· Web view3D design is however not yet widely used in the construction industry. ... The...

Classification : Restricted

Deliverable ReferenceWP

3Task

3200No.

D303Status Draft/Issued/Revised

IssuedRev.

1.0Date

30 June, 1997Release to CEC

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ESPRIT 20876 D303 - Task 3200: Application Software Restricted

ii Rev. 1.0

Restricted D303 - Task 3200: Application Software ESPRIT 20876

Document Control Sheet

Rev. 1.0 iii

WP3: Trends in PDIT Support

Task 3200: Application Software

ESPRIT 20876 - eLSEwise

Authors:

Paul van den Bosch Cap GeminiDiwakar Chaudhari BICC Wim Gielingh Cap GeminiMatti Hannus VTTDavid Quinn BICC

Distribution Draft Issued Revised

Date 25-04-97 30-06-97

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CAP * *

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CEC


Amendment Record

Revision Status Page Nos. Amendment Date By

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Table of Contents

1. INTRODUCTION

1.1 Objective

1.2 Scope

1.3 An Application Framework

2. WHAT EXISTS TODAY

2.1 Discipline Specific Applications

2.2 General business software

2.3 Applications for distributed engineering

2.4 Solutions for Integration

3. BARRIERS AND OPPORTUNITIES

3.1 Barriers to LSE uptake

3.2 Opportunities

4. TRENDS AND EXPECTATIONS

5. RELEVANCE TO LSE

6. CONCLUSION

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1Introduction

1.1Objective

The objective of this deliverable is to provide the software vendors viewpoint about the impact of LSE business drivers and new technologies on future software products. The deliverable identifies drivers and roadblocks that determine the effective usage of computer applications in the LSE industry.

1.2Scope

Application Software is the software that provides business oriented functionality to end-users. It is the software that is used directly by the end-user. Application Software will in general make use on its turn of supporting environments (Task 3000) and systems and technologies (Task 3100).

There exist so many applications today that it is not possible - nor desirable - to attempt to describe them all. For the purpose of ELSEWISE it is more useful to identify the factors that stimulate the effective usage of applications in the LSE business (opportunities), and the factors that hinder their usage (barriers). Therefore the trends, opportunities and barriers of application software are described for four main categories of software:

· Discipline Specific Applications

· General Business Applications

· Applications for Distributed Engineering

· Solutions for Integration

Trends, opportunities and barriers are primarily described from the viewpoint of application vendors.

1.3An Application Framework

Hundreds, if not thousands of computer applications are used today for the LSE Industry. In order to structure the discussion of applications, a framework with respect to their functionality is sketched.

This framework consists of three layers of functionality [fig.1]:

· Technical layer: hardware (computers, peripherals, networks) and system software (operating systems, drivers, network protocols). The content of this layer is described in task 3000.

· Information Integration layer: the information sharing and exchange environment (database management systems, communication software). ). The content of this layer is described in task 3100.

· Application layer: the functionality that supports end-users with their tasks. This is the subject of Task 3200.

The application layer can be structured in accordance with general business functions. In any business a distinction can be made between:

· Operational business functions: the functions that deal with daily business such as product design, construction, maintenance and operation.

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· Tactical business functions: business management functions such as for project planning and project management.

· Strategical business functions: general business functions that deal with overall business objectives such as finance, administration, knowledge management, etc.

The operational level deals with specific applications for LSE disciplines and business processes. The tactical level deals with project management and integration issues. This level is in terms of integration an area of concern as LSE projects are usually executed by consortia that comprise different companies with different cultures, knowledge and infrastructures. The strategical level is tight to one company that may be involved in many different projects.

Use Word 6.0c or later to

view Macintosh picture.

Fig. 1. Graphical presentation of the functional framework for IT. The framework is subdivided in three layers: a technical framework (hardware, networks, operating systems and network protocols), an

information framework (information management) and an application framework. The latter framework is on its turn subdivided in three layers: a strategic layer (business management), a tactical layer (management of LSE projects, asset management and operation management) and an operational

layer (design, construction, asset execution and proces control).

Applications can be organised in association with the main business processes that they support. A distinction can be made between applications at the three levels: strategical (general business integration applications and management support tools) tactical (project, asset and operation management systems) operational (design, construction, asset execution and process control systems).

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2What exists today

2.1Discipline Specific Applications

Discipline specific applications (or: ÔTechnical SoftwareÕ) are used to support specific tasks. There is a wide range of applications in use today. Their contribution to the LSE business varies.

Advanced structural analysis software based on finite element analysis, for example, has enlarged the freedom of design, lead to significant reductions of material costs, and has increased the predictability of structural behaviour. Not only for steel-, concrete- or wooden structures, but also for soil-, wind- and hydro-mechanics, and non-mechanical applications such as thermal behaviour. The same analysis software has taken away the need to make full-size or scaled models for simulation purposes.

Where finite element or related technologies support Ôhigh endÕ applications - complex structures and environmental conditions - there exist today also a wide range of dedicated computer applications based on simpler techniques.

The planning of complex projects has become impossible without advanced planning tools.

