Enterprise Modeling Approach Research Articles

ENTERPRISE MODELLING METHODOLOGY FOR SOCIO-CYBER-PHYSICAL SYSTEMS DESIGN: CASE FROM CYBERSECURITY EDUCATION AND CLIMATE-SMART AGRICULTURE

ENTERPRISE MODELLING METHODOLOGY FOR SOCIO-CYBER-PHYSICAL SYSTEMS DESIGN: CASE FROM CYBERSECURITY EDUCATION AND CLIMATE-SMART AGRICULTURE

An integrated socio-technical enterprise modelling: A scenario of healthcare system analysis and design

One of the crucial issues facing enterprise modelling (EM) practices is that EM is considered technical, and rarely or never has a social focus. Social aspects referred to here are the soft aspects of the organisation that lead to organic organisation development (communication, collaboration, culture, skills and personal goals). There are many EM approaches and enterprise architecture frameworks were proposed recently. These cover different enterprise aspects, perspectives, artefacts and models with different qualities and levels of details. Yet, the imperative determination has overlaid the declarative exploration in EM as a necessity of the design effort. Rethinking the assumptions underlying EM should bring a new and different understanding on how EM can be tackled within the enterprise, in particular the joint development and optimisation of socio-technical systems. This paper discusses EM from a socio-technical systems (STS) perspective, and towards forming a new model of EM that is driven from STS theory and combined with STS practices. Then proposes a conceptual integrated model that incorporates the new concepts of STS toward building an EM framework for balanced socio-technical joint development and optimisation. The approach is illustrated in a scenario from healthcare industry. A combination between modelling and STS practices proved powerful for holistic IT modernisation, future work discussed toward the end of the paper.

AN INTEGRATED APPROACH FOR SOCIO-TECHNICAL SYSTEMS ANALYSIS BY THE APPLICATION OF A WEB MAP SOLUTION

INTRODUCTION
 Socio-technical systems modelling and analysis are playing an important role for sustainability and scenario evaluation in different situations and domains – environmental modelling and simulation, agricultural management, tourism simulation, educational purposes and many others. There are many challenges when scientists are faced with a practical systems simulation modelling situation. These challenges are on choosing an appropriate simulation modelling tool according to the particular situation and on-site integration of a large amount of data in the simulation environment. An option for that particular challenge is to develop a solution by the application of multiple modelling approaches and by integrating them with the Web map application to provide the online data needed for simulation processes and the analysis of different scenarios or outcomes.
 The aim of this paper is to present the results of interdisciplinary research done in collaboration with scientists in environmental modelling and the socio-technical systems engineering fields.
 MATERIAL AND METHODS
 Enterprise modelling as a model development tool is used to provide a holistic understanding of the mentioned domain. In the case of policy makers, the application of 4EM methodology and incorporation of a simulation modelling environment offers a comprehensive tool to influence relevant policies and regulations on the basis of the best available information and the outcome of different scenarios.
 Modern web map applications provide an interactive form of data presentation, especially in the case of spatially related data. On the one hand, the user can easily define inputs to analyses and on the other hand, results of the analyses and simulations are presented in a way that the user can extract information on different levels.
 RESULTS
 As an outcome of this research is an integrated approach for socio-technical systems analysis which is applied in a Web Map Application to provide online visualization of the data provided in the form of maps, charts and tables.
 This application also provides a participatory tool that involves scientists and members of the general public, working together to develop conceptual and dynamic models to address environmental issues. The parameters and conditions of these areas are continuously changing.
 The enterprise modelling approach in combination with simulation tools and utilization of a modern web map application provides an active research tool in situations when many stakeholders are involved in building a comprehensive model and to get the most benefit from its outcome.
 It also provides a holistic view of environmental processes and their influence on residential activities in the protected landscape areas.
 A practical result of this paper, the solution designed and developed during the research was tested in a real life situation in Kala lake with inputs provided by the management board of the lake and an environmental agency. Visualization of the results in the form of an interactive web map application provided an explanatory and straightforward presentation of the results for an expert group, as well as for the general public.
 The developed web map application combines the visualization of the results in the form of charts and tables with the visualization of spatially related phenomena as data layers in a map window, with other map layers from different data providers. On the other hand, the web map application provides functionality for users to insert the parameters of analytical methods and simulation tools to improve the results from previous iterations and/or additional conditions to the computations.
 DISCUSSION
 The advantages of the presented approach is to combine mathematical operations and simulations in the background while the results of these background operations are presented using graphical and cartographic methods in an explanatory form for a variety of users. The expansion of the utilization of web maps in recent years provides an interactive way to present information and to extract knowledge that are important as a support for further decision- and policy-making processes.
 CONCLUSION
 Future work is related with the application of a multi-approach in the socio-technical systems analysis, simulation, verification and validation processes. The interoperability of different modelling software would expand the functionality of the proposed software.
 ACKNOWLEDGMENT
 Michal Kepka was supported by the project LO1506 of the Czech Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports under the program NPU I.

