Enterprise engineering
Encyclopedia
Enterprise engineering is a subdiscipline of systems engineering
, which applies the knowledge and methods of systems engineering to the design of business
es. The discipline examines each aspect of the enterprise, including business processes, information flows, and organizational structure. Enterprise engineering may focus on the design of the enterprise as a whole, or on the design and integration of certain business components.
, a more general form of enterprise engineering has emerged. Encompassing "the application of knowledge, principles, and disciplines related to the analysis, design, implementation and operation of all elements associated with an enterprise. In essence this is an interdisciplinary field which combines systems engineering
and strategic management
as it seeks to engineer the entire enterprise in terms of the product
s, process
es and business operations
,". this field is related to engineering management
, operations management
, service management
and systems engineering
.
In the context of software development
, a specific field of enterprise engineering has also appeared that "deals with the modelling and integration of various organizational and technical parts of business process
es". In the context of information systems development, this has become an area of activity for the organization of systems analysis
, and an extension to the existing scope of Information Modelling. It can also be viewed as an extension and generalization of the systems analysis and systems design
phases of the software development process
. Here, enterprise modelling can form part of the early, middle and late information system development life cycle
. Explicit representation of the organizational and technical system infrastructure is being developed in order to understand the orderly transformations of existing work practices. This discipline is also known as Enterprise architecture
, or along with Enterprise Ontology, defined as being one of the two major sub-fields of Enterprise architecture.
These methodologies, techniques and methods are all more or less suited to modeling an enterprise and its underlying processes.
The division into different views makes it a clarifying reference for enterprise and software engineers. It shows information needs for different enterprise functions such as activities, processes and operations alongside their corresponding resources. In this way it can easily be determined which IT system will fulfill the information needs of a particular activity and its associated processes.
to model manufacturing systems, IDEF has been used by the U.S. Airforce since 1981 and originally offered four different notations to model an enterprise from a certain viewpoint. These were IDEF0
, IDEF1, IDEF2 and IDEF3 for functional, data, dynamic and process analysis respectively. Over the past decades a number of tools and techniques for the integration of these different notations have been developed incrementally.
IDEF shows how a business process flows through a variety of decomposed business functions with corresponding information inputs, outputs and actors. Like CIMOSA, it also uses different enterprise views. Moreover, IDEF can be easily transformed into UML-diagrams for the further development of IT systems. These positive characteristics make it a powerful method for the development of Functional Software Architectures.
In recent years research has shown that Petri Nets can contribute to the development of business process integration. One of these is the "Model Blue" methodology developed by IBM
's Chinese Research Laboratory. Model Blue outlines the importance of model driven business integration as an emerging approach to building integrated software platforms. The correspondence between their Model Blue business view and an equivalent Petri Net is also shown, which indicates that their research has closed the gap between business and IT. However, instead of Petri Nets the researchers instead use their own Model Blue IT view, which can be derived from their business view through a transformation engine.
(EEML) is derived from UML and is proposed as a business modeling language. The question remains as to whether this business transformation is the correct method to use, as it was earlier said that UML in combination with other “pure’ business methods may be a better alternative.
In this way EFD has many similarities with IDEF0 diagrams, which also represent business processes in a hierarchical fashion as a combination of functions and triggers. The two differ in that an EFD places the business functions in an organization hierarchical perspective, which outlines the downstream of certain processes in the organization. On the other hand, IDEF0 diagrams show the responsibilities of certain business functions through the use of arrows. Furthermore, IDEF0 provides a clear representation of inputs and outputs for every (sub)function.
EFD may be used as a business front-end to a software modeling language like UML and its major similarities to IDEF as a modeling tool indicate that this is indeed possible. However, further research is needed to improve EFD techniques in such a way that formal mappings to UML can be made. Research on the complementary use of IDEF and UML has contributed to the acceptance of IDEF as business-front end and therfore a similar study should be carried out with EFD and UML.
Systems engineering
Systems engineering is an interdisciplinary field of engineering that focuses on how complex engineering projects should be designed and managed over the life cycle of the project. Issues such as logistics, the coordination of different teams, and automatic control of machinery become more...
, which applies the knowledge and methods of systems engineering to the design of business
Business
A business is an organization engaged in the trade of goods, services, or both to consumers. Businesses are predominant in capitalist economies, where most of them are privately owned and administered to earn profit to increase the wealth of their owners. Businesses may also be not-for-profit...
es. The discipline examines each aspect of the enterprise, including business processes, information flows, and organizational structure. Enterprise engineering may focus on the design of the enterprise as a whole, or on the design and integration of certain business components.
