Collaborative Demand Capacity Planning Heiko Duin1, Peter Hofbauer2, Ömer Karacan3, Erich Markl4, Josef Withalm4, Walter Wölfel3, Darius Zand5 1
BIBA, Hochschulring 20 D-28359 Bremen, Germany,
[email protected] 2
SIMEAC, Wien, Austria,
[email protected]
3
Siemens IT Solutions and Services, Gudrunstraße 11, A-1101 Wien, Austria, {oemer.karacan, walter.woelfel}@siemens.com
4
Fachhochschule Technikum Wien, Höchstädtplatz 5, A-1200 Wien, Austria,
[email protected] 5
TOMPKINS, An der Trift 3, D-30559 Hannover, Germany,
[email protected]
Abstract The automotive industry is encountered by two big challenges. The first one especially at present time is the shifting of customers’ demands from bigger cars to more fuel efficient ones. The second one is a long term shift in the customer order decoupling point – maybe initialized by the PC industry (like Dell in the 90’s) – enabling the configuration of the car individually. Therefore, the automotive industry has to address a paradigm shift from Maketo-Stock (MTS) towards Assemble-to-Order (ATO) and further Make-to-Order (MTO). Mainly caused by cost saving programmes manufacturing of components is continuously outsourced to suppliers. These suppliers are categorized in tiers and in total about 80% of the components of a car model are manufactured by suppliers. This paper introduces three remedies as CDCP (Collaborative Demand Capacity Planning), EC/EI (Enterprise Collaboration / Enterprise Interoperability ) Services and Serious Gaming. A combination of these three remedies should mitigate the above mentioned challenges of the automotive industry. Further more the potential of providing EC/EI services as SaaS (Software as a Service) utilities will be considered. Keywords Capability Maturity Model Integrated (CMMI), Collaborative Demand Capacity Planning, Enterprise Collaboration, Enterprise Interoperability, ISU (Interoperability Service Utility), Serious Gaming, SaaS (Software as a Service), Supply Networks
1 Introduction Today automotive industry is encountering two big challenges. The first one concerns the shifting of customers’ demands from big cars to smaller, more fuel efficient ones. This is due to the changed perspectives of consumers concerning the discussion of reducing of CO2 emissions. The second challenge is a long term shift in the Customer Order Decoupling Point (CODP) – maybe initialized by the PC industry (like Dell in the 90’s) – enabling the configuration of the car individually. Therefore, the automotive industry has to address a paradigm shift from Maketo-Stock (MTS) towards Assemble-to-Order (ATO) and further Make-to-Order (MTO). A discussion of the strategic relevance of the CODP can be found in [Jagdev et al 2004]. One result of the current situation in the automotive industry is the insight that OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) leeway for reactions that are strongly limited due to the fact that only 20% of parts of a car are produced directly in the plants of the OEM. Therefore, the amount of approximately 80% is delivered by suppliers organised in the different tiers. Although OEM’s may react very fast on changes in their portfolio driven by the market thanks to their flexible manufacturing, suppliers are lagging behind in producing their respective parts and sub-parts. A typical supply chain for the production of a new car in the automotive industry encompass around 6 to 10 tiers and the supply network has around 3000-5000 partners (suppliers delivering components).
