Warehouse and Transportation Management Working Group

We are getting a good bit of interest in our newly formed Transportation and Warehouse Management Working Group.

It is hosted by our High Tech Council, but other industries are welcome to join and we already have someone from Pharmaceutical.

Our members so far signed up to work on this include: DHL, Intel, Cisco, SAP, and an invited expert from Merck. We expect more soon.

This worked in planned to be part of our next release of OAGIS, Release 9.5, which to planned to go to public review right after the first of the year.

Please feel free to write to us for more information. If you are a member of OAGi, please feel free to contact us about joining the Working Group.

OAGIS Registered User Stats

I was going though our registered users list this week and found some interesting statistics. In the four months since we put up the new website, we have 1584 registered users and we are adding 5 - 10 new ones per day.

In going though the names, I found that we have registrations from 65 countries on 6 continents. The breakdown is just below. Europe wins, but Asia is not far behind.

Africa	3 countries represented
Asia	17 countries represented
Australia/Oceana	3 countries represented
Europe	29 countries represented
North America	4 countries represented
South America	10 countries represented

Some of the most interesting countries represented include French Polynesia and the Palestinian Territory.

We truly have an international community.

Cool online web pages about OAGIS

I recently had the opportunity to discover several cool websites where people are writing about OAGIS. In one of them, they describe how OAGIS helps manufacturers. It is on the ISA website. ISA is a partner of OAGi through our MOU on the use of their famous ISA S95 international standard. The link is here:

http://www.isa.org/InTechTemplate.cfm?Section=Channel_Talk1&template=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=77001

Then I found this website, where someone posted a presentation a couple of our members did on using BODs for Data Management. This was the basis for a White PAper we just published for our members that is a very detailed data managment guide.

http://www.slideshare.net/chucka_nc/a-bod-is-a-powerful-thing-a-look-at-the-mechanics-of-using-oagis-bods

Unified Context Methodology for OAGIS

OAGIS has long been considered as a Canonical Model for enterprise and business network interoperability.  Many organizations around the world are using it to save money and increase their organizational agility.

The data model has been tested and matured over many years and it is consequently very robust.  This also means that sometimes there is more in the data model than a particular use case requires.

As we move forward with our plans for OAGIS X, the Unified Context Methodology (UCM) is a very important part of our plans as we believe it will help our users apply OAGIS to their particular use cases more effectively and efficiently.

I will write more about UCM but for now you can download a presentation done at our Spring 2009 Meeting at the following link: 

http://www.oagi.org/oagi/downloads/meetings/2009_0506_WashingtonDC/Presentation_UCM_DiretionAndConcepts_April2009.pdf

  

Two more collaborations moving forward

These news items would normally go into our monthly newsletter, but rather than wait until next month, I thought I would announce them now.

American Chemistry Council ChemITC

On Monday of this week we completed our agreement to join the American Chemistry Council ChemITC group.  This organization is the place where CIDX transferred their business initiatives. 

OAGi will be working closely with this organization in the same manner as we work with EDIFICE for our High Tech Council.

AgGateway

Today we received a Letter of Intent from AgGateway concerning their future membership in our Chemical Industry Council.  I am very pleased that AgGateway, which uses the Chem eStandards labeled as AG eStandards, will be continuing their commitment to working with OAGi as the successor to the CIDX standards efforts.

You can learn more about AgGateway here: http://www.aggateway.org

Plans for a next generation OAGIS

Our OAGIS specification has been in the market since 1996 and during that time we have continuously improved the business process definitions and the data exchange data model.

In the release 9.X version of OAGIS we implemented the 2.01 version of UN/CEFACT CCTS, parts of the Naming and Design Rules, the Datatypes, and some of the harmonized Core Components that were available at that time.

Now that the UN/CEFACT 3.0 technologies look like they are nearing completion, our Policy Board and Architecture Council are discussing plans to implement them in a next generation version of OAGIS we are calling OAGIS Release 10 or OAGIS X.

We are looking at this as a multi-year effort and the scope of OAGIS X is planned to include the following UN/CEFACT technologies:

Core Component Technical Specification (CCTS) version 3.0

Naming and Design Rules 3.0

Data Types Catalog 3.0

Unified Context Methodology

OAGIS X is also planned to be the version of OAGIS that explicitly supports (at least) High Tech, Aerospace and Defense, Automotive, Steel, and the Chemical Industry.  

The Chemical Industry point is very important to the users of the Chem eStandards, which are now owned by the Open Applications Group and our Chemcial Industry Council.  It is planned that OAGIS X will supercede the Chem eStandards at that time.  I plan to discuss our strategy for the Chem eStandards in more detail in anther post.