The objectives of EXTERNAL focus on developing methods, infrastructure/tools and customer solutions for EE modeling, analysis, engineering and operation. In addition, process learning, deployment of an open knowledge-sharing infrastructure and validation of the results are central to the project. Three use cases ensure that EXTERNAL focuses on the right challenges when developing, testing, evaluating and disseminating the EE methodology, infrastructure and customer solutions. The use of the results from the project will increase the competitiveness of European enterprises and workers.

EXTERNAL supports EE engineering and operation by providing:

• a methodology for EE engineering and operation,
• an infrastructure for sharing live EE processes modeled as active knowledge models,
• tools supporting co-operative definition and execution of live EE processes as well as process knowledge management for facilitating organizational learning, and, finally,
• customer solutions for EE engineering and operations, which will be tested in three use cases in the project.

Based on our experience in the fields of groupware, hypermedia and flexible workflow, IPSI primarily contributes to:

• a unified representation for organizations, processes, tools and information manipulated by teams in the processes,
• the techniques for integrating groupware, hypermedia, and workflow services into a team-based networked organization infrastructure, and
• the methodology, infrastructure and tools for cooperation services that support cooperative process modeling and execution, and cooperative process knowledge management.

In addition, Fraunhofer IPSI is responsible for tool development and for using the EXTERNAL results for running this project as a use case. The major tool Fraunhofer IPSI brings into the project is an extensible hypermedia-based cooperative process support system, which is built on top of DyCE - a Java-based environment for building groupware components. The features of this tool include:

• dynamic extension and combination of groupware tools,
• dynamic configuration of user interface, sessions, and workspaces,
• dynamic distribution of groupware tools,
• integration of external applications,
• support of Internet standards, e.g., XML

DNV, METIS and SINTEF are located in Norway. ZEUS is based in Greece. The partners complement each other with existing tools, prototypes and EE methodologies as background results for the project. The partners will jointly exploit and make available the project results, targeting European SMEs in particular, with complementary offerings in EE tools, infrastructures, services and solutions.

The FernUniversität is a subcontractor of FhG IPSI and is managing the EXTERNAL project use case, which uses the EXTERNAL EE environment for running the EXTERNAL R&D project as an extended enterprise.

More information about EXTERNAL can be found at the main EXTERNAL website or at IPSI.

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