Re: [ontolog-forum] Ontological Means for Systems Engineering

[paola.dimaio@xxxxxxxxx]

Hi Howard

 

 

My question is how the discipline of ontologies can be use to extend, enrich, or facilitate the deployment and exploitation of the work by the community which faces the real business challenge of exchanging and sharing information across a heterogeneous set of tools. 

Ontologies can be used in  a variety of different ways to acheive a multiplicity of objectives. You say that agreement over terminology is achieved, so what you have, in my interpretation of your statement, is a controlled vocabulary.
This is an essential ontological artifacts, as well as a great starting point. However, what happens when some staff for some reason do not use the correct term with the intended meaning, despite the agreement acheived? An ontological approach can be adopted to support systems constraints , so that such terminology is actually used as intended in email, documents, processes etc

So assume that tomorrow someone working at the edge of our infoormation network creates a new class. A system that uses an ontology would cross reference some parameters to make sure that the class name, and other class variables, are not in conflict with the agreed schema.

Now, when it comes to checking terminology this is important, but also relatively straight forward. When it comes to check consistency of data flow, and to validate certain processes, say, this becomes a bit more complicated.

An ontological approach can also be used to support factors optimisation (as in production efficiency),

In general, as well implemented ontological approach can help to reduce information errors, it is going to help your overall quality assurance and reduce fault injection

The other side of the coin is that a poorly implemented ontological approach, or over relianece on it, may become a black hole
(lots of ontological efforts are weak or slow because of poor project management)

 

Paola Di Maio

 

 

Howard Mason

BAE Systems Corporate IT Office

On Fri, Jan 30, 2009 at 4:01 PM, Azamat <abdoul@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Tuesday, January 27, 2009 11:38 PM, Howard Mason wrote:

As Chair of the ISO committee responsible fo Industrial Data, and with a job remit that includes information standards for BAE Systems worldwide, I would be most interested ot learn what the ontology community can do to build on many millions of dollars of existing investment, and to enhance the use and exploitation of the knowledge that has already been agreed.

 

Howard,

kindly enlighen what is here the point. Some multi-million investment has been done to some engineering projects , and now you are in need of some standardization model. Or, the multi-million investment is to be allocated for common industrial data and information  standards [for complex engineering systems and processes], and you are in need of integrated ontological schema. Thanks.

Azamat Abdoullaev

----- Original Message -----

From: Howard Mason

To: Jack Ring ; [ontolog-forum]

Sent: Tuesday, January 27, 2009 11:38 PM

Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Ontological Means for Systems Engineering

I think it is worth noting that there is already a considerable body of standards for systems engineering in ISO and INCOSE, with information models developed over the years that are already integrated with product structure and performance standards - ISO 15288 and the new STEP Systems Engineering  ISO 10303-233 standard come to mind.

 

As Chair of the ISO committee responsible fo Industrial Data, and with a job remit that includes information standards for BAE Systems worldwide, I would be most interested ot learn what the ontology community can do to build on many millions of dollars of existing investment, and to enhance the use and exploitation of the knowledge that has already been agreed.

 

I believe this is a fundamental example of the challenge that is faced in bringing our communities together.

 

Sent from home email as the moderator objects to our company standard footer

 

Howard Mason

Chair, ISO TC 184/ SC 4

Corporate IT Office, BAE Systems

On Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 10:31 PM, Jack Ring <jring@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

090123

Andreas Tolk wrote:

[…]

I do not need another description of the whole discipline of SE, I need to describe a system with artifacts that can be read and understood by intelligent agents to understand

- what the system provides (interfaces/service access)

- what the systems consumes (inputs)

- what the system produces (outputs)

- what the system requires (resources/can be modeled as inputs)

- what the systems controls (controls/can be modeled as inputs)

- what the constraints for the inputs/outputs etc. (ICOMs for the IDEF fans) are

- what processes need to be synchronized (synchronization points)

- what processes need to be orchestrated (a little bit more work than synchronization)

- what constraints exist for services and processes

 

Based on this, I want to check to systems if they can be composed. Normally, a set of challenges needs to be solved, even with a good description of the system using mathematical models and axioms (and there is the bad word again: logic):

- there will be differences in resolution (properties of concepts differ in resolution, multi-resolution problem)

- there will be differences in scope (other concepts are used to describe the same thing, multi-scope problem)

- there will be differences in structure (same properties are used to define different concepts, multi-structure problem)

... and then all of the above.

 

If we look at the life cycle, stages and phases can be supported by different systems ... and so forth.

 

Nonetheless, if the system designers use a standardized set of ontological means, we have at least a common syntax (and I agree that this does not mean we have a common understanding of terms as well), but we will be one big step further.

 

What I am dreaming about is a lambda-calculus for systems ... long way to go.

 

All the best

Andreas

==================== ;-)
Andreas Tolk, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Engineering Management & Systems Engineering
Old Dominion University

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Right on, Professor,

 

Prof. Emeritus Warfield tells us to think of a system in terms of Context, Content, and Structure  (to which I add Behavior).

 

Prof. Emeritus Wymore tells us the think about the relationships between Context and Content in terms of Input/Output, Performance, Techology, Cost, Test and Tradeoff Gradient

 

Miles Burke tells us the types of Content are People, Places, Things and Activities.

 

We notice that all 'definitions' of systems are in the present tense which means, to those paying attention, that a system exists only while responding to a stimulus, otherwise all you have is a configuration of assets.

 

Warfield tells us to think in terms of Problematic Situation, underlying Problem System and Problem Suppression System. The problem suppression system is what you want to create.

 

Checkland tells us to think in terms of an intervention goal, an intervention strategy and a system that achieves intervention. Jonas Salk did that.  The goal (how we will know that the problem has been suppressed) also called Measures of Effectiveness and Standards of Acceptance,  This reflects the old rule, "start with the end in mind."

 

Nothing is hierarchy. All exists as a set of nodes, striving to respond to stimuli, in a web of mediators.

 

The contribution of systems engineering are a) languaging the project (the other 95% of the project staff who have to make the damn thing then make it work), b) describing the problem suppression system in its various stages of realization, and c) converging creativity (called ECN's) to closure.

 

Seeing the stages of a system as concepual, logical and physical doesn't work very well, especially for systems that score high in extent, variety and ambiguity (often mis-labeled CAS for Complex, Adaptive Systems). Wymore suggests Functional, Implementable, Buildable, Testable.

 

From the I/O relaitonship one can nominate artifacts that the system must produce. Then the question becomes Can such artifacts happen? An artifact is a system so the question becomes what People, Places, Things, Activities and TIME will suffice to create said artifact. 

 

Then the question becmes, "How many, when, of these assets will support all I/O demands?"

 

Now you are ready to put intelligence into your agents.  There will be three kinds. One works on adjusting the gradients in the system model, a second works on adapting the pattern of relationships among system content. A third works on co-evoling system content consistent with context and internal assets. 

 

All three must honor not only conservation of mass, momentum and energy from the thermodynamics axis but also equivalent triple constrants from each of informatics, teleonomics, economics and ecologics constraints.

 

The final result, an emulatable model of the system, is an ontoloty. Not the current kind which are taxonomies cluttered with first order spaghetti code, but real ontologies.

 

Does this mean that the foregoing is the start of a whole systems realization ontology?

 

Onward,

Jack Ring

 

 

 

 

 

 

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-- 
Paola Di Maio 
**********************************
ISD Labs
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