James G. "Jim" Nell (born 1938) is an American

engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who Invention, invent, design, build, maintain and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials. They aim to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while ...

. He was the principal investigator of the Manufacturing Enterprise Integration Project at the

National Institute of Standards and Technology The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce whose mission is to promote American innovation and industrial competitiveness. NIST's activities are organized into Outline of p ...

(NIST), and is known for his work on

enterprise integration Enterprise integration is a technical field of enterprise architecture, which is focused on the study of topics such as system interconnection, electronic data interchange, product data exchange and distributed computing environments. It is a con ...

Biography

Nell received his

Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering A Bachelor of Engineering (BEng) or a Bachelor of Science in Engineering (BSE) is an undergraduate academic degree awarded to a college graduate majoring in an engineering discipline at a higher education institution. In the United Kingdom, a Bac ...

(BSEE) from

Drexel University Drexel University is a private university, private research university with its main campus in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Drexel's undergraduate school was founded in 1891 by Anthony Joseph Drexel, Anthony J. Drexel, a financier ...

and his

MBA A Master of Business Administration (MBA) is a professional degree focused on business administration. The core courses in an MBA program cover various areas of business administration; elective courses may allow further study in a particular a ...

from

Bowling Green State University Bowling Green State University (BGSU) is a Public university, public research university in Bowling Green, Ohio, United States. The main academic and residential campus is south of Toledo, Ohio. The university has nationally recognized progr ...

Peter Bernus Peter Bernus (born 1949) is a Hungarian Australian scientist and Associate Professor of Enterprise Architecture at the School of Information and Communication Technology, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia.

, L. Nemes (1996) ''Modelling and methodologies for enterprise integration''. p. 68 From 1961 until 1993 Nell worked at

Westinghouse Electric Company Westinghouse Electric Company LLC is an American nuclear power company formed in 1999 from the nuclear power division of the original Westinghouse Electric Corporation. It offers nuclear products and services to utilities internationally, includ ...

in various assignments in

systems engineering Systems engineering is an interdisciplinary field of engineering and engineering management that focuses on how to design, integrate, and manage complex systems over their Enterprise life cycle, life cycles. At its core, systems engineering uti ...

, international

marketing Marketing is the act of acquiring, satisfying and retaining customers. It is one of the primary components of Business administration, business management and commerce. Marketing is usually conducted by the seller, typically a retailer or ma ...

program management Program management deals with overseeing a group or several projects that align with a company’s organizational strategy, goals, and mission. These Project, projects, are intended to improve an Organizational performance, organization's perfo ...

, and

strategic planning Strategic planning is the activity undertaken by an organization through which it seeks to define its future direction and makes decisions such as resource allocation aimed at achieving its intended goals. "Strategy" has many definitions, but it ...

and finally Manager of Information Technology Programs at the Manufacturing Systems and Technology Center of Westinghouse Electric Corporation in Columbia, Maryland. From 1993 to 2000 at NIST he was the principal investigator of the Manufacturing Enterprise Integration Project.James G. Nell
at nist.gov, 1995. Last update, 22 Nov 2000. Formerly he was active in the TC 184 SC4 work to develop product- and process-data representation, serving as the US expert to the SC4 Strategic Planning Advisory Group. For the

IGES The Initial Graphics Exchange Specification (IGES) is a vendor-neutral List of file formats, file format that allows the CAD data exchange, digital exchange of information among computer-aided design (CAD) systems. It is an ASCII-based textual for ...

PDES In mathematics, a partial differential equation (PDE) is an equation which involves a multivariable function and one or more of its partial derivatives. The function is often thought of as an "unknown" that solves the equation, similar to how ...

Organization, he was Chairman of the Steering Committee. He was the original chair of the Evolving Standards Focus Group of the Agile Manufacturing Enterprise Forum at the Iacocca Institute, and a founding participant of the

ANSI The American National Standards Institute (ANSI ) is a private nonprofit organization that oversees the development of voluntary consensus standards for products, services, processes, systems, and personnel in the United States. The organiz ...

Organization for Harmonization of Product Data Standards. As a member of the National Initiative for Product Data Exchange staff, he was the architect of the NIPDE Electronic Library, an early application of the World-Wide Web.

Work

Nell has concentrated on product-information representation, enterprise integration, and standards that apply to information representation and enterprise integration.

GERAM

Generalised Enterprise Reference Architecture and Methodology Generalised Enterprise Reference Architecture and Methodology (GERAM) is a generalised enterprise architecture framework for enterprise integration and business process engineering. It identifies the set of components recommended for use in enterpr ...

(GERAM) is a generalised enterprise architecture framework for enterprise integration and business process engineering. It identifies the set of components recommended for use in

enterprise engineering Enterprise engineering is the body of knowledge, principles, and practices used to design all or part of an enterprise. R.E. Giachetti (2010). ''Design of Enterprise Systems: Theory, Methods, and Architecture''. CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL. An enterpr ...

.J.G. Nell, NIST (1997).
An Overview of GERAM
" ICEIMT'97 International Conference on Enterprise Integration Modelling Technology 1997. Updated 30 January 1997 This framework was developed in the 1990s by an IFAC/ IFIP Task Force on Architectures for

Enterprise Integration Enterprise integration is a technical field of enterprise architecture, which is focused on the study of topics such as system interconnection, electronic data interchange, product data exchange and distributed computing environments. It is a con ...

. Starting from the evaluation of existing enterprise integration architectures, the Task Force has developed an overall definition of a generalised architecture. This proposed framework was labelled as GERAM for "Generalised Enterprise Reference Architecture and Methodology". P. Bernus, and L. Nemes (1994). "A Framework to Define a Generic Enterprise Reference Architecture and Methodology". In: ''Proceedings of the International Conference on Automation, Robotics and Computer Vision (ICARCV'94)'', Singapore, November 10–12, 1994.

ISO TC184 SC5 WG1

Jim Nell has been Convener of ISO TC184 SC5 WG1, Industrial Automation Systems and Integration, Architecture, Communications, and Integration Frameworks, Modeling and Architecture. He is a member of the US delegation to SC5, and a member of the US technical-advisory groups to TC184 and SC5.

Enterprise integration

Enterprise integration has been discussed since the early days of computers in industry and especially in the manufacturing industry, with

computer-integrated manufacturing Computer-integrated manufacturing (CIM) is the manufacturing approach of using computers to control the entire production process. This integration allows individual processes to exchange information with each part. Manufacturing can be faster a ...

(CIM) as the acronym for operations integration. In spite of the different understandings of the scope of integration in CIM, it has always stood for

information integration Information integration (II) is the merging of information from heterogeneous sources with differing conceptual, contextual and typographical representations. It is used in data mining and consolidation of data from unstructured or semi-structured ...

across at least parts of the enterprise. Information integration essentially consists of providing the right information, at the right place, at the right time.J.G. Nell and

Kurt Kosanke Kurt Kosanke (born ca. 1945) is a German engineer, retired IBM manager, director of the AMICE Consortium and consultant, known for his work in the field of enterprise engineering, Enterprise integration and CIMOSA.Arturo Molina, José M. Sánchez, ...

(1997)
ICEIMT'97 International Conference on Enterprise Integration Modeling Technology
Accessed 07 Jan 2008. Evolution in Enterprise Integration

The state of the art in enterprise engineering and integration in the 1990s according to Nell and Kosanke (1997) has been rather confusing. * On one hand it claims to provide solutions for many of the issues identified in enterprise integration. * On the other hand, the solutions seem to compete with each other, use conflicting terminology and do not provide any clues on their relations to solutions on other issues. Workflow modelling, business-process modelling, business-process re-engineering (BPR), and concurrent engineering all aim toward identifying and providing the information needed in the enterprise operation. In addition, numerous integrating-platforms concepts are promoted with only marginal or no recognition or support of information identification. Tools claiming to support enterprise modelling exist in very large numbers, but the support is rather marginal, especially if models are to be used by the end user, for instance, in decision support. The understanding and application of enterprise-engineering and enterprise-integration technologies especially in the end-user community is hampered by the current confusion in solutions and terminology as well as by the lack of sufficient enterprise-integration technologies and their insufficient business justification. The need for enterprise-engineering and enterprise-integration technology is intensifying through the increasing emphasis on agile operation in globally extended or virtual enterprises.

Manufacturing Enterprise Integration

At NIST Jim Nell was the principal investigator of Manufacturing Enterprise Integration Project. This project aimed to improve

business process interoperability Business process interoperability (BPI) is a property referring to the ability of diverse business processes to work together, to so called "inter-operate". It is a state that exists when a business process can meet a specific objective automatical ...

by developing standards to allow software applications to share information better.

Publications

Nell has published several scientific and professional papers since the 1990s as well as edited multiple books.James G. Nell
List of publications from the DBLP Bibliography Server. Books: * 1997. ''Enterprise engineering and integration : building international consensus : proceedings of ICEIMT ʾ97, International Conference on Enterprise Integration and Modeling Technology, Torino, Italy, October 28–30, 1997''. Edited with

. Springer. * 2002. ''Enterprise Inter- and Intra-Organizational Integration: Building International Consensus (IFIP International Federation for Information Processing)''. Edited with

, Roland Jochem, and Angel Ortiz Bas Articles, a selection: * 1995.
"Enterprise Representation: An Analysis of Standards Issues
in: ''Modelling and Methodologies for Enterprise Integration'', IFIP — The International Federation for Information Processing 1996, p. 56-68 * 1997.

in: ''Enterprise Engineering and Integration''. Research Reports Esprit 1997, p. 54-63 * 1999
"Standards Road Map Project"
With Neil Christopher. NIST paper at mel.nist.gov. * 1999. "Standardisation in ISO for enterprise engineering and integration" with K. Kosanke; in: ''Computers in Industry'' (40) 2-3, p. 311-319

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Nell, James G. 1938 births Living people American electrical engineers Enterprise modelling experts Software engineering researchers Drexel University alumni Bowling Green State University alumni