TC5 Chairperson Report

by Gustav J. Olling, TC5 Chairperson

Part I - General Assembly

1. Meetings Held and Scheduled

In Year 2001

• 40^th IFIP TC5 Meeting held on June 15, 2001 in Geneva, CH. 15 Participants representing 12 countries. 9 Apologies and 10 No Responses.
• 41^st IFIP TC5 Meeting scheduled for November 9, 2001 in Budapest, HU in conjunction with PROLAMAT.

In Year 2002

• 42^nd IFIP TC5 Meeting scheduled for May 1, 2002 in Vilamdura, PT in conjunction with the 3^rd IFIP Working Conference on Infrastructures for Virtual
• Enterprises. PRO-VE 2002.
• 43^rd IFIP TC5 Meeting scheduled for August 24, 2002 in Montreal, CA in conjunction with the IFIP Congress 2002.

2. Changes in Membership and Officers

• Prof. G. J. Olling was nominated by ACM as a second representative to IFIP TC5 and, thereafter, on June 16^th, 2001 was elected as the new Chairperson of TC5 – replacing Prof. G. Doumeingts.

• The TC5 Executive Committee elected Mr. R. Waxman as the TC5 Publication and Events Officer, making him the official focal point of all TC5 activities in these areas.

• Prof. M. B. McGrath was elected as the Financial Officer as the focal point for all TC5 financial affairs.

• Prof. Magnenat-Thalmann was elected as the TC5 Communication Officer assuming all TC5 communication and public relation responsibilities.

• Prof. M. Wozny was elected as the new Secretary of TC5.

• IFIP’s TC Chinese representative, Prof. Qiangnan Sun, was replaced by Prof. Gan Renchu, Beijing Institute of Technology.

3. Working Group Activities

• WG 5.2 Computer Aided Design – Chairman: Prof. U. Cugini

• WG 5.3 Computer Aided Manufacturing – Chairman: Prof. F. VanHouten (no written report)

• WG 5.7 Computer Aided Production – Chairman: Prof. Eero Eloranta

No report submitted: Prof. Doumeingts (past TC5 Chairman) reported that this group is very active and he will personally participate during their up coming meeting August 26-29, 2001 in Denmark. He will report on outcome during next TC5 meeting in November.

• WG 5.10 Computer Graphics and Virtual Worlds – Chairman: Prof. Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann

• WG 5.11 Computers and Environment – Chairman: R. Denzer

A web site was launched ( www.enviromatics.org ); ISESS web site is maintained at (issess.crle.voguelph.ca)

• WG 5.11 under its chairman reconstituted its membership in 2000 by recruiting new members, as well as, reviewing the current membership. An extended membership list will be proposed shortly to the TC5 executive committee for review.

• After the reconstruction of the WG, the visibility of 5.11 through their activities has considerably increased.

UN and EU organizations have sought 5.11 advise on the strategic level. In particular, the 5.11 chair is advising the European Commission with regards to environmental software activities within the 6^th Framework Program of the EU.

• WG 5.12 Enterprise Modelling and IFIP/IFAC Task Force Enterprise Modelling Integration – Chairman: Prof. P. Bernus, No Report

• IFIP/IFAC/MECO Task Force Informatics and Automation – Chairman: Prof. Kopacek, No Report

Part II – Technical Assembly

• New Task Force? A proposal from Hasan Janil, Department of Computer Science, Mississippi State University, U.S.A., has been submitted to IFIP TC5. The proposal suggests organizing an entity within TC5 addressing the topic of Bioinformatics with emphasis on intelligent data management, analysis, visualization, etc.

This may be an opportunity to review current activities and determine if such a new topic is appropriate within our scope and determine if other activities ought to be "phased out".

• IFIP ISBN Publication – WG’s plan to publish conference proceedings in the IFIP Conference series. Plans are also to publish the papers on the web as well, pending clarification of IFIP copyright issues.

• A collaboration with the IEMSS (International Environmental Modelling and Software Society) has been initiated by WG 5.11. Plans are to publish selected IEMSS papers in an extended version of Environmental Modelling and Software with Elsevier regularly.