An important supply chain process covering all levels of supply is the Collaborative Demand Capacity Planning (CDCP). This process is in fact an exception or alert handling process when demands of the customer (OEM, 1st tier supplier, etc.) don’t match the planned capacity of their supplier (1st tier, 2nd tier supplier, etc.). The process includes a set of rules to handle such conflicts in collaboration among partners in the supply chain. Even when this process is well defined and agreed among the partners the problem of handling the message flow due the heterogeneous and different ICT infrastructures is a show-stopper for the implementation of that process. To encounter this essential challenge not only one remedy will mitigate this issue but the combination of different ones. In this paper especially the following remedies are discussed, respectively a reference will be given where they are already explicitly referenced:
Collaborative Demand Capacity Planning (CDCP)
Enterprise Collaboration and Enterprise Interoperability (EC/EI) Services
Serious Gaming These pillars are not at all independent from each other. Whereas CDCP intends to tackle the main challenges of suppliers in the automotive industry the other pillars will provide specific methods and tools to support the suppliers. EC/EI Services will provide Business Interoperability Services to change reaction speed in the supply networks. The application of Serious Gaming [Michael, Chen, 2006] enables training support for suppliers to apply the above EC/EI services and/or to request more appropriate ones. EC/EI services which are based on Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), Ontology, and especially Semantic Web Services will originate from the EU funded project COIN [Elvesæter et al 2008] and its forerunners such as ECOLEAD [Camarinha-Matos et al 2005] or ATHENA [Rugabber 2006] and should be selected and applied to solve the CDCP issues. Serious Gaming, which is a specific methodology of e-Learning in this context, is applied primarily by the OEMs in evaluating strategic issues about the constellation of the direct tiers and of higher tiers concerning strategic issues about their subordinate tiers. This is done by enabling the members of supply networks to learn how their own business processes can interoperate with the business processes of their partners and especially with the leading one i.e. OEM and higher tiers Finally, an assessment method of the maturity level of the collaborating subordinate tiers is also a very appropriate mean in solving the CDCP issues. A modified Capability Maturity Model – the CMMI approach – was presented on the last ICE-2008 conference in Lisbon, Portugal [Withalm, Wölfel 2008]. In the following some domain specific back ground information will be presented which highlights the big challenges of the automotive industry at present time. Moreover, the different methodologies (especially EC/EI Services and Serious Gaming) which should improve the current situation will be briefly introduced. Finally, this paper provides an outline of the theory combining these methodologies and how this should improve the performance of OEMs as well as their suppliers in such a way that they can react faster to their clients’ buying behaviour.
2 Theory To find an appropriate approach of solving the essential issues of CDCP, the above mentioned innovative methodologies must be applied on CDCP. Taking into account the first methodology – namely EC/EI services – the focus should be on EI services following the argumentation that in supply chains and supply networks the EC issues are not so relevant according to a very strong leading partner – the OEM. So the most important issues of EC services like the agreement on common business strategies, business models and primary modelling of common business
processes are usually not really relevant as it’s widely defined by the respective OEM expecting from their suppliers’ to adhere to them. Important EC results are coming from the European project ECOLEAD (Camarinha-Matos et al 2005), but these are explicitly considered in the context of CDCP. Much more interesting are the results of the EU project ATHENA and especially the upcoming results of the ongoing EU funded project COIN. Especially the innovative EI services are of interest. These are structured into
Information Interoperability Services,
Knowledge Interoperability Services, and
Business Interoperability Services. For solving the CDCP challenges the focus is put on innovative services for Business Process Interoperability, in order to fill the gap between Business and ICT (Information Communication Technology) in business process management in supply networks. These services will be provided by means of Serious Gaming in order to enable members of supply networks to learn how their own business processes can interoperate with the defined business processes of their partners and especially with the leading one i.e. OEM and higher tiers. The goal of such a game – and of course of the EI Services – is the solution of the CDCP issues. According on the experiences of Serious Gaming, members of supply networks will learn much faster compared to the application of conventional tools (e.g. [Baalsrud Hauge et al 2008]). Moreover, a specific Serious Game, which allows the realistic playing of all involved interorganizational processes (like planning, research and development, design, production, marketing), will also reveal lacks and drawbacks in current EI Services which represent new requirements for the ongoing COIN project. Serious Gaming represents the linking framework of the concept. The game needs to be designed in such a way that the process areas under consideration are covered. Capacity management is done by fulfilling specific objectives (scores) within the game. E-Learning materials need also be accessible directly from the game client. The e-Learning content should be structured in a CMMI compliant manner. The basic requirements for such a Serious Game are:
Appropriate specific goals and practices need to be established for each of the respective process areas including respective e-Learning content.
An important component of the serious gaming approach is the collaboration between players/learners, which is especially important for domains like the automotive sector.
The game needs to provide CSCW (Computer Supported Cooperative Work) features, where gamers are enabled to communicate, negotiate, setting up contracts together, etc.