And, more visible, draughting applications have accellerated the design process, more specifically the time-consuming alteration of designs.

3D design is however not yet widely used in the construction industry. As far as 3D applications are used, they are often restricted to the creation of pretty pictures and simulation. A link between design and production, which does exist in other sectors such as in the mechanical and electrotechnical industries, is hardly supported by applications for the LSE industry. The lack of integrated software in general is for a large part due to the way the LSE industry is organised.

There are three ways to look at discipline specific applications, which are described in the folowing chapters.

2.1.1Usage.

Applications can be differentiated according to the task, process or discipline for which they are used. Foir example, they can be differentiated according to:

· lifecycle phases: design, construction, maintenance, operation

· LSE sector: roads, railroads, plants, utility, housing, bridges, tunnels, waterworks, etc.

· discipline: architecture, construction, physics, legislation, etc.

2.1.2Adaptivity.

As the majority of tasks is highly specialised, it doesnÕt pay off for vendors to develop dedicated software. This has lead to the development of general, but user-adaptable applications. Well known adaptive applications are database management systems and spreadsheets. But also draughting applications can be adapted to particular user needs. The functionality of the popular AutoCad package, for example, can be adapted to the specific needs of a discipline.

The adaptive rules are written in application specific languages. A danger is therefore that a change of application, caused by bankrupcy of the vandor or a change in IT policy of the user, will destroy the invested value of these extensions. An example of such a case happened

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in mid-90Õies to several engineering firms in the process industry. Calma, a leading vendor of 3D CAD software, was taken over by Computervision. Computervision decided to break with the old-fashioned Calma software and to introduce new software. This change made hundreds of Calma applications that were written in the Calma specific languge DAL obsolete; a huge desinvestment for these users.

2.1.3Object-centration.

Traditional applications are used to create documents or models of a particular aspect (like shape). These applications cannot be integrated with others, since they lack the notion of objects that are represented in the documents or models.

A new generation of applications emerges that does have the notion of objects that are respresented. Two first wave of these applications represents annotated documents and models. They are not truly object-centered, since thay are basically old-fashioned document or model centered applications that allow a user to associate database content with the elements of the document or model. Although these applications may look ÔintelligentÕ to a user, real world objects are not represented in a unique fashion by these applications. Therefore it is not easy to keep the associated data consistent.

The next wave of applications is truly object-centered. This means that they represent ecxplicitly real world LSE objects. Information in the form of document elements (pieces of text, drawing elements) or models (like 3D shape, finite elements, associated data) are associated with the objects. The notion of ÔobjectÕ is in these applications normally still simple, allowing only hierarchical breakdown structures. More powerful combinations can be made with dedicated configuration management systems such as PDM (Product Data Management) systems. A disadvantage of object centered applications is that many users are not used to think object-centered. The acceptance of this new generation of applications is therefore limited.

2.2General business software

2.2.1Office Automation Tools

Office Automation Tools are applications that copy and/or replace standard office equipment such as typewriters, filing cabinets and white boards, and consumables like yellow ÔstickiesÕ and pens. The applications that are today available to almost every employee in the office are word-processors, spread-sheets, presentation packages and simple database management systems. These applications do not affect the business significantly. Due to the maturity of these applications, no major developments are expected that need attention in the context of Elsewise.

2.2.2Applications for finance and purchasing

For every private company, finance is the most important measure for business performance. Financial applications support therefore the backbone of the company and are an aid for the financial controller. The most important new developments of financial applications are in the area of integration with applications for purchasing, sales, logistics, warehousing, forecasting and planning.

For the communication between applications for purchasing and sales used by different companies, EDIFACT standards become increasingly important. New developments are triggered by electronic banking and the use of Internet for the ordering of products and electronic payment.

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2.2.3Management support tools

2.2.3.1Data WarehousingData warehousing has emerged as a new method for storing and interrogating data, collocated over a number of years of business operations. In essence, a data warehouse is database that contains non-volatile data: the content remains unchanged in time. Time variance of data is represented explicitly. For example, if the price of a building material varies over time, the data warehouse contains a sequence of prices for given time-intervals. This enables the organisation to study trends and correlations between values. Traditional databases are volatile and provide therefore no basis to learn from the data. Users do not access the data in a data warehouse directly; they do this via support tools that extract useful data from the source data. Some of these tools (data mining, OLAP) are being discussed separately in this document.

Data warehousing is not yet widely applied in industry. The first applications emerge in companies that already possess well structured data.

Organisations are beginning to understand the potential benefit of the technology and are more committed to putting in place a corporate wide warehousing solution. Data warehousing offers a substantial business and technical benefits to the organisations. However, despite the intense interest and activity among consultants and vendors - each of them with their own methodology and products - experience suggests that installing a data warehouse continues to a difficult undertaking with many potential pitfalls. It is encouraging to know that the business expectations for data warehousing achieve a more realistic level - and the difficult task of building a warehouse successfully taken - the business benefits are considerable.

