-3: Message Exchange Controls - Request Price and Availability

+ there is e.g. Retry count = 3 (typical)

17/09/2007



Latest PIPs – this information in XML (BPSS)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<ProcessSpecification name="PIP3A4RequestPurchaseOrder“>

<Documentation>This PIP enables a buyer to issue a purchase order and obtain a

quick response from the provider that acknowledges which of the purchase order

product line items are accepted, rejected, or pending</Documentation>

<BusinessDocument name="Purchase Order Request"

nameID="PIP3A4PurchaseOrderRequest"

specificationLocation="urn:rosettanet:specification:interchange:PurchaseOrderRequ

est:xsd:schema:1.0">

<RequestingBusinessActivity name="Initiate Purchase Order Request"

nameID="InitiatePurchaseOrderRequest" isAuthorizationRequired="true"

isIntelligibleCheckRequired="true" isNonRepudiationReceiptRequired="true"

isNonRepudiationRequired="true" timeToAcknowledgeReceipt="PT2H"

retryCount="3…Extract of PIP process in XML from PIP 3A4

17/09/2007



RosettaNet Dictionaries

RosettaNet Business Dictionary

Defines common elements to use in RosettaNet PIPs

Contains definitions for the elements and their allowable contents

(e.g. business properties, entity instances and fundamental business

data entities )

RosettaNet Technical Dictionary

Organizes product descriptions into reusable atomic properties and

relationships

Used to search electronic catalogs, maintain technical information

databases, generate technical spec sheets, etc.

17/09/2007



catalogIdentifier The proprietary identity of a product catalog.certificateOfOriginIdentifier A unique identifier that represents a certified document

describing the origin of goods for an international shipment.

certificateOfOriginTypeIdentifier

A unique identifier that represents the classification or type of a certified document describing the origin of goods for an international shipment.

changeOrderWindow The number of days before the seller’s confirmed scheduled ship date that the product buyer can no longer change the order.

changeOriginatedBy The party who originates a proposed change.changeOriginationDate The date a proposed change is originated.

changeOwnedBy The party who owns or who is assigned responsibility for a proposed change.

changeReason The reason for a proposed change.

Example business properties

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DateStamp Specifies a specific date. Date stamp based on the ISO 8601 specification. The "Z" following the day identifier (DD) is used to indicate Coordinated Universal Time. Informal format: YYYYMMDDZ

Date 9 9 9(8)X

DateTimeStamp Specifies an instance in time. Based on the ISO 8601 specification where "YYYY" represents the year, "MM" the month and "DD" the day. The letter "T" is the date/time separator and "hh", "mm", "ss.sss" represent hour, minute and second respectively. This representation is immediately followed by a "Z" to indicate Coordinated Universal Time. Informal format: YYYYMMDDThhmmss

DateTime 13

20

9(8)X9(6)V9(3)X

DayOfMonth Specifies a specific day within a month. Value range from 1 to 31.

PositiveInteger

1 2 9(2)

DevicePackageTypeCode

Codes used to explain how a die (computer chip) is assembled into an IC (Integrated Circuit)

String 1

Example FundamentalBusinessDataEntities

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PIP business documents

Payload for process interactions

Example 3A2 message guidelines definition – the request

document

The specification is informal

Natural language constraints included

* Newest PIPs are XML Schema based (modular schema)

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RNIF – The RosettaNet messaging envelope

RNIF is a specification for a platform-independent system that

enables reliable exchange of any PIP over the Internet

RNIF specifies the format and elements of the common parts of

PIP messages constituting RosettaNet Business Message.

RosettaNet business message has elements supporting

authentication, authorization, encryption and non-repudiation.

RNIF specifies bindings for transfer level protocols and protocol

for reliable exchange of messages.

“RNIF is the postal service”

Note RNIF is HTTP, MIME etc., there is no SOAP/WS stuff used

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RosettaNet challenges

The specifications are being improved, which means they are

changing.

Some aspects of the specifications are ambiguous.

The readability of the existing documentation needs to be

improved.

The enterprise readiness effort for RosettaNet implementations is

often underestimated.

Possible convergence with other standards.

source: RosettaNet

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Summary: Problem RosettaNet tries to solve

Standards needed to enable system-to-system B2B

collaboration.

Helps solving some semantic problems in specific industry by

providing message guidelines, dictionaries and unique identifiers

Defines standard business processes

Reliable messaging over Internet

Future: More automation, extended coverage to harder

processes (Product development collaboration)

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So what was the RN process part?

The times to respond is driver for quicker private processes and

increased automation

Not just messages but the relationship between multiple

business documents

BPSS not really helping widely yet – not the biggest problem

solved

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RosettaNet integration – why BPM important

Current usage of PIPs still very rigid

One partner, long term contracts

One PIP implemented always just pair-wise

Combining internal and public process hard technically

Point-to-point solutions, hard to change

Processes span many internal application

Data semantics a big issue as well that should not be

underestimated here

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Whole quote to cash process

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RosettaNet PIPs spanning few partners

Customer

Consignmentwarehousemanager

Supplier

Demand

ThresholdReleaseForecastProcess

Create and sendadvanceshipment

notification

PIP 3B2: Notifyof AdvanceShipment

Receivenotification

Create and sendshipment receipt

notification

PIP 4B2: Notifyof Shipment

Receipt

Receivenotification

Create and sendinventory report

Receive report

PIP 4C1:Distribute

Inventory Report

Calculatereplenishment

requirements toproduction line

Create and sendmaterial release

PIP 4D1: Notifyof Material

Release

Receive materialrelease

Ship product tomeet material

release

Create and sendadvanceshipment

notification

Receivenotification

Receivenotification



Create and sendshipment receipt

notification

Receivenotification

PIP 4B2: Notifyof Shipment

Receipt

Create and sendself-billinginvoice with

consumptioninformation

PIP 3C7: Notifyof Self-billing

Invoice

Receiveself-billing

invoice

Create and sendremittance advice

Receiveremittance advice

PIP 3C6: Notifyof Remittance

Advice

Pay invoice

17/09/2007



<end>Any Questions</end>

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