From SEEKing knowledge to making connections: Challenges, approaches and architectures for distributed process integration

Abstract

Integration and coordination of distributed processes remains a central challenge of construction information technology research. Extant technologies, while capable, are not yet scalable enough to enable rapid customization and instantiation for specific projects. Specifically, the heterogeneity of existing legacy sources together with firms' range of approaches to process management makes deployment of integrated information technologies impractical. This paper reports on complementary approaches that promise to overcome these difficulties. First, the SEEK: Scalable Extraction of Enterprise Knowledge toolkit is reviewed as a mechanism to discover semantically heterogeneous source data Second, a schedule mapping approach is presented that integrates firms' diverse individual schedules in a unified representation. The mapping network is supported by a Process Connectors architecture that also incorporates SEEK components. While this paper focuses primary on schedule process integration, the Process Connectors architecture is viewed as providing a broad solution to discovery and integration of firms' process data. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.