The success of the data warehouse is in its ability to provide the information required by the users, rather than masses of data. Data cleansing is one key problem area which can be prevented at the data entry stage by ensuring the input is consistent by using the data cleansing software.

2.2.3.2Data MiningOnce the data warehouse has been successfully established, the organisations can access data using tools such as OLAP (On Line Analytic Processing) or DARTs. These tools are good for providing management information such as summarised data, or identifying simple business trends and risks. Bust these tools seldom deliver information that offers opportunities to target new markets or products or acquire strategic advantage by optimising production processes.

Also these tools do not have features to extract rules and knowledge that may be evaluated from the business perspective. A much more rich extraction methods whereby not only the data is extracted but the knowledge, rules and objectives trends can be interpreted. Furthermore, almost exclusively, these tools operate on the conventional databases, however the company information is often stored in documents, spreadsheets, CAD systems, etc. As a result a new concept of ‘Intelligent Warehouse’ is now emerging

2.2.3.3Decision Support EnvironmentThe current definition says that software tools designed to allow decision makers in an organisation to make decisions by reviewing, monitoring and manipulating data in the current databases and in data warehouse. This allows them to make more informed decisions than if

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they were using the standard database query tools. Mostly read-only they also involve modelling and forecasting of the future, so some data may be written to the live systems.

There are a number of companies who claim to have tools for the decision support environment like Brann Software, Brio Technology, Business object, Cognos, Computer Associates Comshare, IBM, etc. Most of these companies also claim to sell data warehousing tools. These are predominantly query tools, some have capability of statistical processing capability, but none of them have real intelligence where extraction of knowledge, business rules and key performance indicators can be derived at all levels of organisation. Furthermore they do not have facilities to evaluate cost functions and carry out risk analysis for different ‘options’ or ‘what ifs’ so that time-critical decision can be made. Currently these fall under the category of AI tools. The decision support tools need to encompass all techniques like genetic algorithms, neural networks, fuzzy logic, expert system, case based reasoning constraint satisfaction theory, etc. so that appropriate use is made with the vast amount of data with a relatively simple and responsive mechanism. Furthermore data resides not only in the databases but also in text documents, engineering designs and drawings and CAD systems, so consideration has to be given to extraction of knowledge from these media.

Management decision processes and the associated information requirement are becoming more complex and time-critical and some times global. The need is therefore for flexibility to handle future management decisions process that are unknown at present.

2.2.4Integrated solutions

Integrated solutions for business automation are rapidly becoming popular in the European Industry. Market leader in this field is SAP AG in Germany. The SAP software was originally running on large centralised systems (mainframes), but since a few years a decentralised solution (SAP R/3) has conquered a large share of the market. SAP is mainly sold to large firms, although smaller companies with relative important logistic processes are also applying this software successfully.

In the shadow of SAP the Dutch company BAAN becomes increasingly successful with its Baan IV software. The BAAN software aims at large (such as Boeing and Ford) and middle-sized companies.

Comparable software that is developed in the US, marketed by Oracle and Peoplesoft, has currently no significant European market share.

The scope of the integrated solutions mentioned here comprises roughly the following functional domains:

· financial accounting· controlling· human resource management· logistics (sales and distribution)· production planning· materials management· quality management· asset management· plant maintenance· business WorkflowBoth SAP and BAAN extend their software currently with electronic document (EDM) and product data management (PDM) modules.

Implementations of integrated solutions go hand in hand with business process redesign (BPR). This leads in the majority of cases to a significant improvement of business

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performance. Integrated solutions are therefore integrated in the truest sense of all: they integrate the business in which they are applied.

The other side of the medal is that the introduction of integrated packages has a severe impact on the organisation and the business processes. If a project that aims at the introduction of integrated packages is not well managed and not sufficiently supported by business management, there is the risk of a painful transformation phase.

2.3Applications for distributed engineering

2.3.1Document Registration

Document registration systems are predecessors of the Document Management systems that will be discussed hereafter. In essence, they contain data about (paper) documents and are used as a tool to manage document versions, ownership, status, and so on. Document registration systems are common practice in many LSE companies.

2.3.2Document management

2.3.2.1General functionalityThe majority of documents is created with electronic tools today. This offers the opportunity to manage documents at their source, i.e. the electronic files that are used to print paper documents from. At first Electronic Document Management (EDM) systems were aimed at managing only the files that were generated with for example a word processor like MS Word, later they were expanded with functionality to manage all types of files and documents. An EDM system offers the following functionality:

· Storage: documents are stored together with their attributes (author, date of creation, title, key words, etc.) on a wide variety of storage devices, including CD-ROM and WORM.

· Retrieval: a document may be found without knowing in advance where it is stored, the system will retrieve it with an acceptable response time, and it can be displayed to the user, regardless of its internal format. Users will scan a certain storage area or define a query based on the attributes to retrieve documents. Furthermore search engines exist that allow for full-text retrieval including proximity searches, “sounds like”, relevancy ranking and fuzzy logic searches.

· Version control: every time a new version is created the old version is saved and comments are added so it is easy to distinguish between different versions.

· Check In / Check out keeps track of who is working on which document, and ensures that two people cannot make conflicting updates to the same document. Documents are physically checked in into a vault, thus securing it and making it accessible to other users. After checking out the document is copied to the user’s workspace and other users are not able to edit the document any more.

· Redlining and Annotation: when an author has produced a draft others can review his document and add comments using redlining and annotations.

· Security: an important requirement of document management is security of both content and attributes. An EDM system offers functionality to grant users access in many ways, thus enabling a company to determine exactly who is allowed to access a document. Security is provided, in the form of access control to documents, where individuals or

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groups are given specific access rights to documents and groups of documents in the system

· Imaging: in order to make paper documents accessible it is necessary to convert them to an electronic format. Using scanning hardware and software they can be converted to digital images that can be stored in the EDM system. When documents contain text Optical Character Recognition (OCR) can be used to produce a digital text document.

A document management system handles multiple document formats, including proprietary word processing formats, HTML (Hypertext Mark-up Language, for documents on the Web), and SGML (Standard Generalised Mark-up Language, ISO 8879: the international standard for mark-up of the content of documents).

2.3.2.2Document searchingDocument management software can index the full text of documents, allowing for full text searching based on any words which occur in the documents. Boolean searching, using logical operators, enables searching for multiple words which must all occur (AND), for the occurrence of at least one of the words (OR), and for the absence of a word (NOT).

Proximity searching allows the user to specify how near the search words must appear to each other, to help prevent retrieval of documents where the words are distant from each other, and are not related. Phrasal searching allows the user to find documents which contain a sequence of words as a distinct unit (a phrase), and not just the words appearing separately.

The facility for weighting of search terms allows the specification by the user of more or less crucial words, which are given higher or lower weightings. Retrieved documents are ranked by the system in order of likely relevance, depending on the weightings and frequency of occurrence of the words found in the documents. Thus, the user may inspect the documents in order of likely relevance, to find the required document(s) as quickly as possible.

Similarity searching is a powerful facility for finding further documents that are similar to the current one which the user judges as relevant. While the original user request may have consisted of one or only a few words on which to search, one or more documents judged by the user to be relevant contain further information that the system may use to find other relevant documents. Statistical similarity measures between the words contained in documents are used to judge their similarity.

2.3.2.3Document databasesA collection of documents may be stored and managed as a document database. These documents may be stored in various formats, and may be distributed across multiple computers and sites. For example, the documents may be stored on a local server, or at a distant Internet site.

Replication is a method of sharing of information within a workgroup, where any changes are automatically updated throughout the workgroup. For example, if a document on a distant site is updated by another member of the workgroup, the new version will automatically become available to all other members of the workgroup who have access permission.

Security is provided, including encryption and decryption (using cryptography). Thus documents, if intercepted by a third party, are in encrypted form and cannot be read by them. This is a vital element of a distributed document database, particularly where documents are transferred across the Internet. Confidential documents must be protected from accidental or intentional access by third parties.

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Authentication is also provided, allowing for the verification of the identity of an individual. This prevents an unauthorised person from gaining access to the system. Access control, which may limit the access rights of genuine users, is described above, and is a further component of security.

2.3.3Product Data Management

Although the application of EDM has many advantages over paper based working methods, it has one major disadvantage. This is the fact that a minor change in the configuration of a facility may affect many documents. Every object that is part of a building or another LSE facility may be represented in many documents. Product Data Management (PDM) systems manage information associated with objects in a facility so that the consequences of configuration changes can be traced automatically.

At the core of each PDM system lies Document Management; initially aimed at managing CAD files it now offers the same functionality as the EDM system. Furthermore PDM offers extra functionality related to management of information:

· Product Structure Management: the product structure can be defined with a graphical representation and documents are linked to a certain part of the structure. It is possible to create different views on the product structure; a mechanical engineer views a product in different way than an electrical engineer does. Product structures are used to organise information and enable easy retrieval.

· Product Configuration Management: extending product structures with the dimension of time enables the organisation to keep track of product configurations as they change over time. The product configuration can be registered during the entire life cycle. This is of great importance with regard to product liability; for example when an aeroplane crashes the producer should be able to reproduce all documents valid for that specific aeroplane.

· Application integration: in order to manage all product related data it is necessary to integrate applications. In that way PDM applications form a transparent layer on all applications used, providing one uniform window on all data.

PDM applications also contain Workflow modules. They are often expanded with Change Management modules which allow the user to create an Engineering Change Order, study the impact on other parts of the product and the related documents and subsequently submit the change order in a Workflow so the progress of the change order can be monitored closely. Furthermore Project and Program Management modules are being developed that support the planning of projects and complete series of product ranges.

PDM seems to be less applicable for the LSE industry than EDM, because of the Ôone-of-kindÕ nature of the LSE product. The number of changes that is made in a design or in reality is less high than in (semi) mass production industries. As a consequence, the effort of adopting working methods that are centered around LSE product configuration structures does not weigh up against the advantages of PDM. Process plants may form an exception to this rule. Because of increasingly strong product liability constraints with respect to safety and environment, the legislation with respect to the configuration of plants has become so demanding that plant owners require today an electronic database of all plant information that complies with the actual status of the plant (as-operated and as-maintained).