OT Modeling: The Enterprise Beyond IT

Enterprises are composed of an enormous number of elements (e.g., organizational units, human resources, production processes, and IT systems) typically classified in the business or the IT domain. However, some crucial elements do not belong in either group: they are directly responsible for producing and delivering the company’s goods and services and include all the elements that support day to day operations. Collectively, these elements have been called operational technologies (OT) and have been conspicuously excluded from enterprise modeling (EM) approaches which traditionally have focused on the business and IT dimensions. Evidence of this is the absence of OT elements in languages and metamodels for EM. This is in line with the historical division between IT and OT in organizations that has led to information silos, independent teams, and disparate technologies that only recently have started to be reconciled. Considering that OT is critical to most productive organizations, and the benefits that EM brings to its understanding and improvement, it makes sense to expand EM to include OT. For that purpose, this paper proposes an extension to ArchiMate 3.0 which includes crucial OT elements. On top of that, this paper also proposes an approach to further expand ArchiMate to address specific industries where more specific OT elements are required. This is illustrated in the paper with an extension for the Oil and Gas case that was validated with experts belonging to five companies in the sector.

BORO as a Foundation to Enterprise Ontology

ABSTRACTModern business organizations experience increasing challenges in the development and evolution of their enterprise systems. Typical problems include legacy re-engineering, systems integration/interoperability, and the architecting of the enterprise. At the heart of all these problems is enterprise modeling. Many enterprise modeling approaches have been proposed in the literature with some based on ontology. Few however adopt a foundational ontology to underpin a range of enterprise models in a consistent and coherent manner. Fewer still take data-driven re-engineering as their natural starting point for modeling. This is the approach taken by Business Object Reference Ontology (BORO). It has two closely intertwined components: a foundational ontology and a re-engineering methodology. These were originally developed for the re-engineering of enterprise systems and subsequently evolved into approaches to enterprise architecture and systems integration. Together these components are used to systematically unearth reusable and generalized business patterns from existing data. Most of these patterns have been developed for the enterprise context and have been successfully applied in several commercial projects within the financial, defense, and oil and gas industries. BORO's foundational ontology is grounded in philosophy and its metaontological choices (including perdurantism, extensionalism, and possible worlds) follow well-established theories. BORO's re-engineering methodology is rooted in the philosophical notion of grounding; it emerged from the practice of deploying its foundational ontology and has been refined over the last 25 years. This paper presents BORO and its application to enterprise modeling.

Enterprise Pattern: integrating the business process into a unified enterprise model of modern service company

Modern service company (MSC), the enterprise involving special domains, such as the financial industry, information service industry and technology development industry, depends heavily on information technology. Modelling of such enterprise has attracted much research attention because it promises to help enterprise managers to analyse basic business strategies (e.g. the pricing strategy) and even optimise the business process (BP) to gain benefits. While the existing models proposed by economists cover the economic elements, they fail to address the basic BP and its relationship with the economic characteristics. Those proposed in computer science regardless of achieving great success in BP modelling perform poorly in supporting the economic analysis. Therefore, the existing approaches fail to satisfy the requirement of enterprise modelling for MSC, which demands simultaneous consideration of both economic analysing and business processing. In this article, we provide a unified enterprise modelling approach named Enterprise Pattern (EP) which bridges the gap between the BP model and the enterprise economic model of MSC. Proposing a language named Enterprise Pattern Description Language (EPDL) covering all the basic language elements of EP, we formulate the language syntaxes and two basic extraction rules assisting economic analysis. Furthermore, we extend Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) to support EPDL, named BPMN for Enterprise Pattern (BPMN4EP). The example of mobile application platform is studied in detail for a better understanding of EPDL.

