The Contextualized UML: Practical Use of Unified Modeling Language in Japanese Industry

Since foreign affiliated firms are advancing their technologies in the Japanese field, there is the problem of communication between this foreign personnel and the Japanese. Japanese language is difficult for foreign people, just as the English is difficult for Japanese. Even though the Esperanto artificial language was developed for communication purpose, the cost for mastering it is too high. There is need for the introduction of another artificial language in graphical representation which can be mastered by foreigners and Japanese people easily. The author therefore, in this book, discusses the Unified Modeling Language, for short UML. This book intends to bridge the gap between analysis and design process by UML in Japanese contextualization. UML turns out to be applied not only to business systems, but also engineering systems through contextualization. Although general ideas are given for developing industrial systems, new social problems have occurred. We should tackle the problems with a paradigm shift from object orientation to agent orientation. An agent-oriented modeling is discussed for next generation industrial systems.