PDM will become a more feasible option once companies apply object centered applications such as 3D CAD and intelligent applications for schematics.

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Fig. 2. Trends in the way information will be handled. There is a maximum amount of paper that an organisation can handle. Once this point is reached, document management and PDM will help the organisation with vaster amounts of information. The next limit is the amount of information that

humans can handle. Product Data Technology records information in a computer interpratible manner, thus allowing the organisation to cope with even vaster amounts of information. The LSE industry is

currently reaching the first critical point.

2.3.4Groupware

The employee of today works in groups and very often these groups are multi disciplinary teams that share their knowledge and schedule their joint activities, even though they may work at different locations.

Groupware applications enable organisations to communicate, to collaborate and to co-ordinate their business processes. They do not just encompass electronic mail but they act as an integrated platform to develop and use applications that structure the flow of both structured and unstructured information. Well known groupware packages are MS Exchange and Lotus Notes. Both have millions of users.

Internet and Intranet also offer groupware functionality. Intranet applications are based on Internet software, such as Internet browsers. They provide the infrastructure for companies to share their information world wide. One of the interesting consequences is “around the clock design” where a team of designers starts working on a design and, at the end of the day send everything to another part of the world where another team can continue the design.

Messaging services may be part of information oriented applications. These include electronic mail, for person to person communication. Bulletin boards allow messages to be posted. Scheduling systems allow users to record their own appointments, and arrange meetings of groups of people. Workflow routing, as described above, is a further component of messaging.

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2.3.5Workflow Management

Workflow management tools are used to model the activities performed in an organisation. Once these activities are modelled the model can be used to manage and control them, and to activate applications that are needed to perform a certain task. Although engineering activities contain a high degree of informal and unstructured activities compared to an office environment, it is very well possible to support and manage them through Workflow management applications.

Workflow management includes Workflow routing, where documents are sent to users when they are needed, based on a fixed sequence of work or on a more complex set of conditions. For example, a document may need to be created, updated, reviewed, and read by a number of specific people in a particular order. There may be a fixed sequence in which these people need to see the document, but with the possibility of the document being returned to a previous person, if further work is needed, and then continuing to follow again the normal sequence.

Workflow maps provide an overview of the state of processing of documents in the system. For example, the user may wish to see any documents that are behind schedule. Audit trails allow for the inspection of the complete history of processing of particular documents.

Project collaboration involves support for and management of the various aspects of a project. The members of the team of each project are registered. Documents and folders may be selected as belonging to a particular project, or accessible to team members of the project. Support is provided for project discussions, project task lists, and project Workflow.

2.4 Solutions for Integration

Three types of integration will be discussed here:

· system integration: the coupling of hardware and software systems.

· application integration: the functional coupling of software applications.

· information integration: the information sharing and information exchange between computer applications.

2.4.1System Integration

System integration has become an important subject due to the trend in the late 80-ies and early 90-ies to migrate from large centralised computer systems (mainframes, miniÕs) to decentralised systems (micro-computers, PCÕs).

A network solution consists of many levels of functionality that inter-operate. Network technology is boosting due to the fact that telecommunication networks such as for telephone and TV are migrating from analogue to digital standards. The huge capacity of digital networks needed for these applications will have a major impact on the price and performance of networks. Through this development the distinction between home appliances such as telephone, TV and radio, and office appliances such as telephone, fax, computer, printer and copier are rapidly diminishing. Due to the digitisation of these technologies and the sharing of digital networks all these technologies are merging into one.

The most important development that is triggered by network technology is the integration of networks through INTERNET. The success of Internet is for a large part due to the availability of Free-ware and Share-ware that has set de facto standards. Of these, the most important one is the language HTML, used for the definition of World Wide Web pages. HTML is derived from the ISO standard SGML. Market leader in the field of Internet

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browsers is Netscape. The JAVA language, developed by Sun Microsystems in the US, has become one of the most important languages for the development of Internet applications.

As an important spin-off of Internet technology, many large companies are setting up their internal IntranetÕs; these are relatively easy to build networks that are entirely based on Internet software and standards.

2.4.2Application Integration

The integration of applications is still a major stumble-block. With the decrease of software costs and the rapid changes of software versions, costum-build interfaces are expensive.

Object-technology may improve this situation, but it will not provide the full answer. A method that is applied currently by many vendors is the wrapping of existing applications in standardised object-oriented shells. The Eureka Software Factory project (ESF) was during the last decade one of the most significant efforts of the European software industry in this direction.

In order to avoid a direct linking of applications, the communication of data objects across platforms and networks is enabled via low level standards such as TCP/IP and high level standards such as CORBA.

These standards, as well as standards for object linking and embedding (MicrosoftÕs OLE), are merely tools for application integration. The actual integration of applications requires still a major effort for programmers in order to establish full functional integration.

