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

这笔赠款为建立工程虚拟组织(EVO)提供资金，以利用网络基础设施(CI)作为使能技术，以促进离散事件物流系统(DELSS)的科学研究。DELS研究人员的社区一直并在很大程度上继续围绕分优化的活动子集或问题子集的范例进行组织。我们寻求建立DELS EVO和支持CI，通过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，为DELS研究创建一种替代的面向系统的范式。EVO的基础技术将是大规模复杂DELS的高保真数字样机，结合高带宽分布式计算。关键的使能技术是一种新的系统建模语言SysML，它提供了全面、统一地表示DELS所需的描述能力。这一努力将通过在专业会议和公司地点举行的一系列会议来促进DELS社区的积极参与，这些会议最终将在一次会议上描述DELS CI原型，定义EVO的用户要求、关键的操作原则和最优先的研究计划。这个原型将通过推出最初的EVO网络展示来实现，并通过有限的方式展示创建DELS的高保真表示的潜力，并使用分布式计算来支持DELS设计。如果成功，这一努力的结果将使个人和团体能够通过标准的基于网络的技术来参与DELS的高保真数字模型。这一功能将从根本上改变教授和学习DELS领域的方式，使学生能够更丰富、更直接地了解DELS。此外，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，即使是一个原始的DELS理论的创建也将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.