Toward the Design of a Generic Model of Interoperability for SIEC

SIEC: Eco-design Information System

Mengqiang Yang

, Mongi Smati

, Khalil Khalifa

, Slimane

Hammoudi

, Olivier

Beaudoux

Olivier Camp

and

Frederic Saubion

ACV PLUS, 66 Avenue des Champs Elysées, Bur 41, 75008, Paris, France

GROUPE ESEO, 10 Bd Jeanneteau, CS 90717 – 49107, Angers, France

LERIA, Université d’Angers, Angers, France

Keywords: Decision Support, Interoperability, Life Cycle Assessment, Eco-design, Human-Computer Interaction.

Abstract: Faced with the need to take into account environmental impacts, life cycle analysis (LCA) should emerge as

an engine for innovation and eco-design. It is clear that there are many barriers to their deployment. There is

thus a need for tools to facilitate their integration in business projects. These LCA tools must be compatible

with different existing information systems. In addition, it is also necessary that the coupling of the different

data sources helps to make decisions. This article shows the requirements of the company ACV Plus in

terms of interoperability and HCI (Human-computer Interaction) in order to make its Siec software easily

adaptable to various business sectors. Different peripheral tools have been developed to define data

exchange formats and meet specific needs. This research aims to develop a generic bus in order to have

easier process maintenance and avoid costly development for each new situation. Two PhD thesis have

focused on the HCI aspects and on interoperability aspects. More generally, our project aims to develop a

new system with interoperable design and management tools that can help any customer in the definition of

its environmental projects and eco-design.

1 INTRODUCTION

Several software systems have been proposed to

compute life cycle assessment (LCA). They are

listed on the website of the Institute for Environment

and Sustainability, a joint Research Centre of the

European Commission (Institute for Environment

and Sustainability, 2010). The main functionalities

of these systems are usually restricted to the

transformation of non-elementary flows to

elementary flows in order to compute traditional

basic environmental impacts. Moreover, these tools

are mainly dedicated to environment specialists and

they are still out of the reach of non-expert users for

decision support. This has very negative effects on

the use and distribution of these systems. For

example, the difficulties met by designers to use

existing LCA tools have been identified by several

authors (J. Ammenberg and E. Sundin, 2005; W.

Dewulf, 2003; M. Lindhal, 2006; V. Lofthouse,

2006; C. Luttrop and J. Lagerstedt, 2006) as a

barrier to the use of these tools for eco-design. In

fact, a study carried out in 2007 among a number of

French companies and reported in (Tatiana Reyes,

2007) concluded that the failure of LCA to provide a

real help in eco-design is one of the main reasons for

which enterprises are reluctant in initiating eco-

design practices. The above observations led us to

think that to be of real use. LCA tools should go

beyond this stage, be fully customizable and

adaptable to business and domain specific issues by

allowing the definition of goals, indicators,

regulations, properties ... thus providing each

department of the company with a specific and well

suited view of the LCA. Finally, an LCA system

should be able to be fully integrated in the company

information system and be fully interoperable with

its components: databases, Enterprise Resource

Planning system (ERP), Computer Aided Design

(CAD) tools, ... These ideas have led to the

development of the SIEC system (SIEC is an

acronym for “Système d’Information pour l’éco-

Conception” meaning “Information System for Eco-

Design” in French) (K. Khalifa and O. Camp, 2011).

329

Yang M., Smati M., Khalifa K., Hammoudi S., Beaudoux O., Camp O. and Saubion F..

Toward the Design of a Generic Model of Interoperability for SIEC - SIEC: Eco-design Information System.

DOI: 10.5220/0004564103290333

In Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS-2013), pages 329-333

ISBN: 978-989-8565-59-4

 2013 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

The paper is organized as follows: in the second

section of this article we describe the SIEC system

(its components, modules and the diversity of its

databases) and how its use can be adapted to specific

domains and business opportunities. In the third

section, we describe all tools developed by our team,

which will be used to collect data (supplier

information, selection of materials, addition of some

specific modules). We present their relationships

with the SIEC system. In section four we describe

the architecture model that will be implemented to

achieve the interoperability between SIEC and

various tools. Finally, we conclude and present some

future works.

2 SIEC AND EXTERNAL DATA

SOURCES

Companies have to achieve integration of new

software quickly and as cheaply as possible, but still

need to preserve software architecture and insure

robust solutions that are easily maintainable over

time. Today's business scenario challenges include

the development of closer business partnerships,

improvements in supply chain, customer support

services and streamlining processes to achieve

organizational efficiency.

However, most of the companies still use

existing legacy applications, developed using

different architectures and technologies that have

usually not been designed for integration.

Companies cannot afford to replace them quickly,

because they are mission critical; also they cannot

afford to develop their entire information systems

from scratch in today's business environment.