2.4.3Information Integration

The European industry at large communicates its information still mainly in paper form, even though the majority of documents is today produced with digital media. This situation is however changing in the late 90-ies. Practically all major companies in the process industry, aerospace industry, automotive industry and the mechanical industry are implementing solutions for Electronic Document Management and Product Data Management. The trend to manage electronic data as the master is triggered by the CALS (Continuous Acquisition and Lifecycle Support) initiative in the defence industry.

EDM/PDM does not address integration at the level of information content. Information Content Management requires a semantic definition of information that can be interpreted by intelligent computer applications.

Database technology enables the sharing of information by applications on a content level. The type of database technology that is today still most powerful is that of relational databases. There is a trend towards object oriented databases, but this technology is still in its childhood. Applications can access data in a database via a standardised data access and manipulation interface. For relational databases this is SQL (Standard Query Language). Vendors of object oriented database management systems have defined a similar standard, ODMG (Object Database Management Group).

Although SQL and ODMG provide standardised interfaces to database management systems, these standards do not define data and functions for business applications. This means that information integration via shared databases is as expensive as the development of direct interfaces between applications. The Shell-group has calculated that the costs of integration add up to 75% of total IT costs.

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Fig. 3. Three levels of information integration and their corresponding most popular standards.

2.4.4Services for integration.

As described above, application integration and information integration are today not entirely solved by standards. There is therefore a significant market for system integration services, as offered by major companies like IBM, EDS, CSC, Cap Gemini and Arthur Anderson.

The services that these major IT companies provide to the market are however changing, influenced by the trends that are reported.

In the past, the IT companies mentioned focused largely on the realisation of costum-build solutions. This required programming and project management skills. With the introduction of increasingly better standard software packages, the need for programmers decreased. A new market developed around the customisation of integrated solutions such as SAP and BAAN. More recently, the customisation of Product Data Management packages and Intranet solutions form also an interesting market for the major IT companies. This market is so large that the IT service companies are still growing and have problems to find personnel with the required skills. It is expected that the growth of business through customisation of standard packages will not continue, through the emergence of pre-customised solutions for business integration solutions.

As integrated solutions offer companies the opportunity to integrate their business processes, business process redesign (BPR) has become another major field for the provision of services. Actually, the expected growth of sales of pre-customised business integration solutions will trigger BPR services: future systems are not tailored anymore to the existing business process of companies, but the business processes are changed to comply with the integrated IT solution. This is expected to bring significant benefits for the companies that apply the integrated solutions.

Through these developments, some of the major IT companies are shifting their business gradually from IT to business consulting and change management. Arthur Anderson is an example of a company that has a tradition in consulting, but is expanding its business in the direction of IT. Cap Gemini does the opposite: this IT company migrates towards management consulting and the delivery of complete business and IT transformation services.

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3Barriers and opportunities

3.1Barriers to LSE uptake

Barriers for the uptake of new technologies by the LSE industry can be of different nature. A differentiation can be made between the following types of barriers:

1. Economical barriers. New technologies are not always cost-effective. Their cost effectiveness cannot be easily proven or measured. Besides, a return on investment can in most cases only be realised through the introduction of new working practices; a factor that is often not adequatelly addressed in combination with IT by LSE companies. The LSE industry is also characterised by relatively low profit margins, thus making very little room for investments. A significant part of the LSE industry consists of small and medium sized companies which have very little room for investments.

· The way LSE projects are budgeted leaves little room for new IT technologies that require company wide commitment and cannot be justified within the scope of just one project.

1. Technological barriers. New technologies are not always fit-for-purpose. They are often developed for other types of industries before they are introduced in the LSE industry. The performance of new technologies may be inadequate: LSE projects are large and LSE facilities may contain millions of components.

· Technological developments change to rapidly (causing industry to wait until technologies become stable and standards are set)

· Construction industry is currently a small market for IT systems. The high development costs limit the number of available commercial products. Constructors needs are not covered by available general applications. Construction companies cannot pay for expensive software while they can do their job without IT. As an example, standard structural analysis programs are not designed for AEC needs

· Internet and Intranet introduce security risks that have to be considered seriously before implementation. When a company joins the Internet it not only makes information available to other authorised parties, but it might also give opportunity to unauthorised access.

1. Integration barriers. The LSE industry works in a project centered way, often within consortia that exist only for a short period of time. The effectiveness of IT in a project is hindered by the unability to communicate data in electronic form between consortium partners. Standards for electronic data interchange are necessary, but the LSE industry lacks ÔchampionsÕ that are able to enforce the usage of these standards. The most convenient way of communication remains therefore paper based.

2. Awareness. Management in the LSE industry is rather conservative and not fully aware the possibilities offered by new technologies. The translation of technologies into new business practices is not easily made.

3. Working practices. Many employees have a natural resistance to change their current way of working. New technologies are often applied in tradtional working practices, so that no significant benefits are gained. The educational programmes of schools, colleges and universities are inadequate. Although computer science is being teached, the focus is too much on technology and not sufficiently on new ways of problem solving that are enabled

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by the new technologies. The curriculae of educational institutes have to be adapted in a more drastic way.

