Engineering Informatics and Industrial Information Integration Engineering

Engineering informatics is an emerging engineering discipline combining information technology with a variety of engineering disciplines. It is a new interdisciplinary subject focusing on the application of computing technologies in a variety of engineering disciplines. Before the need for engineering informatics was formally presented in 2007 and the term "engineering informatics" was coined in 2007 and 2008, a scientific and engineering discipline called Industrial Information Integration Engineering (IIIE) was formally proposed and recognized by international organizations IFIP and IEEE in 2005. The concept of IIIE emphasizes multiple aspects, including one of the major aspects that is completely overlapping with the scope of engineering informatics: engineering information integration. The advances in industrial information integration methods have spurred tremendous growth of a variety of techniques that have been used for probing industrial information integration including engineering information integration. These techniques include business process management, workflow management, EAI, SOA, and others. Such techniques are originated from different disciplines and have the potential for significantly improving the performance of engineering informatics. Many applications require a combination of the techniques. In particular, formal methods and systems methods are crucial for modeling complex engineering systems. This paper is focusing on one of the major aspects of IIIE that is completely overlapping with the scope of engineering informatics: engineering information integration.