Advanced Enterprise Modeling

While the pace of change in the business sector accelerates ever more, the context for this change is becoming more complex. Today’s business environments entail cooperation with different organizations, rapidly changing business activities and processes, and an intensive competitive landscape. Enterprises therefore need the capability to respond quickly and efficiently to these challenges, and even to leverage them to competitive advantage. In this effort, they steadily transform themselves into becoming dynamic, proactive, connected, adaptive, or globally integrated organizations. The objective of this special issue is to bring attention to emerging research in enterprise modeling (EM) – a catalyst for development of IT solutions capable to follow the business of today. In its foundational terms, EM addresses a systematic analysis and modeling of goals and processes, organization and products structures, IT-systems or any other perspective relevant for the modeling purpose. EM research aims to solve business/IT alignment in a holistic manner by providing the techniques, languages, tools, and best practices for using models to represent organizational knowledge and information systems from different perspectives. Described complex business and technology conditions reinforce the role of EM in its responsibility to achieve alignment. Quality attributes such as agility, sensitivity, responsiveness, adaptability, autonomy, and interoperability are emerging as the norms for advanced enterprise models. It is no less important to develop methods to enable enterprise stakeholders to take advantage of those models in order to create business value. The content of the special focus issue is therefore conceived of bringing together novel research results in EM and the topics from the best papers of the 6th and 7th IFIP WG 8.1 conference on the practice of enterprise modeling (PoEM) held in 2012 and 2013. The focus of the PoEM conference series is on advances in the PoEM through a forum for sharing knowledge and experiences between the academic community and practitioners from industry and the public sector. PoEM was initiated in 2008; since its foundation it has been hosted in Sweden, the Netherlands, Norway, Germany, Latvia, and the UK. The six accepted papers reflect different topics of modern EM, including EM approaches addressing: business modeling for networked organizations; contextchanging and capability-driven organizations; transformation and integration of models for improved use from data and service perspectives; visualization solutions for business modeling. In addition to the research papers, the special issue includes two interviews with distinguished practitioners from the business sector: Mr. Sladjan Maras, ViceAssoc. Prof. J. Zdravkovic (&) Assoc. Prof. J. Stirna Stockholm University, Kista, 16440 Stockholm, Sweden e-mail: jelenaz@dsv.su.se

Cartography of the Enterprise Modeling Approach

In this paper we will elaborate the state of the art related to Enterprise Modeling and Interoperability achievement. Also we give a detailed description of tools and method dealing with interoperability such as Model Driven Architecture. The paper proposes a move towards a description of Enterprise Modeling Approach and the different concepts which we will present.

Strategic business modeling: representation and reasoning

Business intelligence (BI) offers tremendous potential for business organizations to gain insights into their day-to-day operations, as well as longer term opportunities and threats. However, most of today's BI tools are based on models that are too much data-oriented from the point of view of business decision makers. We propose an enterprise modeling approach to bridge the business-level understanding of the enterprise with its representations in databases and data warehouses. The business intelligence model (BIM) offers concepts familiar to business decision making--such as goals, strategies, processes, situations, influences, and indicators. Unlike many enterprise models which are meant to be used to derive, manage, or align with IT system implementations, BIM aims to help business users organize and make sense of the vast amounts of data about the enterprise and its external environment. In this paper, we present core BIM concepts, focusing especially on reasoning about situations, influences, and indicators. Such reasoning supports strategic analysis of business objectives in light of current enterprise data, allowing analysts to explore scenarios and find alternative strategies. We describe how goal reasoning techniques from conceptual modeling and requirements engineering have been applied to BIM. Techniques are also provided to support reasoning with indicators linked to business metrics, including cases where specifications of indicators are incomplete. Evaluation of the proposed modeling and reasoning framework includes an on-going prototype implementation, as well as case studies.

Model-based auditing using REA

The recent financial crisis has renewed interest in the value of the owner-ordered auditing tradition that starts from society's long-term interest rather than management interest. This tradition uses a model-based auditing approach in which control requirements are derived in a principled way. A problem with this approach is that it has been proven hard to apply it in modern complex organizations. Making it feasible requires at least an adequate enterprise modeling approach. In this paper, it is shown that the REA ontology fulfills most of the requirements for such a model-based approach. The analysis also suggests some directions in which REA can be extended.

Applying and extending a semantic foundation for role-related concepts in enterprise modelling

In this paper, we provide a semantic foundation for role-related concepts in enterprise modelling. We use a conceptual modelling framework to provide a well-founded underpinning for these concepts. We review a number of enterprise modelling approaches in light of the concepts described (namely, ARIS, ArchiMate, DoDAF, RM-ODP and BPMN). This allows us to understand the various approaches, to contrast them and to identify problems in their definition and/or usage. We start with a core set of concepts and then extend this set to address the social aspects of actors and roles in an organisation. In particular, this enables us to investigate the actor–role relations in further detail.

Capturing and Modelling Work Practice. A Context-based Methodological Approach

Current enterprise modelling approaches describe generic task designs that do not capture actual work practices. However, several improvement areas in organisations are related to the particular ways that individuals have of implementing tasks. This research seeks to enrich enterprise modelling with a methodological approach to capture and model work practices, using a model centered on organizational agents and contexts. The approach allows the identification and analysis of personal and inter-personal work patterns. Context-based representations are acquired from action repositories. The approach is illustrated with a case study. Results on the automatic discovery of personal contexts using clustering are reported.