· Internet/Intranet and groupware applications allow people to work at a different location than their regular office. This poses challenges for management because it requires a new way of managing and controlling employees.

· Internet and Intranet provide employees the possibility to go “surfing”, which can be used for relevant information searching, but also to waste their time.

· To implement a Workflow application it is required to model the working practices. If people work informally or if they are not ready to formally describe their activities implementation will meet a considerable organisational resistance.

· industrial thinking (cost reduction through scale effects) is often lacking: tendency to prefer home-grown solutions over standard commercially available solutions and outsourcing of work. In domains where clients are large industrial customer the LSE industry tends to have a different attitude and apply more innovative technologies (f.e. plant construction for the process industry)

· no triggers for major changes in way of working due to minimal international competition: LSE products are not movable and competition was until recently hindered by national laws and local legislation. Legislation itself hinders also often changes in working practices.

· ÔOver-specificationÕ of designs using traditional methods hinders contractors and suppliers to bring in new technologies.

3.2Opportunities

Opportunities for the uptake of new technologies by the LSE industry can be found by removing some of the barriers mentioned before.:

1. Economical opportunities.

The traditionally fragemented LSE industry is rapidly changing in recent years through mergers and takeovers. Especially some large contractors and large supply firms with sufficient financial resources reduce their business risks through regional expansion. Many firms that were originally focussed on local (national) markets are expanding their business internationally.

This trend leads to new challenges. How will a large, internationally operating firm act as one company in stead of a dozen local ones? The expected large expansion of telecommunication networks in combination with digital technologies provides an opportunity to improve large distance communication drastically. It must be noted here that telecommunication alone is not sufficient to improve communication between people in internationally operating companies. To make new technologies more effective for each company, it is required to improve people skills in communication aspects as well as the exploitation and re-use of knowledge that exists elsewhere in the company. This subject is better known as knowledge management.

A second opportunity comes from the expansion of discipline skills and know-how within the multi-national LSE companies. This creates the possibility to sell multi-discipline services in stead of the (traditional) mono-discipline services. Multi-discipline skills make it possible to provide more value for a costumer. An axample of a new type of service is that of turn key projects (Build Operate Transfer) and full product lifecycle support projects (Build Own Operate Transfer). Information

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Technology and especially Product Data Interchange (PDI) play an important enabling role in such projects by management and communication of asset data. The higher value of such projects for clients make it possible to increase financial margins.

A third opportunity lies in the enlargement of the scale of the LSE business. Larger turn-overs and larger profits will create higher budgets for investment, including investments in IT. In order to turn investments in economic benefits in multi-national companies it required that they develop a corporate Information Management and Information Technology strategy.

2. Technological opportunities.

An opportunity that exists for all LSE companies, large or small, is created by the continuously growing performance of micro computers. Even the most complex software runs today on small computers, and the user-friendlyness of microÕs is improving. Price remains a hurdle for smaller companies: although the price/performance ratio decreases, the avarage price of hardware and software remains at a constant level. Given the fact that base technologies are still rapidly changing, the economic lifetime of micro computers remains short (2-3 yrs).

Client/server technologies may create specific opportunities for smaller companies working in changing business contexts (consortia, projects). Project information may be shared by consortium partners through a central server. The shared use of software may be enabled by network computers (NCÕs).

3. Opportunities through integration.

Systems that support business integration, such as integrated MRP/Logistic/Financial systems (SAP, Baan, etc.), Document Management systems (EDM) and Document distribution systems (Intranet, Lotus Notes etc.) are not yet widely used in LSE industry but may offer benefits if they are applied for the implementation of business best practices.

Business integration solutions will only be successful if the necessary measures are taken in the organisation and in business practices. The importance of this critical success factor is often underestimated.

Standards for information interchange and communication are today not successfully applied in the LSE industry because powerful parties that can enforce the application of these standards seem not be present (which is different from, for example, the automotive and aerospace industries that are dominated by a handful of powerful companies). If the LSE industry is able to organise itself so that the use of standards can be enforced, and if the industry takes the necessary measures to implement business best practices in conjunction, standards may become another area of new opportunities.

4. Awareness.

Opportunities that are offered by new technologies are often not sufficiently understood. This is not just a matter of ÔunawarenessÕ at the technological level. Many major LSE companies employ specialists that have a fair understanding of recent technological developments. A more critical factor is the understanding of the potential impact of new technologies on the organisation, its human resources and its business processes. The essential question is therefore: what do new technologies mean for the enterprise?.

The ability of a company to understand the potential of new technologies in terms of new business opportunities and its ability to change are therefore two significant factors for success.

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At this level, the creation of awareness in several layers of the organisation may create new opportunities.

5. Working practices.

Information technology and information management offer the potential for an LSE enterprise to change paradigms in working practices fundamentally. Examples of such paradigm shifts are 3D design and product modelling as opposed to draughting, object oriented (ÔintelligentÕ) applications and databases as opposed to document centered way of working, electronic document management and product data management, as opposed to paper based ways of working, and the Ôvirtual enterpriseÕ, as opposed to physical forms of communication and organisation.

