Mark Stephen Fox (born 1952) is a Canadian

computer scientist A computer scientist is a scientist who specializes in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation. Although computer scientists can also focus their work and research on ...

, Professor of Industrial Engineering and Distinguished Professor of Urban Systems Engineering at the

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public university, public research university whose main campus is located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park (Toronto), Queen's Park in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was founded by ...

, known for the development of Constraint Directed Scheduling in the 1980s and the

TOVE Project The TOVE project ("Toronto Virtual Enterprise") is a project to develop an ontology (information science), ontological framework for enterprise integration (EI) based on and suited for enterprise modeling.Terje Totland (1997)5.2.3 Toronto Virtual ...

to develop an ontological framework for

enterprise modeling Enterprise modelling is the abstract representation, description and definition of the structure, processes, information and resources of an identifiable business, government body, or other large organization. It deals with the process of underst ...

and

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 ...

in the 1990s.

Biography

Fox received his B.Sc. in

Computer Science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

from the

in 1975, and his PhD in Computer Science from the

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The institution was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools. In 1912, it became the Carnegie Institu ...

in 1983 with the thesis "Constraint-directed search: a case-study of job-shop scheduling." Fox started his academic career at

as Associate Professor of Computer Science and Robotics, where he also headed the Center for Integrated Manufacturing Systems of The Robotics Institute. In 1991 he returned to the University of Toronto, where he was appointed Professor of Industrial Engineering at the

. He is also Senior Fellow in the Global Cities Institute at the University of Toronto.Mark S. Fox
Faculty profile, University of Toronto. Accessed September 19, 2013 He is elected Fellow of the

Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) is an international Learned society, scientific society devoted to promote research in, and responsible use of, artificial intelligence. AAAI also aims to increase public under ...

, and elected fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advance Research.

Work

Fox's current research interests concern

smart cities A smart city is an urban area that uses digital technology to collect data and operate services. Data is collected from citizens, devices, buildings, or cameras. Applications include traffic and transportation systems, power plants, utilities ...

, in particular "ontologies for modelling cities and their performance, causal analysis of crowd sourced data (e.g., analysis of reports provided by citizens to the city), and process mapping and analysis of city services (e.g., social services)." In the past he has been particularly interested the fields of "enterprise engineering (i.e., information technology for business process engineering), constrained-directed reasoning, a unified theory of scheduling, enterprise modelling (i.e., TOVE) and coordination theory."

TOVE project

The

TOVE project The TOVE project ("Toronto Virtual Enterprise") is a project to develop an ontology (information science), ontological framework for enterprise integration (EI) based on and suited for enterprise modeling.Terje Totland (1997)5.2.3 Toronto Virtual ...

, acronym of ''TOronto Virtual Enterprise'' project is a project to develop an ontological framework for

(EI) based on and suited for

.Terje Totland (1997)
5.2.3 Toronto Virtual Enterprise (TOVE)
Thesis, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim. In the beginning of the 1990s it was initiated by Mark S. Fox and others at the University of Toronto .Mark S. Fox and

Michael Gruninger Michael Gruninger is a Canadian computer scientist and Professor of Industrial Engineering at the University of Toronto, known for his work on Ontologies in information science. particularly with the Process Specification Language, and in enterp ...

(1998)
Enterprise Modeling
. American Association for Artificial Intelligence. Initially the project had defined four goals:Fox, M.S., (1992),
The TOVE Project: Towards A Common-sense Model of the Enterprise
, Enterprise Integration Laboratory Technical Report. :# ''provides a shared terminology for the enterprise that each agent can jointly understand and use,'' :# ''defines the meaning of each term (aka semantics) in a precise and as unambiguous manner as possible'' :# ''implements the semantics in a set of axioms that will enable TOVE to automatically deduce the answer to many "common sense" questions about the enterprise, and'' :# ''defines a symbology for depicting a term or the concept constructed thereof in a graphical context.'' The TOVE framework wants to support reasoning about enterprises, and therefore "provides a characterisation of classes of enterprises by sets of assumptions over their processes, goals, and organization constraints." It has been further developed in the fields of

concurrent engineering Concurrent engineering (CE) or concurrent design and manufacturing is a work methodology emphasizing the parallelization of tasks (i.e. performing tasks concurrently), which is sometimes called simultaneous engineering or integrated product develo ...

supply chain management In commerce, supply chain management (SCM) deals with a system of procurement (purchasing raw materials/components), operations management, logistics and marketing channels, through which raw materials can be developed into finished produc ...

and

business process re-engineering Business process re-engineering (BPR) is a Strategic management, business management strategy originally pioneered in the early 1990s, focusing on the analysis and design of workflows and business processes within an organization. BPR aims to hel ...

Enterprise modeling

In the 1995 seminal article "Methodology for the Design and Evaluation of Ontologies" (1995) Grüninger and Fox outline the definition and scope of

enterprise modelling Enterprise modelling is the abstract representation, description and definition of the structure, processes, information and resources of an identifiable business, government body, or other large organization. It deals with the process of underst ...

, stating: :''In enterprise modelling, we want to define the actions performed within an enterprise, and define constraints for plans and schedules which are constructed to satisfy the goals of the enterprise. This leads to the following set of informal competency questions'': :* ''Temporal projection - Given a set of actions that occur at different points in the future, what are the properties of resources and activities at arbitrary points in time?'' :* ''Planning and scheduling - what sequence of activities must be completed to achieve some goal? At what times must these activities be initiated and terminated?'' :* ''Execution monitoring and external events - What are the effects of the occurrence of external and unexpected events (such as machine breakdown or the unavailability of resources) on a plan or schedule?'' :* ''Time-based competition - we want to design an enterprise that minimizes the cycle time for a product. This is essentially the task of finding a minimum duration plan that minimizes action occurrences and maximizes concurrency of activities.'' Michael Grüninger and Mark S. Fox (1995)
Methodology for the Design and Evaluation of Ontologies
" p. 3−4

Publications

Fox published some books and numerous articles on Artificial Intelligence, Scheduling, Ontologies, and Enterprise Modelling. A selection. Books: * Mark S. Fox (1983). ''Constraint-directed search: a case-study of job-shop scheduling''. Carnegie-Mellon University *

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.

and Mark S. Fox eds. (2005). ''Knowledge sharing in the integrated enterprise : interoperability strategies for the enterprise architect''. *

Guy Doumeingts Guy Doumeingts (born 1938) is a French engineer, Emeritus professor at the University of Bordeaux 1 and former Director of "Laboratoire d’Automatique, Productique Signal et Image" control theory, known for the development of the GRAI method and ...

, Mark S. Fox (2010). ''Enterprise Architecture, Integration and Interoperability'' Articles, a selection * 1984. "ISIS—a knowledge‐based system for factory scheduling". With S.F. Smith in: ''Expert systems'' 1 (1), p. 25-49 * 1995. "Methodology for the design and evaluation of ontologies". With M. Grüingger in: ''IJCAI-95 Workshop on basic ontological issues in knowledge sharing'', Montreal. * 1998.
Enterprise Modeling
. With M. Gruninger. In: ''AI magazine''. 19 (3), p. 109 * 2000. "Agent-oriented supply-chain management" With M. Barbuceanu and R. Teigen in: ''International Journal of Flexible Manufacturing Systems'' 12 (2-3), p. 165-188

References

External links

Mark S. Fox
Enterprise Integration Laboratory, University of Toronto {{DEFAULTSORT:Fox, Mark S. 1952 births Living people Canadian computer scientists University of Toronto alumni Carnegie Mellon University faculty Academic staff of the University of Toronto Fellows of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence