Service Modelling Language Applied for Hyper Connected Ecosystem

Frank-Walter Jaekel

, Martin Zelm

and David Chen

Fraunhofer Institute for Production Systems and Design Technology, Pascalstr. 8-9, 10587 Berlin, Germany

INTEROP-VLab, 21 rue Montoyer, 1000 Brussels, Belgium

IMS, University of Bordeaux, 351, Cours de la liberation, 33405 Talence, France

Keywords: Service Modelling, Enterprise Modelling, Service, Servitization.

Abstract: The paper elaborates the application of service modelling language for hyper-connected ecosystems. A

specific target is to demonstrate the use of ISO 19440 standard together with a set of specialized service

modelling constructs developed in the scope of CEN TC310/WG1. It presents a conceptual use case to model

a ‘Matching Service’ and the service system required to provide the Matching Service in a service ecosystem.

The purpose of this study is to test and demonstrate the use of a service modelling language related to

ISO19440:2020 to describe in a formal and systematic way a service and its needed service system at business

level for communication and validation. The paper first presents the motivation of the study and recalls related

works. The service modelling language and the background of this work are discussed. The Matching service

use case will be presented in detail and the concluding summary as well as some outlooks are given at the end

of the paper.

1 INTRODUCTION AND

MOTIVATION

Cloud service approaches for companies and company

networks increase within the last years. The

development of related standards for the virtualisation

of company assets such as the administration shell of

the reference model for industry 4.0 (RAMI4.0) and

OPC-UA are ongoing. It supports the use of company

assets in terms of Internet of Things (IoT) objects.

Examples of related activities are BASYS4.0

(BASYS4.0, 2021) with BASYSx (BASYSx, 2021)

but also other initiatives such as the international data

space (IDS). These technologies provide the basis to

realise the asset administration shell to define the

exchange of information in the context of Industry 4.0

(Idtwin, 2021).

The technological evaluation opens a wide field

of service provision opportunities especially to the

further development of industrial ecosystems.

Services for communication became an essential

prerequisite in terms of increasing home office and

company cooperation e.g. to manage the current

pandemic situation. Services for tracking information

between different partners in a value net or immediate

reorganisation of suppliers support the resilience of

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4846-005X

companies. Examples for related research activities

are, RESYST (RESYST 2021) (Holtmann 2021),

GAIAX (GAIAX 2020), WvSC and I4Q (I4Q, 2021).

The service modelling and interface design are

still a challenge for business and IT engineers. How

to design the structures, the processes, the constrains

and the dynamics between different classes of service

providers, e.g. cloud service providers and service

providers within the cloud infrastructure, which

includes both the product as a service and the services

around the products.

It needs tthe design of the business but at the same

time the design of implementation requirements.

Different methods and notations are available such as

BPMN and UML but its application to the services

modelling still needs to be guided in terms of specific

properties and relationships.

Enterprise modelling is a proven tool for the

integrated development and implementation of

structures and processes of enterprises and enterprise

networks including technologies and services.

Methods like IEM/MO²GO, ARIS, GRAI and

CIMOSA exist since a long time. Enterprise

frameworks have also been developed in the past,

such as the Zachman Framework for Enterprise

Architecture Management and the Generalized

Jaekel, F., Zelm, M. and Chen, D.

Service Modelling Language Applied for Hyper Connected Ecosystem.

DOI: 10.5220/0010726300003062

In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Innovative Intelligent Industrial Production and Logistics (IN4PL 2021), pages 209-215

ISBN: 978-989-758-535-7

209

Enterprise Reference Architecture and Methodology

(GERAM) which have existed since a long time.

Of course, in a specific case, service engineers

will create their own guidelines, terminologies and

modelling support for expressing and designing

services. This becomes complicated if different

services need to work together and have to be handled

together. An example is the integration of several

enterprise applications into a service ecosystem

providing a seamless IT support between supply

chain services, enterprise resource planning and

manufacturing execution services coming from

different vendors or providers. Comparing and

understanding of the design in terms of completeness

and understandability is required. This calls for

interoperability of service descriptions.