• Lastly, at the TC5’s June 16^th meeting, the group unanimously voted to establish the COVE project as a new Working Group: WGx Co-operation Infrastructure for Virtual Enterprises and Electronic Business. (See Attached COVE Report, Membership List and Agreement). We herewith seek IFIP’s approval!

 FULL MEMBERS LIST

Project COVE
CO-operation infrastructure for Virtual Enterprises and electronic business

 1.     Launching phase

 Main events during the project-launching phase:

• First news on project approval (from TC 5 chairman): 21 March 2000.

• Elaboration of a contract letter between IFIP and the UNINOVA institute regarding the coordination of the project – Jun / Jul 2000.

• Official starting date: 1 Jul 2000.

• Initial contacts / invitations for membership – Dec 1999 – Jul 2000.

• In order to regulate the cooperation among full members, a cooperation agreement was signed by all members.

• The current membership includes 19 members from 13 countries.

2.     Recent / past activities

The following activities took place during the first phase of the project:

2.1 Project meetings

Two meetings were organized in 2000:

• Berlin, Germany – 29 Sept 2000 – 13 participants.

• Florianopolis, Brazil – 6 Dec 2000 – 13 participants.

Minutes from both meetings are available.

2.2 Conferences

COVE members contributed to the organization of the following conferences:

•    BASYS 2000 – 4^th IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Information Technology for Balanced Automation Systems in Production and Transportation, Berlin, Germany – 27-29 Sep 2000.

•    PRO-VE 2000 – 2^nd IFIP Working Conference on Infrastructures for Virtual Enterprises, Florianopolis, Brazil – 4-6 Dec 2000.

 Proceedings of both events were published by Kluwer Academic Publishers:

 2.3 Newsletter

An on-line Newsletter for the project was launched: COVE News http://www.uninova.pt/~cove/newsletter.htm

Two issues were published: Jan 2001 and Mar 2001. The first issue had about 450 visitors.

An ISSN number was obtained for the Newsletter:  ISSN 1645-0582

2.4 Special issue

A special issue of the Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing (Kluwer) devoted to Virtual Enterprises was published (April 2001) with the contributions of several COVE members.

 2.5 Technical discussions

On-going technical discussions:

• Virtual Enterprise related glossary

• White paper on infrastructures for virtual enterprises

• Collecting examples / case studies on Virtual enterprises

2.6 New projects

Members of COVE are actively involved or the initiators of new VE-related projects funded or submitted to the European Commission:

• THINKcreative - Thinking network of experts on emerging smart organizations

• CE-NET II – Concurrent Enterprising Network of Excellence

• VOSTER (being evaluated) – Network of excellence on Virtual Organizations

3.     Dissemination actions

A web-site for the project was created at UNINOVA: www.uninova.pt/~cove

A link to this site was included in the IFIP site.

 An extensive article on COVE was published in the IFIP Newsletter.

A brief reference to COVE and its activities was also published in the CIM-OSA Newsletter.

4.     Planned activities for next period

4.1 Meetings

For 2001 three sub-group meetings are planned (in association to three international conferences):

• Zurich, Switzerland (in association to I3E Conference), 4-5 Oct 2001 (with 3 or more COVE participants)

• Budapest, Hungary (in association to PROLAMAT Conference), 7-10 Nov 2001 (with 5 or more COVE participants)

• Venice, Italy In association with eBusiness and eWork Conference), 17-19 Oct 2001 (with 4 or more COVE participants).

 4.2 Activities

• Finish white paper on Reference Models for VE infrastructures

• Organize collection of VE case studies

• Elaborate comparative analysis of VE projects.

 4.3 Organization of conferences

• PRO-VE’02 – the 3^rd IFIP Working Conference on Infrastructures for Virtual Enterprises (the main event of COVE) is planned for 1-3 May 2002 in Algarve, Portugal. The preparation of this conference already started. www.uninova.pt/~prove

• COVE members are also involved in the organization of BASYS’02 to be held in Cancun, Mexico, 25-27 Sep 2002.