An appropriate modeling of the business processes and the supporting services needs to be performed in order to realistically simulate the environment of OEMs and their suppliers. In a simulated environment (sometimes called micro world) like a Serious Game, the assessment is not limited to assess individuals only. Furthermore, the outcome of a team might be the right measure of success. This also allows the analysis of players’ behavior as a team member. On the last ICE 2008 conference it was shown that the combination of Serious Gaming and CMMI assessment have the potential to improve on the one hand the collaboration behaviour of members of supply networks and on the other hand enabled the structuring of process areas of EC/EI (see [Withalm, Wölfel, 2008]).
3 Methodologies In this chapter innovative EI (especially Business Interoperability) Services and Serious Gaming are described in more detail.
3.1
EI Services
All concerned business processes are collected from both, the whole supply network – the so called CBP (Cross organizational Business Process) – which is usually led by an OEM respectively a tier leader of the respective tier and the individual business processes – the so called PP (Private Processes) of the single suppliers. The following constraints must also be taken into account:
PP’s will not be visible completely to the CBP. The visible part will be called VP (View Process)
PP’s will have access to CBP i.e. planning data for a new model should be visible to the concerned suppliers. Especially interesting are the following business processes:
Competency request
Capacity request
Common bidding process
Creation process of new VO
Procurement process
Development process
Manufacturing process
Delivery / shipment process
Order tracking process Taking into account EC/EI Services – the focus should be on EI services following the argumentation that in supply chains and supply networks the EC issues are not so relevant according to a very strong leading partner: the OEM. So the most important issues of EC services like the agreement on common business strategies, business models and primary modelling of common business processes are usually not really relevant as it’s widely defined by the respective OEM and expect from their suppliers’ to adhere to them. Important EC results are coming from the European project ECOLEAD but will not be explicitly considered in the context of CDCP. Software as a Service (SaaS) [Bennet et al, 2000] is an approach for providing software services, which will be applied on EI Services in project COIN as well and is briefly introduced. The COIN software model is built on “Software as a Service” (SaaS) and “Software as a Service Utility” (SaaS-U) concepts, which are emerging concepts for current and future networked enterprises. SaaS is a model of software deployment where an application is hosted as a service provided to customers across the Internet. By eliminating the need to install and run the application on the customer's own computer, SaaS alleviates the customer's burden of software maintenance, ongoing operation, and support. Conversely, customers relinquish control over software versions or changing requirements. Using SaaS also can conceivably reduce that up-front expense of software purchases, through less costly, on-demand pricing. From the software vendor's standpoint, SaaS has the attraction of providing stronger protection of its intellectual property and establishing an ongoing revenue
stream. The SaaS software vendor may host the application on its own web server, or this function may be handled by a third-party application service provider (ASP). This way, end users may reduce their investment on server hardware too. SaaS is generally associated with business software and is typically thought of as a low-cost way for businesses to obtain the same benefits of commercially licensed, internally operated software without the associated complexity and high initial cost. Many types of software are well suited to the SaaS model, where customers may have little interest or capability in software deployment, but do have substantial computing needs. Application areas such as Customer relationship management (CRM), video conferencing, human resources, IT service management, accounting, IT security, web analytics, web content management and e-mail are some of the initial markets showing SaaS success. The distinction between SaaS and earlier applications delivered over the Internet is that SaaS solutions were developed specifically to leverage web technologies such as the browser, thereby making them web-native. The data design and architecture of SaaS applications are specifically built with a 'multi-tenant' backend, thus enabling multiple customers or users to access a shared data model. This further differentiates SaaS from client/server or 'ASP' (Application Service Provider) solutions because SaaS providers are leveraging enormous economies of scale in the deployment, management, support and through the Software Development Lifecycle. The ongoing European research is trying to make a new implementation of the SaaS vision, a step forward in a new field of interoperability among collaborative enterprises, supporting the various collaborative business forms, from supply chains to business ecosystems, and becoming for them like a utility, a commodity, the so-called Interoperability Service Utility (ISU, see [Li et al, 2008], [Enterprise Interoperability Cluster]). The ISU challenge is addressed by COIN by providing a service infrastructure for Enterprise Interoperability in the business context of Enterprise Collaboration. This will not just create a service platform, but mainly a new business concept – the Software-as-a-Service Utility (SaaSU) model. The SaaS-U paradigm fits well with the ISU concepts and can be seen as a software application delivery model where a software vendor develops Web-native software services and hosts and operates them for use by its customers over the Internet. Customers do not pay for owning the software itself any longer but rather for using it on-demand. They use it through an API accessible over the Web and often written using Web services. Furthermore, the SaaS-U paradigm also fits well with modern SOA architectures that aim to promote software development in a way that leverages the construction of dynamic software systems and which can easily adapt to volatile user environments and be easily maintained as well. SOA enables flexible connectivity of applications by representing every application as a service with a standardized interface. This enables them to exchange structured information quickly and flexibly. This flexibility enables new and existing applications to be easily and quickly combined to address changing business needs, and the ability to easily combine and choreograph applications allows IT services to more readily reflect business processes.
