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                          State of the Art and Mission Control Room Specification 


Executive Summary:

This document reflects the Value Production Space (VPS) and the role of the so-called Mission Control Room (MCR) as a management tool to support stakeholders in managing the Virtual Enterprise (VE).
VPS is seen as a real network of enterprises that agreed to form a VE. Hence MCR manages the VE by supporting the VE creation and improvement, collecting feedback of knowledge worker during VE execution, providing features to monitor the VE and to enable creative processes in improving or enable the injection of innovations.
MCR is following concept model based approach, which means that graphical concept models are used to chart the VPS and interpret these charts as a conceptualisation of the real world. Hence it is possible to apply a set of functions on that conceptualisation such as viewing, navigating, querying, simulating, publishing, training, testing, guiding and collaboratively collecting feedback, assessing, alerting and improving.
Key challenge is to enable such a conceptualisation of the real world to enable (a) semantic enrichment from the PIKR developed in WP5 and (b) innovation injections from the Virtual Innovation Factory developed in WP4.
Figure 1 depicts the vision of BIVEE introducing the Value Production Space on the left and the Virtual Innovation Factory on the right.

Figure 1 Overall Application Scenario of BIVEE

Hence we identify that Value Production Space is reality and hence conceptualisation of this reality must consider (a) state of the art in conceptualisation, (b) currently applied approaches of the end users, (c) a flexibility to adapt or change the conceptualisation to the specific needs of the end user and (d) enable the inclusion of unpredictable concepts using different formats, different world areas, different level of semantic expressiveness.

MCR needs a conceptual framework, which is represented in form of a modelling language and a modelling tool, which is represented in form of a Web-application.
Value Production Space is a highly complex socio-technical system including well structured and production processes and knowledge workers. Hence the conceptualisation requires: (a) to provide concepts that are sufficiently formalised enabling semantic support and (b) to tightly involve the knowledge worker and hence keep the “human in the loop”.
MCR tackle aforementioned challenges by:
(1)   MCR supports a VE life cycle with a modeller enabling the creation and improvement of VE models, an assistant enabling the tight participation of knowledge worker, a monitor enabling the analysis of KPIs and finally a whiteboard enabling the feedback collection and interaction with the Virtual Innovation Factory.
Integrating the knowledge repository PIKR with the MCR - evolving the so-called Semantic Modelling Kernel - enables to introduce semantic into the MCR to support conceptualisation with semantic technology and to enable conceptual integration with Virtual Innovation Factory. This integration has a conceptual integration and a technical integration aspect.
Enabling radical innovation injections from the de-coupled Virtual Innovation Factory requires a collaboration protocol for the “hand-over”, which is conceptually supported by the PIKR and technically supported via the BIVEE platform.
(2)   MCR realises the BIVEE modelling framework that is based on the common approaches such as SCOR and VRM. MCR selected the most appropriate modelling concepts but additionally offers three unique characteristics: (a) the modelling language is semantically enriched, (b) hybrid modelling is applied to enable modelling language plug-ins and (c) collaboration features for modelling are provided. This deliverable points to prototypical realisation of reference processes and to prototypical end user processes.
(3)   Technical implementation of the MCR relies on (a) typical feature of the MCR-Modeller, MCR-Assistant and MCR-Monitor but enables (b) semantic enrich and (c) collaboration via own features and the coupling with the VIF.
Technical specification of MCR considers this by using a stable meta modelling platform, and developing flexible plug-in introduction the requested functionality in a Web-framework.
The combination of a state of the art concept model, applying the flexible meta modelling approach, introducing hybrid modelling and allowing semantic enrichment in a Web-based, adaptable and collaborative tool environment, makes the MCR a step forward beyond current available VE management tools.