Two COVE meetings will be organized in association to these conferences.

5.     Difficulties

As it could be expected, running a project without funds (the project has only a small support from IFIP) makes it very difficult to get strong commitments (in terms of schedule) from project members in spite of their enthusiasm.

As a consequence, the planned schedule for the project has to be dynamically adapted. In this context, the 2 year period initially planned for the project is unrealistic in face of all the planned activities / goals.

Two alternatives can be suggested:

• Extend the duration of the project

Or

• Make a proposal to change it into a Working Group.

7 June 2001
'The COVE coordinator
Luis M. Camarinha-Matos
New University of Lisbon / Uninova Institute

COOPERATION AGREEMENT

This cooperation agreement is established between the undersigned, here called Full Member (FM) and the IFIP COVE project consortium coordinated by the Uninova Institute.

COVE is a two-year project, established in the framework of the Technical Committee 5 of IFIP, aims at contributing to the harmonization of R&D results in the area of infrastructures for Virtual Enterprises and Electronic Business.

Under the general spirit of IFIP, COVE is open to the voluntary participation of all researchers and practitioners actively involved in R&D in Virtual Enterprises and advanced Electronic Business systems. Two classes of membership are considered:

• Full Members – participants that are committed to have an active and regular involvement in the COVE activities, that have an established curriculum in the area, recognized by the other partners, and that sign the cooperation agreement.
• Affiliate Members – participants that show interest in being informed about the activities and results of COVE, for which they are included in the COVE mail list but that will have only access to reduced information.

1. FM agrees to actively contribute to the COVE activities in his/her specific area of expertise. For this purpose, FM will make reasonable efforts to participate in COVE meetings and to contribute to the electronic discussions. Whenever the participation in a meeting is not possible, FM will inform the COVE coordinator and will try to send a contribution through electronic means.
2. In particular, FM will contribute his/her knowledge and experience in the areas of:
   -
   -
   -
3. FM will have access to the contributions from other members of the consortium under the same rules agreed by all members.

In order to guarantee open and frank scientific discussions among the consortium members, namely when these discussions involve original contributions and information subject to some level of confidentiality, FM agrees to the following principles:

1. The Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), regarding any original contribution or background knowledge brought in by any member, are owned by the contributing member.
2. The IPR regarding any new knowledge (forward knowledge) generated in the framework of COVE as a result of a cooperative activity (e.g. joint discussion in a meeting or electronic forum) is owned by the members contributing to this knowledge.
3. The Full Members can use the forward knowledge in their own R&D activities, provided proper reference to the IPR owners is made. The Affiliate Members can use the knowledge made available to them under the same conditions.
4. Exceptions to rule c) can take place in case of some critical knowledge for which the IPR owners explicitly request protection presenting a reasonable justification (for instance, some information might be temporarily confidential until the contributor(s) publish(es) it). For this case, all members will respect the required non-disclosure option.
5. In all forms of use of the mentioned knowledge, proper recognition to all original contributors should me made, namely through:

• Proper references in publications. When the referenced piece of knowledge has been published, standard referencing rules should apply. In case of draft ideas included in the COVE Newsletter or COVE Minutes, a reference to the author and COVE document should be made.
• Otherwise, in the case that there is no written reference, a note stating: "personal communication in the framework of the COVE project" can be used (identifying the contributor).

6. Reports / publications issued by COVE will be authored by the main members contributing to the report / publication. Smaller contributions will be acknowledged in the acknowledgements section.
7. In case any results of the project may lead to exploitable property, the proper IPR agreements have to be established among all contributors before the exploitation takes place.

4.1 The COVE consortium reserves the right to exclude any member that violates the cooperation agreement.

4.2 In case the FM finds out about any violation of the agreement clauses by any other member of the consortium shall immediately inform the COVE coordinator.

The Full Member candidate:

____________________________________
(Name and signature)

Date: ____/ ____/ _____

The COVE coordinator:

____________________________________
(Name and signature)

Date: ____/ ____/ _____