3.2
Serious Gaming
In the knowledge society, life long learning is essential for knowledge workers in their work processes. All learning tools, methodologies and content that mainly consist of digital support can be considered as e-Learning. Serious Games are computer and/or video games used beside entertaining goals for educational technology. Serious Games can be of any genre and many of them can be considered a kind of edutainment. Computer based Serious Games are an eLearning methodology [Michael, Chen, 2006]. Before the term Serious Game was coined, games were already being developed for nonentertainment purposes. During the late 1990’s, a number of scholars began to examine the
utility of games for other purposes, including e.g. early work by Henry Jenkins at MIT. Additionally, the ability of games to contribute to training expanded at the same time with the development of multi-player gaming. In 2002, the "Serious Games Initiative" was launched to encourage the development of games that address policy and management issues. More focused sub-groups appeared since 2004, including Games for Change, which focuses on social issues and social change, and Games for Health which addresses health care applications [Annetta et al, 2006]. Serious Games are considered as the next evolutionary generation of learning tools, which address some of the short-comings of its predecessors. A Serious Game could be a simulation that has the look and feel of a game, but corresponds to non-game areas, including e.g. business operations, military operations or medical applications. The games are intended to provide an engaging, self-reinforcing context in which to motivate and educate the players. Through modifying existing game applications for educational purposes there is great potential for learning with games [Freitas 2007]. The application of serious gaming technology is expected improve European competitiveness [Oliveira, Duin, 2007].
4 Expected Results The organisation ITA (Information Technology for the Automotive Industry) started already the project CDCP. ITA’s way in handling such projects follows always the same approach. There must be at least one OEM or nth tier partner within the project who fosters it and who is willing to trial it. In the course of CDCP there is a German OEM who will promote this project. So all the results will be demonstrated in companion with this OEM and its suppliers which partly also participate in the project. Moreover ITA projects are monitored by a member of the ITA steering committee. The project leader is one employee of an ITA member organisation. ITA project teams contains mainly employees of ITA members at least one employee of an OEM will participate and in some cases also experts from associated organizations. In the first part of the application of Serious Gaming suppliers of a tier will elicit the most essential required EI Services for the above mentioned business processes. There it is most important to specify exactly
if suppliers must have access to the respective CB,
if CBP must have access to which part of suppliers PP-the so called VP must specified. In all this requirement collection it must be checked, if the main goals of CDCP and of course the main challenges of the automotive industry will be met. Having finalized the requirement phase it must be decided which Serious Games have to be developed in order to train the concerned partners (tier leader and suppliers within a tier) to apply the to-be-implemented EI Services. Of course a further idea is that ICT partner within this project will later on implement respective ICT solutions which will be exploited on the one hand via the classical ISP model but on the other hand also via the most recent SaaS (Software as a Service) approach. Especially the EI service platform should be implemented with help of Semantic Web Services so it’s well applicable also for other OEM’s and their partners. A specific interest is paid to the implementation of a Serious Game, where existing platforms such as PRIME [Duin, et al, 2007] or SECONDS [Hunecker, 2008] can be adapted. These platforms meet already some of the above mentioned requirements such as CSCW support and the appropriate modelling of business processes.
5 Conclusions Seamless implementation of CDCP along the supply chain is an urgent problem in the automotive industry which must be solved very fast especially in the case of the actual situation.
