Defining Enterprise Systems Engineering

Abstract

This paper proposes a precise definition of Enterprise Systems Engineering (ESE), recognising it as an independent discipline and putting forth a new theoretical foundation to create or change enterprise systems. This paper proposes and demonstrates an approach to formulate and validate definitions grounded in the philosophy of science and product development theory, which starts with a set of specifications and uses the synthesis technique for defining. Using the proposed approach a comparative analysis of different definitions of the same subject was performed and the results shed light on how attempts to define a field of study contribute to differentiate it from or confound it with other fields.