Data-level integration is often the starting point

where a company begins to work on integration.

ETL process and ESB are two data integration

solution to achieve this aim (K. Khalifa and C.

Ahmed, 2012, P. Harneve, 2006). The purpose of

these studies is to search for the solution from

existing approaches to determine which one is most

suitable for the web application.

Integration architecture is usually built from

several layers. The most important types of

integration are:

 Data-level integration

 Application integration

 Business process integration

SIEC centralizes in one collaborative platform all

the data needed to design a product (performance,

environmental quality, costs) and its Life Cycle

Analysis. SIEC contains and can use simultaneously

different types of databases for various purposes:

 Classic LCA databases (Eco-Invent, Buwal,

ELCD, NREL ...) to generate outputs similar to

those of traditional LCA software.

 Other statistical environmental databases ( Air

Chief, Bilan Carbone ®, CORINAIR ...) to

facilitate interpretation of results for non-expert

users in environmental assessment.

 Environmental/non-environmental databases

(statistical data related to the chemical

composition of materials, their collection rate,

their lower calorific value LCV, their recycled

content...) to shed more light and meet

regulatory requirements.

 User database containing information on the

function of the studied specimens, material

properties...

The SIEC team works continuously on various

external data sources to expand the interoperability

of SIEC. Currently targeted sources are the outputs

of the various Computer-Aided Design (CAD) tools,

Excel files, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)

systems (figure 1). Also, SIEC integrates a new data

model called the PIVOT System. It is a device that

allows SIEC to integrate environmental issues that

are specific to each project, regardless of the

industry, including ensuring the correspondence

between:

 LCA databases

 Physico-chemical properties

 Other environmental data

 Data from other software tools (CAD, Excel,

ERP ....)

 Designer database

Figure 1: Siec database and external data source.

ICEIS2013-15thInternationalConferenceonEnterpriseInformationSystems

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One of the purposes of the PIVOT system is to

allow the system to use data from external sources

by defining common interfaces. These interfaces

should be the only data transfer channel, thus

ensuring the collect of information from different

types of external tools and heterogeneous systems.

Integration enables us to better exploit changes

in the business environment. A well-integrated

environment should handle the functionality of a

priori incompatible applications to share data and to

manage data transfer.

3 SIEC AND CURRENT

PERIPHERAL TOOLS

Currently, SIEC is able to handle nearly all users’

requirements such as the creation of products, their

analysis, and so on...

However, this achievement is not the only

purpose of SIEC and other LCA tools may also

provide the same functions.

ACV Plus wants to provide a better integration

in the design processes, for this reason a research

project on interoperability has been launched.

On a complementary side, another team focuses

on HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) in order to

insure that the three key features “Fast”, “Simple”,

“Interactive” are fully integrated in the SIEC design.

The two teams collaborate because of their

complementary objectives.

The SIEC system consists of a main software

called Siec Genius and various applications for

different needs. We will now present some of the

peripheral tools around SIEC:

3.1 CHRONOSIEC

CHRONOSIEC is a tool which facilitates the rapid

construction of a full product in collaboration with

the suppliers. A user could also accomplish this

activity in SIEC, but because of the the current web

technology used by SIEC, the creation of the

elements may take a lot of time. Moreover, the

creation procedure is not as intuitive as the one

provided by CHRONOSIEC. With the help of

CHRONOSIEC, the user is thus able to create a

product with its necessary elements, quickly and

intuitively. Additionally, it is not necessary to

connect to the SIEC data center to use

CHRONOSIEC, and a user can create a product

independently and import it into SIEC after having

completed her/his project.

Figure 2 shows the functional model of

CHRONOSIEC by suppliers.

Figure 2: Functional model of ChronoSiec.

Chronosiec is also a small application of 20Mo

which includes many LCA databases (Eco-Invent,

Buwal, LCA Food, Siec …) The user may also add

lots of product elements. This allows all participants

to use the same language and avoid mappings which

are often long and tedious.

A product in LCA is composed of a product

itself, its components and pieces. A component is

composed of pieces while a piece can’t be divided

any more. The construction of a product should be

simple and follow these rules.

The construction of the data for each supplier is

intuitive by dragging predefined boxes (product,

component, piece, material …) as showed in the

following figure (figure 3).

Figure 3: Interface of ChronoSiec.

3.2 SIECMAT

SIECMAT is another independent tool which allows

the user to choose among the materials according to

certain requirements. A user can select several

filtering conditions and, after analysis, import the

preferred materials into SIEC.

This tool concerns more mainly the material

domain, and it gives SIEC another function in that

field. Since not all users are interested in the

material domain, SIEC doesn’t provider a specific

function to analyze and choose materials. However,

users can choose materials in SIECMAT and import

them into SIEC. SIECMAT has been developed by a

strong collaboration between researchers of ACV

Plus, École des Arts et Métiers Paris Tech (ENSAM)

and ESEO.