Enriched multi-process modelling in support of the life cycle engineering of Business Processes

A new approach to enterprise modelling is described that facilitates the reuse of multi-perspective models of Business Process networks. The approach has been designed to advance current best practice when engineering change to interdependent Business Processes of types commonly deployed within Manufacturing Enterprises. The approach is unique in the way it maintains coherence between (1) conventional enterprise models, used primarily to represent graphically (at multiple levels of abstraction) relatively enduring properties of Business Process networks; and (2) dynamic models of selected segments of a parent Business Process network, which can be computer-executed via conventional simulation modelling and workflow modelling technology. Thereby, context-dependent dynamic models can be used to replicate and analyse historical patterns of enterprise behaviour, and predict and analyse possible future patterns of enterprise behaviour, should selected elements and parameters of the modelled Business Process network be changed. The paper also considers ‘needed decision support capabilities’ during Business Process Reengineering and Business Process improvement projects. In so doing, it collates those decision support requirements identified into a generalized description of the life phases of such projects. This generalized description was used to help structure the design of the new enterprise modelling approach. Furthermore, it is used to help illustrate an example application of the new modelling approach.

Object Oriented Principles in Information System Alignment with Enterprise Modelling

This paper begins with an analysis of how some business or enterprise modelling approaches intend to reflect corporate goals into business process models by extensively using object oriented principles. Then we try to emphasize the object-oriented principles' potential in the strategic orientation of information systems, starting this investigation with these business models previously presented. Thus we discuss some methodological aspects of information systems development, supporting the implementation of organizational goals and strategies. Finally, we try to particularize the data organization and design aspects within the information system context approach stated above.

A structured approach to evaluating the impact of implementing a component-based system in the automotive engine manufacturing domain

Component-based (CB) technology applied to the control system of production machinery is one of the new research developments in the automotive manufacturing sector. Although it is important to evaluate the technical aspects of this new paradigm, an appreciation of the impact from the business and human aspects is equally important to the stakeholders in the industry. Current evaluation approaches do not offer a method to capture and analyse the impact of CB technology that is simple to use and produces results that are readily understood by all the interested parties. The definition of an approach for evaluating the business and human aspects of implementing a CB system in the automotive sector is discussed. An evaluation strategy has been formulated comprising (1) knowledge elicitation, (2) investigation of future implementation scenarios, (3) data representation and analysis using enterprise modelling approaches, and (4) simulation and model analysis using proprietary software toolkits.

Verification Rules of Computerized Information System Model with Respect to Data Resource Processing

This paper presents the set of verification rules to detect faults in specification of model of computerized information system. Computerized information system model is specified using Enterprise modeling approach, which integrates static and dynamic dependencies. Typical commu- nication action loop is a basic construct of Enterprise modeling approach. Actions, which process data resources of computerized information system, are analyzed.

Enterprise Modelling and I.T Tools for Enterprise

These last past years enterprises were forced to make evolve their information systems deeply, by introducing new software packages, such as ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), SCM (Supply Chain Management). These strategic tools require huge efforts for their choice, implementation, running and evolution. Today these Tools become the key support of the enterprises competitiveness. This article highlights some consequences of implementation of a new software and discusses practical benefits of using Enterprise Modelling approaches in this kind of global projects.

Reconciling Integrated Business Packages with an Human-Centered Organisation: A Small Enterprise Case Study

The spectacular impact of integrated business solutions reminds still difficult for SMEs. Difficulties arise from the misunderstanding between these too generic “Information Technologies push” organisation and the human-centered organisation as SME. To reconcile users needs and IT, we propose to combine an enterprise modelling approach based on a model warehouse to define the SME organisation with an integrated business packages one to implement this organisation.

Contributions of CIMOSA to GERAM

CIMOSA is an open systems architecture for CIM developed by the ESPRIT Consortium AMICE. It is based on a three-stage, process-based enterprise modelling approach, partly covering the enterprise life cycle. It covers functional/behavioural, information, resource and organisation aspects of an integrated enterprise at various modelling levels. It structures CIM systems as sets of distributed, cooperative agents (called functional entities) linked by an integrating infrastructure to timely execute the many concurrent business processes of manufacturing enterprises. This paper discusses in which way CIMOSA fulfils GERAM (the Generic Enterprise Reference Architecture and Methodology) requirements, as defined by the IFAC/IFIP Task Force on Architectures for Enterprise Integration.