Overview
In the field of engineeringEngineering
Engineering is the discipline, art, skill and profession of acquiring and applying scientific, mathematical, economic, social, and practical knowledge, in order to design and build structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes that safely realize improvements to the lives of...
, a more general form of enterprise engineering has emerged. Encompassing "the application of knowledge, principles, and disciplines related to the analysis, design, implementation and operation of all elements associated with an enterprise. In essence this is an interdisciplinary field which combines systems engineering
Systems engineering
Systems engineering is an interdisciplinary field of engineering that focuses on how complex engineering projects should be designed and managed over the life cycle of the project. Issues such as logistics, the coordination of different teams, and automatic control of machinery become more...
and strategic management
Strategic management
Strategic management is a field that deals with the major intended and emergent initiatives taken by general managers on behalf of owners, involving utilization of resources, to enhance the performance of firms in their external environments...
as it seeks to engineer the entire enterprise in terms of the product
Product (business)
In general, the product is defined as a "thing produced by labor or effort" or the "result of an act or a process", and stems from the verb produce, from the Latin prōdūce ' lead or bring forth'. Since 1575, the word "product" has referred to anything produced...
s, process
Business process
A business process or business method is a collection of related, structured activities or tasks that produce a specific service or product for a particular customer or customers...
es and business operations
Business operations
Business operations are those ongoing recurring activities involved in the running of a business for the purpose of producing value for the stakeholders...
,". this field is related to engineering management
Engineering management
Engineering Management or Management Engineering is a specialized form of management and engineering that is concerned with the application of engineering principles to business practice...
, operations management
Operations management
Operations management is an area of management concerned with overseeing, designing, and redesigning business operations in the production of goods and/or services. It involves the responsibility of ensuring that business operations are efficient in terms of using as little resources as needed, and...
, service management
Service management
Service management is integrated into supply chain management as the joint between the actual sales and the customer. The aim of high performance service management is to optimize the service-intensive supply chains, which are usually more complex than the typical finished-goods supply chain...
and systems engineering
Systems engineering
Systems engineering is an interdisciplinary field of engineering that focuses on how complex engineering projects should be designed and managed over the life cycle of the project. Issues such as logistics, the coordination of different teams, and automatic control of machinery become more...
.
In the context of software development
Software development
Software development is the development of a software product...
, a specific field of enterprise engineering has also appeared that "deals with the modelling and integration of various organizational and technical parts of business process
Business process
A business process or business method is a collection of related, structured activities or tasks that produce a specific service or product for a particular customer or customers...
es". In the context of information systems development, this has become an area of activity for the organization of systems analysis
Systems analysis
Systems analysis is the study of sets of interacting entities, including computer systems analysis. This field is closely related to requirements analysis or operations research...
, and an extension to the existing scope of Information Modelling. It can also be viewed as an extension and generalization of the systems analysis and systems design
Systems design
Systems design is the process of defining the architecture, components, modules, interfaces, and data for a system to satisfy specified requirements. One could see it as the application of systems theory to product development...
phases of the software development process
Software development process
A software development process, also known as a software development life cycle , is a structure imposed on the development of a software product. Similar terms include software life cycle and software process. It is often considered a subset of systems development life cycle...
. Here, enterprise modelling can form part of the early, middle and late information system development life cycle
Systems Development Life Cycle
The systems development life cycle , or software development life cycle in systems engineering, information systems and software engineering, is a process of creating or altering information systems, and the models and methodologies that people use to develop these systems.In software engineering...
. Explicit representation of the organizational and technical system infrastructure is being developed in order to understand the orderly transformations of existing work practices. This discipline is also known as Enterprise architecture
Enterprise architecture
An enterprise architecture is a rigorous description of the structure of an enterprise, which comprises enterprise components , the externally visible properties of those components, and the relationships between them...
, or along with Enterprise Ontology, defined as being one of the two major sub-fields of Enterprise architecture.
Enterprise engineering methods
Enterprise engineering involves formal methodologies, methods and techniques which are designed, tested and used extensively in order to offer organizations reusable business process solutions:- CIMOSACIMOSACIMOSA stands for "Computer Integrated Manufacturing Open System Architecture", is a enterprise modeling framework, which aims to support the enterprise integration of machines, computers and people...
|Computer Integrated Manufacturing Open Systems Architecture]] (CIMOSA) methodology - Integrated DEFinitionIDEFIDEF, an abbreviation of Integration Definition, refers to a family of modeling languages in the field of systems and software engineering. They cover a wide range of uses, from functional modeling to data, simulation, object-oriented analysis/design and knowledge acquisition. These "definition...