The impact of these new paradigms is so fundamental that it affects the way of working of many people in the organisation on almost every thing they do. In practice, very few organisations are able to undergo such major changes. The result is that new technologies are often used to support working practices that are still traditional. 3D systems are for example used to produce 2D drawings. CAD systems are used to produce paper documents. The copying machine is in almost every company the major means for information distribution, even though almost all documents are produced electronically.

The use of new technologies to support old working paradigms is understandable in a period of transition, just as the first automobiles looked like (and were used as) carriages without horses. At a certain point in time industry will be able to translate new technological paradigms into new business paradigms. At that point, a fundamental change will occur that brings the real benefits of the new technologies to the business.

A foundation for these paradigm shifts can be created in education. Students need to learn to solve problems with the support of new technologies. In order to create ÔseedbedsÕ for innovative ways of working, LSE companies can form kernels of young professionals in their organisations that apply new ways of working to solve actual business problems.

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4Trends and expectations

The following major trends in the field of computer applications with relevance for LSE are identified:

1. The increasing importance of object orientation in programming languages and database management systems. A Ôparadigm shiftÕ that develops in parallel is the transition from document centered information management towards product/object centered information management. Such applications will be seen as ÔintelligentÕ since they recognize the logical objects used in design and construction. Standards like STEP will provide the necessary baseline for the standardization of business objects. This paradigm shift may create important new oportunities for the LSE industry if the industry is able to rethink its way of working accordingly.

2. The increasing importance of client/server architectures, especially in combination with internet- and intranet-technologies, will enable LSE consortia to share electronic information and to integrate distributed software systems. In addition it will become possible to share software across partners in a consortium (a technology that has triggered the idea for Network Computers or NCÕs). This development makes the dependency on standards for data interchange wiothin in a consortium less critical.

3. Paper based ways of working will be replaced by the sharing of electronic data. The first step in this process will be the usage of Electronic Document Management systems. A major step further will be Product Data Management; a step that can only be taken if the usage of ÔintelligentÕ object centered applications becomes common practice.

4. Communication between persons in an organisation will undergo a major change. It is today so easy to produce and distribute information, that the consumption of that information has become a new ÔbottleneckÕ. New software is being developed around the “broadcasting” metaphor. The software enables companies to send information to subscribers through “channels”. This means that information is pushed to the subscriber and it is clustered in channels like on television. So a user can have a Sports channel, but also a company channel, software update channel and so on. This will increase the effectiveness of Internet/Intranet considerably.

5. Uniformity of user interfaces. The metaphor of Windows for application and document usage has become a standard across platforms. Internet browsers (such as Netscape Navigator) provide a common interface for all kinds of applications that manipulate information.

6. The rapid digitisation of all thinkable information carriers (including telephone, television and radio) lead to a convergence of technologies for communication.

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5Relevance to LSE

The major IT vendors and service providers do not invest heavily in new products for the LSE industry. The main reason for this is the low level of investment in IT by this industry, especially in externally offered products or services.

As a result, many products offered by large IT vendors do not meet the specific demands of the construction industry. Exceptions exist for certain planning tools and design tools for, for example, process plants and civil infrastructure.

There are many LSE specific tools available, offered by smaller vendors or vendors that operate in a specific region. As there are not many market leaders for specific applications, there are unsufficient industry standards. The applications that are specifically developed for the construction industry stem often from in-house developed applications and are marketed by small vendors. These applications have generally a low market share and the vendors have to deal with relatively small budgets for product innovation.

This situation may change in the next decades. Vendors, users and technologies are maturing. The specific needs of the LSE industry are better understood by vendors, and users are getting a better understanding of the possibilities of new technologies. The technologies themselves, which develop in the direction of ÔintelligentÕ object-centered applications, become more powerful and useful for the industry. A shake-out of vendors will occur, so that the remaining vendors gain a relatively larger market share. This will support the migration towards industry standards and will increase the budgets for development of new software.

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6Conclusion

The major IT vendors and service providers do not invest heavily in new products for the LSE industry. The main reason for this is the low level of investment in IT by this industry, especially in externally offered products or services.

As a result, many products offered by large IT vendors do not meet the specific demands of the construction industry. Execeptions exist for certain planning tools and design tools for, for example, process plants and road design.

For the successful uptake of new technologies in the LSE industry it is essential that new business paradigms for design, project development, project execution and asset management will be developed. These paradigms need to be understood in multiple levels of the LSE industry, educational institutes and vendors of IT solutions.

Until today, the majority of new technologies have entered the LSE business Ôbottom upÕ through indivdual staff members or departments with only IT responsibility. Little or nothing has changed in the way LSE companies do their work. As a result, new technologies have not contributed much to overall business performance. There is need for corporate strategies within the leading LSE enterprises in which the new business paradigms are translated into new business practices. Only then can we expect that the IT industry is capable to provide the right instruments to support such new ways of working, and only then can we expect that the LSE industry will get the benefits of new technologies.

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Date post:	18-Mar-2020
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