TowardtheDesignofaGenericModelofInteroperabilityforSIEC-SIEC:Eco-designInformationSystem

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Unlike ChronoSiec, the SiecMat application

allows computation in order to classify materials

according to their performance.

Figure 4: Material performance (Capture from SiecMat).

SiecMat is coupled to an American database

“Mat Web” which contains more than 90 000

references and the database from CES EduPack.

After analyzing the results provided by SiecMat,

the user can export these materials and compare

them in Siec Genius from an environmental point of

view (Figure 5).

Figure 5: Functional model of SiecMat.

3.3 SIECTRANSFER

Nowadays, there exist several LCA tools. Some of

them, such as SIMAPRO, benefit from a ten years

history on the market. Therefore, it is likely that

some users are already working with other LCA

tools before turning to SIEC. They may thus have

important data collections that they do not want to

lose or for which they do not want to spend time to

rebuild.

The SIECTRANSFER tool enables the users to

import data from these LCA tools into SIEC.

If someone used another LCA tool and wants to

change for SIEC, she/he will not lose any time re-

building the products that he already has created.

SIECTRANSFER offers the facility to analyze the

files produced by other LCA tools and generate a

Figure 6: Functional model of SIECTRANSFER.

file that respects the SIEC format, which can then be

processed by SIEC.

Figure 6 shows the different steps needed to

transform data from external tools to Siec Genius.

3.4 CAD Interoperability

In some industrial domains, CAD software tools

such as AutoCAD, Catia, Solidworks, ... are

frequently used for project drawing purposes.

Thanks to the “CAD Interoperability” tool, SIEC

is able to import files from these CAD software tools

and directly generate a product with its associated

elements as shown in figure 7.

Figure 7: CAD interoperability components.

3.5 Excel Interoperability

As everybody knows, Microsoft Excel is a

spreadsheet application developed by Microsoft and

very widely used. .

By using the “EXCEL Interoperability” tool, the

users are able to import the EXCEL files (xlsx or xls

format) into SIEC and directly generate a product

with its associated elements.

Figure 8 explain the principle of Excel

interoperability.

Figure 8: Functional model of EXCEL Interoperability.

4 EXPECTATIONS

AND PROSPECT

Presently, peripheral tools such as SIECMAT and

CHRONOSIEC work directly and independently

from SIEC. However, the user has to download

several tools if she/he wants to perform more than

one activity. Moreover, there is no communication

between these tools.

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Thus, in order to insure communication and

connection between these tools, ACV Plus is now

investigating a solution in order to integrate the

peripheral tools.

The diagram in figure 9 represents the current

communication mechanism between SIEC and the

peripheral tools. Each tool communicates directly

with SIEC.

Figure 9: Communication mechanism between SIEC and

the peripheral tools.

The aim of ACV Plus is to integrate all these

tools into one single package (figure 10). Each

function may communicate and share information

with the others in the package. The communication

between SIEC and these functions will be

standardized and unified. In the near future, it will

not be necessary to work independently with the

peripheral tools thanks to seamless integration of all

the tools.

Figure 10: Proposal interoperability model between SIEC

and the external tools.

In addition, ongoing research work in cooperation

with ESEO (O. Beaudoux and M. Clavreul, 2012)

and focusing on HCI aims at providing a better and

more intuitive product creation and design process in

the Siec System.

5 CONCLUSIONS

In this article the current Siec system and the

communication procedure with peripheral tools have

been briefly presented. In order to develop the

system which meets the expectations of LCA

experts, it is necessary to build a robust architecture

in order to guarantee interoperability between Siec

and external data sources and tools. We have already

started implementing the connection of Siec with

existing CAD tools and ERP systems. However,

more analysis and experimentations of SIEC in

different fields of activity are still needed in order to

identify the components and define generic models

for integration.

REFERENCES

Institute for Environment and Sustainability, 2010.

European Commission. LCA Tools Directory

(http://lca.jrc.ec.europa.eu/lcainfohub/index.vm).

J. Ammenberg and E. Sundin, 2005. Products in

environmental management systems : drivers, barriers

and experiences. Journal of Cleaner Production,

13:405–415.

W. Dewulf, 2003. A Pro-Active Approach to Ecodesign :

Methods and Tools, Ecodesign in central Americ.

PhDthesis, KatholiekebUniversiteit Leuven.

M. Lindhal, 2006. Engineering designer’s experience of

design for environment methods and tools–

requirement definitions from an interview study.

Journal of Cleaner Production, pages 487–496.

V. Lofthouse, 2006. Eco-design tools for designers:

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K. Khalifa and C. Ahmed, 2012. Comparison of ETL and

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