Enterprise modelling methods and frameworks

are summarized in an international standard: ISO

19440 “Constructs for enterprise modelling” (ISO

19440:2020). This standard provides a reference for

enterprise modelling constructs in relation to its

definition and internal structure. A further detail of

the service modelling constructs is currently in

discussion to provide details of the use of ISO 19440

related to service modelling demands. This will

provide a reference for terminology and guidelines

for service modelling constructs.

The goal of the paper is to demonstrate the usage of

a standard based modelling and implementation of

service modelling language in a hyper connected

ecosystem via an example. The presented use case

focuses on the business service modelling to provide a

formal specification of the service and service system

for stakeholders, service design and implementation

engineers for discussion, assessment and validation

before to actually build the service system.

In other words, the main benefits for the user

result from a coordinated use of a common modelling

language in the representation, design and operation

of service system. This leads to considerable quality

improvement in the design process and cost reduction

in the system operation.

The use case presented in the paper discusses the

use of ISO 19440 to model a hyper connected service

ecosystem. The use case is derived from the work in

a project of the Werner-von-Siemens Centre for

Industry and Science in Berlin (WvSC, 2021a) about

electric drives (WvSC, (2021b) call hyper connected

ecosystem for industry. It is used because of different

types of services, infrastructures and actors.

The ISO 19440 standard provides detailed

structured semantic knowledge represented by the

templates of the constructs. A specific target of the

paper is to demonstrate the use of this ISO 19440

standard together with a set of specialized service

modelling constructs currently in discussion under

CEN TC310/WG1. It is also focusing on the test of

service modelling constructs concerning the

feasibility of its usage in terms of consistency and

completeness.

2 ROOTS OF THE ADDRESSED

SERVICE MODELLING

LANGUAGE

The service modelling language has been developed

in European research projects like the Integrated

Project about Manufacturing Service Ecosystem

(MSEE) (MSEE, 2011) and the H2020 project

PYMBIOSYS (PYMBIOSYS, 2018). Related

modelling standards have influenced the original

constructs of the service modelling language such as

• ISO 19439:2006 Enterprise integration—

Framework for enterprise modelling

• ISO 19440:2007 Enterprise integration —

Constructs for enterprise modelling

The standards also refer to the ISO 15704:2000

“Industrial automation systems - Requirements for

enterprise-reference architecture and

methodologies”. This illustrates the wide range of

considered services from shopfloor to business

activities. This leads to the service implementation of

new technologies not only for enterprise applications

and business but also for industrial automation. The

implementation of requirements designed in

enterprise models is a useful technology to improve

the realisation of new processes, organisations,

services and technologies. The two standards ISO

19439 and ISO 19440 provide a holistic knowledge

about information concerning the design of enterprise

models. They are briefly introduced below.

“ISO 19439:2006 specifies a framework

conforming to requirements of ISO 15704, which

serves as a common basis to identify and coordinate

standards development for modelling of enterprises,

emphasising, but not restricted to, computer

integrated manufacturing. ISO 19439:2006 also

serves as the basis for further standards for the

development of models that will be computer-

enactable and enable business process model-based

decision support leading to model-based operation,

monitoring and control. In ISO 19439:2006, four

enterprise model views are defined in this framework.

Additional views for particular user concerns can be

generated but these additional views are not part of

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this International Standard. Possible additional views

are identified in ISO 15704.” (ISO 15704:2019).

The ISO 19440 “identifies and specifies

constructs necessary for users that model enterprises

in conformance with ISO 19439. This standard

focuses on, but is not restricted to, engineering and

the integration of manufacturing and related services

in the enterprise. The constructs enable the

description of structure and function of an enterprise

for use in configuring or implementing in different

application domains.” (ISO 19440:2020).

Other languages addressing the modelling of

services have been developed and implemented as

standards. Examples are Service-oriented

architecture Modeling Language (SoaML) using

UML and focusing on model integration. Web

Services Description Language (WSDL) for

application integration within and across

organizations. The constructs for service modelling

(CEN, 2020) are currently in an updating process

related to their conformity to the ISO 19440 (2020).