There are some issues discussed in this paper which will substantially improve the acceleration of implementation and reaction of supply chain processes. CDCP has many stakeholders in the automotive industry that could benefit when meeting the goal of the CDCP project. The most important stakeholders are OEM’s and their suppliers and ICT providers who will implement the recommended services and Serious Games. Finally, the CDCP project is expected to deliver concepts of EI Services which might be implemented by the participating ICT partners during the time frame of the project. A Serious Game, which enables suppliers in the automotive industry to learn how EI services work, will support meeting the CDCP goals, i.e. on the one hand supplier learn to apply EI services and on the other hand it will help to reveal missing EI services. Acknowledgement The paper is mainly based on work performed in the project COIN (EU FP7 Project 216256; http://www.coin-ip.eu) funded by the European Community within the IST-Programme of the 7th Framework Research Programme. The authors also thank the contribution from other partners in the COIN consortium. References Annetta, L. A., Murray, M. R., Laird, S. G., Bohr, S. C., Park, J. C. (2006) Serious Games: Incorporating Video Games in the Classroom. In: Educause Quarterly. (006) 3. pp. 16-22. Baalsrud Hauge, J., Duin, H. und Thoben, K.-D. (2008). Reducing Network Risks in Supply Networks by Implementing Games for Mediating Skills on Risk Management. In: Cunningham, Paul and Cunningham, Miriam (Eds.): Collaboration and the Knowledge Economy: Issues, Applications, Case Studies. IOS Press. Amsterdam, Berlin, Oxford, Tokyo, Washington DC 2008. pp 707-714. Bennett, K., Layzell, P., Budgen, D., Brereton, P., Macaulay, L., Munro, M. (2000) Service-based software: the future for flexible software. Proceedings of the Software Engineering Conference, 2000 (APSEC 2000). pp 214-221. Camarinha-Matos, L. M., Afsarmanesh, H., Ollus, M. (2005) ECOLEAD: A Holistic Approach to Creation and Management of Dynamic Virtual Organizations. In: Camarinha-Matos, L .M. et al (Eds.): Collaborative Networks and Their Breeding Environments. New York, Springer. pp 3-16. Duin, H., Oliveira, M., Saffarpour, A. (2007). A Simulation Model for Virtual Manufacturing Environments for Serious Games. In: Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Concurrent Engineering (ICE 2007), 4-6 June 2007, Sophia-Antipolis, France. pp 253-260. Elvesæter, B., Taglino, F., Grosso, E. D., Benguria, G., Capellini, A. (2008) Towards enterprise interoperability service utilities. Proceedings of the International Workshop on Enterprise Interoperability (IWEI 2008), Munich, Germany, 18 September 2008. (http://www.ics.kth.se/iwei/IWEI%20Camera-ready,%20Elvesater.pdf) Freitas, S. de (2007) Learning in Immersive Worlds. A Review of Game-based Learning. JISC E-Learning Programme. Jagdev, H. S., Brennan, A., Browne, J. (2004) Strategic Decision Making in Modern Manufacturing. Boston, Dordrecht, Kondon, Kluwer Publishers. Li, M.-S., Crave S., Grilo A., Van den Berg R. (2008). A New Value Proposition of Interoperability for Enterprises to Advance the Frontiers of the European Knowledge Economy. In: Cunningham, Paul and Cunningham, Miriam (Eds.): Collaboration and the Knowledge Economy: Issues, Applications, Case Studies. IOS Press. Amsterdam, Berlin, Oxford, Tokyo, Washington DC 2008. Michael, D., Chen, S. (2006) Serious Games: Games that Educate, Train and Inform. Boston, Thomson Course Technology. Oliveira, M., Duin, H. (2007) Serious Game Development by Distributed Teams: A Case Study Based on the EU Project PRIME. In: Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies (WEBIST 2007). Springer. pp. 296-303. Rugabber, R. (2006) ATHENA – Advanced Technologies for Interoperability of Heterogeneous Enterprise Networks and their Applications. In: Konstantas, D., Bourrieres J.-P., Leonard, M., Boudjlida, N.: Interoperability of Enterprise Software and Applications. London, Springer. pp 459-460. Withalm J., Wölfel W. (2008) Capability Maturity Models for Collaborative Networked Organisations. In: M. Antonia Martínez-Carreras, Antonio Ruiz-Martínez, A. F. Gómez-Skarmeta. (Eds.): Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Concurrent Engineering (ICE 2008), 23-25 June 2008, Lisboa, Portugal.