(IDEF) methodology - Petri NetPetri netA Petri net is one of several mathematical modeling languages for the description of distributed systems. A Petri net is a directed bipartite graph, in which the nodes represent transitions and places...
s - Unified Modeling LanguageUnified Modeling LanguageUnified Modeling Language is a standardized general-purpose modeling language in the field of object-oriented software engineering. The standard is managed, and was created, by the Object Management Group...
(UML) or Unified Enterprise Modeling Language (UEML) - Enterprise Function Diagrams (EFD)
These methodologies, techniques and methods are all more or less suited to modeling an enterprise and its underlying processes.
Computer Integrated Manufacturing Open Systems Architecture
CIMOSA provides templates and interconnected modeling constructs to encode business, people and information technology (IT) aspects of enterprise requirements. This is done from multiple perspectives: Information view, Function view, Resource view and Organization view. These constructs can further be used to structure and facilitate the design and implementation of detailed IT systems.The division into different views makes it a clarifying reference for enterprise and software engineers. It shows information needs for different enterprise functions such as activities, processes and operations alongside their corresponding resources. In this way it can easily be determined which IT system will fulfill the information needs of a particular activity and its associated processes.
Integrated DEFinition
First developed as a modeling languageModeling language
A modeling language is any artificial language that can be used to express information or knowledge or systems in a structure that is defined by a consistent set of rules...
to model manufacturing systems, IDEF has been used by the U.S. Airforce since 1981 and originally offered four different notations to model an enterprise from a certain viewpoint. These were IDEF0
IDEF0
IDEF0 is a function modeling methodology for describing manufacturing functions, which offers a functional modeling language for the analysis, development, reengineering, and integration of information systems; business processes; or software engineering analysis.IDEF0 is part of the IDEF family...
, IDEF1, IDEF2 and IDEF3 for functional, data, dynamic and process analysis respectively. Over the past decades a number of tools and techniques for the integration of these different notations have been developed incrementally.
IDEF shows how a business process flows through a variety of decomposed business functions with corresponding information inputs, outputs and actors. Like CIMOSA, it also uses different enterprise views. Moreover, IDEF can be easily transformed into UML-diagrams for the further development of IT systems. These positive characteristics make it a powerful method for the development of Functional Software Architectures.
Petri Nets
Petri Nets are established tools used to model manufacturing systems. They are highly expressive and provide good formalisms for the modeling of concurrent systems. The most advantageous properties are the ability to create simple representation of states, concurrent system transitions and capabilities thereby allowing modelling of the duration of transitions. As a result Petri Nets can be used to model certain business processes with corresponding state and transitions or activities therein as well as outputs. Moreover, Petri Nets can be used to model different software systems and transitions between these systems. In this way programmers can use it as a schematic coding reference.In recent years research has shown that Petri Nets can contribute to the development of business process integration. One of these is the "Model Blue" methodology developed by IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
's Chinese Research Laboratory. Model Blue outlines the importance of model driven business integration as an emerging approach to building integrated software platforms. The correspondence between their Model Blue business view and an equivalent Petri Net is also shown, which indicates that their research has closed the gap between business and IT. However, instead of Petri Nets the researchers instead use their own Model Blue IT view, which can be derived from their business view through a transformation engine.
Unified Modeling Language (UML)
UML is a broadly accepted modeling language for the development of software systems and applications. The so called, “object oriented community” also attempts to use UML for enterprise modeling purposes. Here, emphasis is placed on the usage of enterprise objects or business objects from which complex enterprise systems are made. A collection of these objects and corresponding interactions between them can represent a complex business system or process. While Petri Nets focus on the interaction and states of objects, UML focuses more on the business objects themselves. Sometimes these are called “enterprise building blocks” and includes resources, processes, goals, rules and metamodels. Despite the fact that UML can be used to model an integrated software system, it has been argued that the reality of business can be modeled with a software modeling language. In respose, the object oriented community makes business extensions for UML and adapts the language accordingly. Extended Enterprise Modeling LanguageExtended Enterprise Modeling Language
Extended Enterprise Modeling Language in software engineering is a modelling language used for Enterprise modelling across a number of layers.-Overview:...
(EEML) is derived from UML and is proposed as a business modeling language. The question remains as to whether this business transformation is the correct method to use, as it was earlier said that UML in combination with other “pure’ business methods may be a better alternative.
