Collaborative Research: Developing an Engineering Virtual Organization for Discrete-Event Logistics Systems

这笔拨款为建立一个工程虚拟组织（EVO）提供资金，以进一步发展离散事件物流系统（dels）的科学，使用网络基础设施（CI）作为使能技术。DELS研究人员社区一直并将在很大程度上围绕活动或问题子集的次优化子集的范式进行组织。我们寻求建立DELS EVO和支持CI，这将为DELS研究创造一种替代的面向系统的范式，使研究团队能够从统一和全面的角度解决更广泛的系统问题。EVO的基础技术将是大规模复杂DELS的高保真数字模型，并结合高带宽分布式计算。关键的支持技术是一种新的系统建模语言SysML，它为DELS的全面、统一表示提供了所需的描述能力。通过在专业会议和公司地点举行的一系列会议，DELS社区学术界和实践者的积极参与将得到促进，这些会议最终将描述DELS CI原型，定义EVO的用户需求，关键操作原则和最高优先级的研究计划。这个原型将通过启动一个初始的EVO网站来实现，并以有限的方式展示创建DELS高保真表示的潜力，并使用分布式计算来支持DELS设计。如果成功，这项工作的结果将使个人和团体能够通过标准的基于网络的技术参与到DELS的高保真数字模型中。这种能力将从根本上改变DELS领域的教学方式，让学生更丰富、更直接地学习DELS。此外，即使是一个粗略的DELS理论的创建，对于用于计划、操作和控制DELS的大型软件系统的开发人员来说，也具有非常重要的意义。

This grant provides funding for the establishment of an engineering virtual organization (EVO) to further the science of discrete-event logistics systems (DELSs), using cyberinfrastructure (CI) as an enabling technology. The community of DELS researchers has been and largely continues to be organized around the paradigm of sub-optimizing subsets of activities or subsets of issues. We seek to establish the DELS EVO and supporting CI that will create an alternative system-oriented paradigm for DELS research by making it possible for teams of researchers to address broader system issues from a unified and comprehensive perspective. The foundational technologies for the EVO will be high-fidelity digital mockups of large-scale complex DELS, combined with high-bandwidth distributed computing. The essential enabling technology is a new systems modeling language SysML that provides the descriptive power needed for comprehensive, unified representations of DELS.The active engagement of the DELS community both academics and practitioners will be facilitated by this effort through a series of meetings at professional conferences and company locations that culminate at a meeting to describe a DELS CI prototype, defining the user requirements for the EVO, the critical operational principles, and the highest-priority research initiatives. This prototype will be realized by launching an initial EVO web presence, and by demonstrating, in a limited way, the potential for creating high-fidelity representations of DELS, and using distributed computing to support DELS design. If successful, the results from this effort will enable individuals and groups to engage high-fidelity digital mockups of DELS through standard web-based technologies. This capability will fundamentally change the way the DELS domain is taught and learned, by making learning about DELS richer and much more immediate to students. In addition, the creation of even a crude DELS theory will have very important significance for developers of large scale software systems used to plan, operate, and control DELS.