The definitions of constructs related to the service

modelling language from ISO 19440 and used within

the use case are public available (ISO 19440:2020).

However, these definitions are just in terms of a

glossary. The standard includes detailed templates

describing the scope and properties of each construct

as well as an UML class diagram with the specific

relationships. Constructs derived from ISO 19440 are

as follows: Organizational Unit, Order, Product,

Resource, Process, Functionality, Service, User, and

Decision. In ISO 19440, a service is described as

“functionality resulting from interaction between a

supplier (provider) and a user, often in the context of

a supplied product in use by the user” (ISO

19440:2020).

3 SERVICE MODELLING

LANGUAGE

The service modelling language addresses service

designers, service engineers, process engineers and

designers to achieve common understanding in the

service usage, needed service system, related

challenges and benefits. It supports interoperability of

a service design across organisation and business

demands by providing a common metamodel for

terminology and structuring the service modelling

constructs with associated templates. One of the goals

of using such a language is a pluggable service design

for service architectures together with other

enterprise model views. However, it requires the

common use of the constructs and templates as well

as in a later step the implementation of these standard

constructs into enterprise modelling systems. The

ISO 19440 provides detailed structured semantic

knowledge described in the templates of the

constructs.

The following modelling constructs of ISO

19440:2020 and derived extensions for service

modelling have been selected for the use case.

The construct “Organisation” can be derived from

the “Organisational unit” defined in ISO 19440:2020

and might be extended by this way to company or

enterprise.

The abstract class “Actor” can be derived from the

“Role” construct of the ISO 19440 and might be

extended to Persons and Organisation.

The abstract class “Actor” covers subclasses, which

represents specific roles in the service infrastructure

such as “Vendor”, “Customer”, “Provider”,

“Stakeholder” but also “User” derived from ISO

19440:2020. A specific construct is the construct

“Service Level Agreement” which represents

contractual regulations and becomes more important

with additional regulations for service delivery such

as data ownership and security.

The service constructs are currently further

analysed and detailed in the working group “Systems

architecture” CEN/TC 310/WG1. One task in this

activity is the design of a use case example using and

testing the described service modelling constructs

together with the ISO 19440 (2020). This has

different perspectives:

• The use of the constructs to design the services

and its interrelations in terms of the

applicability and completeness of the constructs.

• The use case should also provide a reference

about who should use the constructs and why

they are useful.

• A minor point but helpful in terms of the use of

the constructs is their implementation in

existing enterprise modelling systems.

The next section outlines the current work on this use

case, particularly with regard to the verification of the

constructs.

4 USE CASE DERIVED FROM

HYPER CONNECTED

ECOSYTEM

The previous development of the SML focuses on

business aspects for one service delivered to the

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211

market with a viewpoint form the service provider. It

leads to the definition of constructs to externalize the

specific elements and its interrelation for the service

modelling. An example of the constructs is described

in the paper “Service Modelling Language and

potentials for a new standard” (Chen, 2013).

In today’s service development, it is usual to have

combination of services provided by different

provides working together. Some of these services

just come into the business during the service

deployment such as infrastructure services in terms of

apps stores or clouds. This creates specific challenges

such as interoperability of the technical interfaces but

also interoperability on business aspects such as

regulations defined in service level agreements and

data ownership regulations.

The view across several services extended the

SML constructs with the element of “service

provider” as a specific partner in the service model.

Now the service can be defined in a standardized way

and then combined with other services by

interrelation of the constructs. This leads for example

to a blueprint of a service ecosystem like the “Hyper-

connected Ecosystem for industrial networks” used in

the use case. It is a work package within the

framework of the Werner von Siemens Centre for

Business and Science (WvSC) in Berlin (Wvsc,

(2021a) in the project on electric drives (Wvsc,

(2021b).

The use case covers different kinds of services

such as approaches and solutions in the context of

Industry 4.0, IoT, Cyber Physical Systems, Cloud

Computing and integration/federation of services of

enterprise applications such as SCM, ERP, MES.

Also, enterprise application services such as supply

chain network and manufacturing execution services

integrating modular shopfloor IT services (Jaekel,

2017) (Jaekel, 2020) are reflected in the use case with

interfaces like OPC-UA.

The idea behind the Hyper-connected Ecosystem

for industrial networks is to make necessary

information available at any time and any place

across infrastructures and platforms. It should create

the required communication channels semi-automatic

via a protocol between the partners such as asking for

communication and agreeing to communicate similar

to social network technologies. For example, a

partner can find other partners via certain

characteristics and then address them specifically.

A central component is a matching service, which

provides opportunities to create partnerships like

value or supply chains but also purchasing pools and

other networks within the hyper connected

ecosystem. The matching service running in a cloud

infrastructure and using other services has been

selected as one focus for the use case.

The use case scenario considers cloud

infrastructures, a matching service, a service to

provide partner information to different service

providers, a pump producer and a product service

provider for water supply as well as a list of part

suppliers (see Figure 1).

In terms of a supply chain information can be

directly discovered from the devices via IoT (OPC-

UA) interfaces. This will also require to ensure data

ownership and security aspects. The IoT interfaces

can also be used to provide information to the

customer of the water supply service.

Figure 1: Use case scenario for service modelling.

The "pump manufacturer" produces a pump and

offers this pump to the customer as part of a water

supply service. An example of a possible customer

could be a state water supply authority. This implies

several services to produce the pump and to deliver

the service with several contracts with suppliers of

parts and services.

A matching service helps to find the suppliers but

also customer networks. The matching service uses a

profile service that provides information about

potential business partners. However, these two

services run on cloud service infrastructures. The

cloud service provides also the infrastructure to

deliver the IT components of the water supply service

such as monitoring the amount of water, potential

maintenance, breakdowns, replacements as well as

the payment. The maintenance also invokes the

matching service concerning potential material and

local maintenance service providers. This creates a

far-reaching network of services and dependencies on

a legal, business and technical level.

The use case illustrates the challenges and

dynamic arising in the design of a service

infrastructure. The current model is in development

to review the SML constructs. It includes the

following main elements in terms of instantiated SML

constructs. “Actor” is an abstract class related to

persons or organisation and incorporates service

providers, vendors, stakeholders and other roles:

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• Actors

o Pump producer and water supply

provider

o Matching service provider

o Cloud infrastructure provider

o Provider of partner profile services

o Suppliers (parts and maintenance

services)

The service construct covers all kinds of services in

the use case such as IT services and product as a

service and services around a product:

• Services

o Water supply service

o Cloud infrastructure service

o Matching service

o Portfolio service

o Maintenance service

In the current work, UML is used to express the

elements of the use case via instances of SML

constructs. Each SML construct as well as each ISO

19440 construct has a related template. Therefore, for

each use case element a related template is available

in text form. Table 1 illustrates an example of such

template about the matching service construct. UML

also supports the modelling of the relation between

the SML constructs in a flexible way which helps to

follow the current evaluation of the SML in CEN/TC

310/WG 1. The services modelling language are used

in a native way by UML models and template

descriptions for the use case.

Figure

: Use Case UML model clipping.

Related to the size of the model the structure just

covers the cloud service and the matching service.

The example provides an indication of how to

interrelate the service level agreements like the

information technology infrastructure library (ITIL)

between providers, sellers, users, services and

products in the context of cloud infrastructures.

The matching service requires the cloud service to

provide its functionality. Therefore, the matching

service provider is at the same time a customer of the

cloud service provider. This implies a service level

agreement (SLA) between the cloud service provider

and the matching service provider. The model express

clearly a further SLA between the matching service

provider and the pump producer using the matching

service. Both SLAs are decoupled in terms of

contracting and concerning one service but the

integrated view illustrates that they finally related

because if the cloud service disappears also the SLA

of the matching service is affected. The construct of

SLAs in the SML is a placeholder for various

regulations such as data ownership, data security and

data privacy.

Table 1: Example of Service construct template.

Header

Construct label SRV

(

Service

)

Identifier Identifie

Name Matchin

service

Bod

Attributes

Description The service provides a search of

potential matches between potential

liers and demands.

Objective The service supports the tendering

between customers and suppliers to

create a partner network or supply

chain.

Constraint A profile service provides the partner

information in a formal way. The same

for the product description of the

supply parts.

Nature Information

Relationships to other model elements

Product Water

Functionality Partner search and matching

Resource - Cloud infrastructure

Process - identif

lier / matchin

Customer - Pump produce

Decision - Not a

Performance

Indicator

- Number of alternative providers,

correspondence between demand and

identified

roviders

–

correct match

Value - Fast correlation between demand and

supplier, evolution support by

information of the suppliers about

additional demands of potential

customers

Stakeholde

-Pum

roduce

Decomposition - a set of parameter related correlation

services

- a service for logical connecting of the

single results of parameter matching

- a priority service of managing the

resultin

sets of su

liers, …

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213

In terms of modelling, the matching services and

the cloud service are modelled separately and then

orchestrated in one model thanks to the common

SML modelling. The example related to the SLAs is

just one usage for the model. The SML provides a

structured method for modelling a service that

provides a better understanding of the service

components. It also helps to include the required

elements into the service blueprint.

An important element is the template related to

each service model construct and of course to each

instance of the constructs. It provides a deeper

semantic to the constructs and especially to instances

like the matching service. Table 1 provides an

example to each of the properties of this template.

The whole set of templates is part of the current work

and provides a comprehensive guideline of the use of

construct templates in the service design.

In the template the service is described with its

objectives and constrains but also with related aspects

like the water pump because the product covers

parameter values which are needed to select the right

part suppliers.

Initial work has started to map the constructs into

the enterprise modelling system IEM/MO²GO to

provide interconnection with other enterprise aspects

Figure 3: IEM/MO²GO Example for SML.

such as the manufacturing or the enterprise

management. This task is performed to show the

possibility of using the SML in terms of different

enterprise modelling systems by extending their

information model.

The constructs are added to the MO²GO class

structure and the template properties are attributes for

each construct (Figure 3). This is afterwards used to

provide the related process diagram. However, the

SML process construct could also be part of the

previous UML diagram to provide a modelling

system independent view which might be used to

exchange SML models between different modelling

systems. Also, this is a benefit which would be

provided by a standardise service modelling

language. In difference to just exchanging notations

also a significant part of the semantic is provided.

5 CONCLUSION

The paper provides a brief inside of current work

related to service modelling language. It presents

some findings in terms of a use case applied in the

work such as modular combination of service models

to a service ecosystem. The benefits are in structured

service development, modular combination of service

designs and the externalisation of specific challenges

of the design. In addition, the interoperability for

service models is supported not only by notation but

also by semantics.

It is worth noting that the added value of the

service modelling language allows to model both

service and service system providing the service. The

resulting service model studied in this paper provides

a formal specification with templates for all actors

involved in the project to achievement a common

understanding and agreement before to start the

technical development of the targeted service and

service system.

6 OUTLOOK

The upcoming Technical Report of the European

Committee for Standardization (CEN) will document

the relation between the ISO 19440 and the service

modelling language and report on further use cases. It

is foreseen to provide applications of ISO 19440 to

the service domain. The technical report will describe

the approach between the service modelling language

and application development aspects such as the use

cases to describe the application of the service

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modelling constructs related to cloud services, apps

and product as a service.

The target of the use cases is to elaborate the

benefits, the usage as well as potential improvements

of the service modelling language.

The corresponding work is currently being

prepared and further discussed in CEN/TC 310/WG1.

A first draft should be available in 2022 for balloting.

The work related to the hyper-connected

ecosystem is under development in the Werner-von-

Siemens Centre for Industry and Science at Berlin

with initial feasibility tests currently under

preparation.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Authors thank to CEN TC310/WG1 partners for their

participation and contribution to the work on service

modelling language. Authors also acknowledge the

EU partners involved in the use case project. Parts of

the described work has been developed in the scope

of WvSC.EA “Electric motors 2.0” supported by the

European Regional Development Fund (EFRE).

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