Enterprise Function Diagrams
EFD is a used as a modeling technique for the representation of enterprise functions and corresponding interactions. Different business processes can be modeled in these representations through the use of “function modules” and triggers. A starting business process delivers different inputs to different functions. A process flowing through all the functions and sub-functions creates multiple outputs. Enterprise Function Diagrams thereby provide an easy-to-use and detailed representation about a business process and its corresponding functions, inputs, outputs and triggers.In this way EFD has many similarities with IDEF0 diagrams, which also represent business processes in a hierarchical fashion as a combination of functions and triggers. The two differ in that an EFD places the business functions in an organization hierarchical perspective, which outlines the downstream of certain processes in the organization. On the other hand, IDEF0 diagrams show the responsibilities of certain business functions through the use of arrows. Furthermore, IDEF0 provides a clear representation of inputs and outputs for every (sub)function.
EFD may be used as a business front-end to a software modeling language like UML and its major similarities to IDEF as a modeling tool indicate that this is indeed possible. However, further research is needed to improve EFD techniques in such a way that formal mappings to UML can be made. Research on the complementary use of IDEF and UML has contributed to the acceptance of IDEF as business-front end and therfore a similar study should be carried out with EFD and UML.
See also
- Business engineeringBusiness engineeringBusiness Engineering is an interdisciplinary field of engineering that focuses on how complex businesses should be designed and managed.- Overview :...
- Business ArchitectureBusiness architectureA business architecture is a part of an enterprise architecture related to corporate business, and the documents and diagrams that describe that architectural structure of business...
- Enterprise architectureEnterprise architectureAn enterprise architecture is a rigorous description of the structure of an enterprise, which comprises enterprise components , the externally visible properties of those components, and the relationships between them...
- Enterprise Architecture PlanningEnterprise Architecture PlanningEnterprise Architecture Planning in Enterprise Architecture is the planning process of defining architectures for the use of information in support of the business and the plan for implementing those architectures.- Overview :...
- Enterprise integrationEnterprise integrationEnterprise integration is a technical field of Enterprise Architecture, which focused on the study of topics such as system interconnection, electronic data interchange, product data exchange and distributed computing environments....
- Enterprise Life CycleEnterprise Life CycleEnterprise Life Cycle in enterprise architecture is the dynamic, iterative process of changing the enterprise over time by incorporating new business processes, new technology, and new capabilities, as well as maintenance, disposition and disposal of existing elements of the enterprise.- Overview...
- Enterprise systems engineeringEnterprise systems engineeringEnterprise systems engineering is a emerging discipline of engineering that focuses on integration of many engineering sub-systems and principles into a complete system....
- Generalised Enterprise Reference Architecture and MethodologyGeneralised Enterprise Reference Architecture and MethodologyGeneralised Enterprise Reference Architecture and Methodology is a generalised Enterprise Architecture framework for enterprise integration and business process engineering. It identifies the set of components recommended for use in enterprise engineering.This framework is developed in the 1990s...
- Functional Software ArchitectureFunctional Software ArchitectureA functional software architecture is an architectural model that identifies enterprise functions, interactions and corresponding IT needs. These functions can be used as reference by different domain experts to develop IT-systems as part of a co-operative information-driven enterprise...
- Software factorySoftware factoryIn software engineering and enterprise software architecture, a software factory is an organizational structure that specializes in producing computer software applications or software components according to specific, externally-defined end-user requirements through an assembly process...
- View modelView modelA view model or viewpoints framework in systems engineering, software engineering, and enterprise engineering is a framework which defines a coherent set of views to be used in the construction of a system architecture, software architecture, or enterprise architecture. A view is a representation...
Further reading
- Jan L.G. Dietz (2008) (eds.). Advances in enterprise engineering I : 4th International Workshop CIAO! and 4th International Workshop EOMAS, held at CAiSE 2008, Montpellier, France, June 16–17, 2008. Proceedings.
- Cheng Hsu (2007) (eds.) Service enterprise integration : an enterprise engineering perspective.
- Duane W. Hybertson (2009). Model-oriented systems engineering science : a unifying framework for traditional and complex systems.
- Feltus, Christophe; Petit, Michael; Vernadat, François. (2009). Refining the Notion of Responsibility in Enterprise Engineering to Support Corporate Governance of IT , Proceedings of the 13th IFAC Symposium on Information Control Problems in Manufacturing (INCOM'09), Moscow, Russia