Group B - Interoperability

Interoperability is the ability of a system to work with or sue the parts or equipment of another system (Merriam-Webster).

Interoperability describes the extent to which systems and devices can exchange data, and interpret that shared data.  For two systems to be interoperable, they must be able to exchange data and subsequently present that data such that it can be understood by a user (HIMSS).  Interoperability can be uses with a wide variety of systems.  When it comes to buildings, interoperability is extremely important because all of the systems within a building need to work together in order for it to work.  The structural system, architectural system, HVAC system, electrical system, etc. must all be working in unison in order for a building to be functional and safe.

Manufacturing systems engineering projects depend on contributions from several engineering disciplines.  These contributions consist of complex artifacts like mechanical, electrical, and software components and plans.  While the software tools are strong in supporting each individual engineering discipline, there is very little work on engineering processes automation across semantically heterogeneous engineering tool data models.  (Moser)  This shows that although people might be experts in their specific field, it is important that they are able to communicate with other experts in different fields so that they can work together to achieve a higher goal.  Many engineering firms today are now multidisciplinary in practice.  This is because cooperation between different groups is just as, if not more, important than expertise in a single group.  By having multiple groups working in the same office, companies can get jobs done faster, cheaper, and more efficiently. 

Interoperability is very common in software engineering and it is growing very quickly.  There are two types of interoperability in this field: syntactic and semantic interoperability.  Syntactic is if two or more systems are capable of communication and exchanging data.  Semantic is the ability to automatically interpret the information exchanged meaningfully and accurately in order to produce useful results as defined by the end users of both systems (Wikipedia).  These two types of interoperability are used depending on what kind of data is being observed.

Resources:

"Interoperability." Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 18 Jan. 2014.

"What Is Interoperability?" HIMSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Jan. 2014.

Moser, T. "Semantic Tool Interoperability for Engineering Manufacturing Systems." IEEE Xplore. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Jan. 2014.

"Interoperability." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 01 Mar. 2014. Web. 20 Jan. 2014.