Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | X | XML Journal

XML excellence at Ford Motor Company: realizing the promise. (Enterprise Solutions).

Article Excerpt
What would our companies be like if we didn't have to pay an extra premium to integrate our applications? Integrating a software package can cost as much as two dollars for every dollar spent acquiring it. People pay additionally over the life of the application to maintain the integration points. XML and Web services, combined with appropriate architecture, promise to drastically reduce integration-related costs to a negligible percentage of the total cost.

What if the normal mode of data exchange between companies, organizations, business units, and applications became automatic, near real-time communication and collaboration triggered by true business events?

For years business practices have been arranged around file transfer technology and overnight or periodic scheduled batch processing runs. Using this approach, information generated by business events isn't acted on immediately, but aggregated for later communication. An artificial event triggers the actual communication as a batch (e.g., the nightly batch-processing window for a particular application that starts at 2 a.m. Eastern Time). Information doesn't flow in a relevant way. Delay is built in. People work around this, using telephone, fax, and manual data entry to compensate for the timing-related deficiencies of the system. In addition, these practices create further problems in requiring a large number of data points to be processed at once, which in turn often requires planned downtime, which among other things obviates 24/7 operation.

XML and Web services promise to support new rapid-response business practices: as soon as a customer returns a product for repair, the information generated from this business event can be sent automatically to manufacturing, design, customer service, and finance people as well as to systems and databases--and those of the suppliers--so that all the appropriate resources of the extended enterprise are immediately engaged in satisfying this customer now and in the future.

People are looking for a universal integration back plane built on Internet technology that every application and computing device plugs into. This integration back plane would enable reliable, secure transmission of information in widely understood formats. Instead of handcrafted point-to-point interfaces and integration connections, we need standard connection points that are well known throughout the computing industry and supported by all products. This is XML excellence, applied to integration.

We think the promise is achievable. Most of the pieces are in place. We see several elements of XML excellence that are involved in realizing the promise:

* Use the overall structure and integration best practices of the Open Applications Group Integration Specification (OAGIS).

* Use and support relevant standards.

* Manifest excellence in a focused solution that delivers business value to the company.

* Drive use and compliance internally and externally to the company.

* Plan for broad deployment of these techniques--event-driven messaging, Web services, and richer electronic collaboration.

Standards are critical elements of the vision. Effective standards yield global, cross-industry coalescence around specifications that everyone implements. We understand the standards, and we work with the IT industry and other end users of IT like ourselves to drive relevant standards. We aggressively implement to the standards in ways that make us a more effective automotive manufacturer. This is part of Ford Motor Company's investment in IT excellence as a corporate strategy.

OAGIS

In April the Automotive Industry Action Group (AIAG) sponsored an interesting meeting of automobile manufacturers. Participants from Ford Motor Company, Volkswagen, Nissan, Toyota, Honda, General Motors, and DalmlerChrysler described in turn which XML standards their companies had implemented or planned to implement. There was a remarkable consensus on the Open Applications Group Integration Specification. Each company uses it...