Copyright @IFAClnIdligentManufacturing Systems, Vienna, Austria, 1994 INTEGRATED MODELLING TECHNIQUES FOR CIM SYSTEMS REQUIREMENTS ANALYSIS M. KliRAMEES, M. LITTOVER, L RANDVEE, J. VAIN Institute of Cybernetics, Department of Control Systems Akadeemia tee 21, EE0026 TaUinn, Estonia Abstract. Conceptual modelling of business processes at the initiation phase of the CIM project life cycle is investigated. The conceptual meta-model based on the open-EDI model and requirements specification language KAOS is elabomted and used as an intennediate language for requirements specification. The dimensions of integrated modelling in knowledge engineering context are outlined. The class structure and intensional definitions for concept classes used in software specifications are derived and their formalization operations analyzed. Key words. Conceptual meta-model; integrated modelling; knowledge engineering; system analysis; requirements specification. 1. INTRODUCTION The complexity of the integrated enterprise business activity groups can hardly be overestimated. Requirements specification of activity groups being implemented in a CIM system may combine different features like distribution of data .and processes, processing and communication of different types of data (e.g. sensor signals, business reports), conflicting hard real-time and average response time requirements, fault-tolerance and high-performance requirements, etc... Analysis of requirements where these features are presented induces the need for use of different formal modelling techniques each oriented on a particular group of system features. Practical experiencies with several CIM projects such as furniture manufacturing plant, dairy, and paper mill (Littover et al, 1992a, 1992b) have led authors to the conclusion that combining various modelling techniques required in real CIM system design often brings in additional fragmentation of requirements and makes the uniform interpretation of analysis results into a hardly managable task. As the result, getting complete and consisIent requirements specification for the CIM system takes many iterations and constitutes a remarkable pan of system development efforts and costs. Recently new knowledge engineering techniques have proven their appropriateness for solving many classes of problems faced in CIM system 59 development. Solution to the problem of CIM requirements integrity and tractability described in the present paper relies on the idea that the keystone of the requirements specification process is an appropriate conceptul meta-model in terms of which all acquired knowledge should be structured. A conceptual meta-model serves as an integrator for relating particular feature-oriented requirements models (e.g. timing, causal dependencies, data structures etc.). In (Littover et al, 1992b) such a conceptual meta-model based on the KAOS gOal- oriented approach (Dardenne et al, 1991) complemented by the Open-EDI scenario-player- event model (ISOIIEC, 1991) was proposed. In this paper the proposed meta-model is elaborated in more details and relationship between concept definitions and concept handling schemas in one hand and ideas of object-oriented modelling on the other hand is demonstrated. During the elaboration of the conceptual meta-model an observation is made that more definite structuring of the meta- modelling environment is highly recommandable both for understanding and implementation reasons. The aim of this paper is not a thorough overview of modelling activities and tools but rather a presentation of the role of conceptual meta-model as an integrating framework ·for modelling of applications in CIM environment. For a more broad overview of general modelling relations and the part of the conceptual modelling in modelling activities we refer to (Kaaramees et ai, 1993).