Managing Social Challenges in Cross-Organizational Event-Based Systems

Abstract

During the last decade the manufacturing industry focused on the realization of industry 4.0 aspects. Besides the implementation of new technologies, existing software structures also need to be reviewed and adapted in this context. To stay competitive in the global market, especially small and medium-sized companies need to emphasize on better cooperation with other organizations. This leads to the implementation of cross-organizational distributed software system structures. The development of distributed systems faces different challenges - technical and code-centric as well as social challenges. This paper focuses on the social challenges that appear in distributed development processes. After defining the main challenges, the paper introduces a development approach that is based on the integration of a Federated Management System (FMS). FMS is a technical approach to minimize social challenges by the generation of system transparency and the provision of a platform for communication and interaction. It facilitates a distributed system development of cross-organizational event-based systems.