Validating adequacy and suitability of business-IT alignment criteria in an inter-enterprise maturity model

Aligning requirements of a business with its information technology is currently a major issue in enterprise computing. Existing literature indicates important criteria to judge the level of alignment between business and IT within a single enterprise. However, identifying such criteria in an inter-enterprise setting – or re-thinking the existing ones – is hardly addressed at all. Business-IT alignment in such settings poses new challenges, as in inter-enterprise collaborations, alignment is driven by economic processes instead of centralized decision-making processes. In our research, we develop a maturity model for business-IT alignment in inter-enterprise settings that takes this difference into account. In this paper, we report on a multi-method approach we devised to confront the validation of the business-IT alignment criteria that we included in the maturity model. As independent feedback is critical for our validation, we used a focus group session and a case study as instruments to take the first step in validating the business-IT alignment criteria. We present how we applied our approach, what we learnt, and what the implications were for our model

Design Within Complex Environments: Collaborative Engineering in the Aerospace Industry

The design and the industrialization of an aircraft, a major component, or an aerostructure is a complex process. An aircraft like the Airbus A400M is composed of about 700,000 parts (excluding standard parts). The parts are assembled into aerostructures and major components, which are designed and manufactured in several countries all over the world. The introduction of new Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) methodologies, procedures and tools, and the need to reduce time-to-market, led Airbus Military to pursue new working methods to deal with complexity. Collaborative Engineering promotes teamwork to develop product, processes and resources from the conceptual phase to the start of the serial production. This paper introduces the main concepts of Collaborative Engineering as a new methodology, procedures and tools to design and develop an aircraft, as Airbus Military is implementing. To make a Proof of Concept (PoC), a pilot project, CALIPSOneo, was launched to support the functional and industrial design process of a medium size aerostructure. The aim is to implement the industrial Digital Mock-Up (iDMU) concept and its exploitation to create shop fl oor documentation

Developing supply chain maturity

This study introduces an empirical model of supply chain maturity and assesses its impact upon performance. Findings suggest that supply chain maturity is multi-dimensional including the areas of planning, sourcing, making, delivering, new product development, and returning. Valid and reliable measures, scales and supply chain maturity constructs were formulated and significant positive links found with multiple objective performance measures. The supply chain maturity framework is thus concluded to be robust for answering questions relating to where a supply chain is in developmental terms and what may be done to continue improving upon the design. Possible areas for further research and implications for managers are also raised.Supply Chain Design; Supply Chain Coordination;

Identifying higher capability maturity KPAs of construction organisations; Model refinement through expert interviews

Process improvement has been identified as a mechanism of achieving the much needed performance improvements within the construction industry. Despite the concerns of being an industry with unique characteristics, construction has borrowed some process improvement principles from other industries such as software. However, while process capability maturity has been identified as an important aspect of process improvements in many disciplines construction shows a clear research gap in that area. Among the few capability maturity based process improvement initiatives within the construction industry, there is a clear necessity to investigate what are the higher capability maturity level dynamics of construction process improvements. Addressing this requirement, this paper discusses a model to identify construction higher capability maturity

ICoNOs MM: The IT-enabled Collaborative Networked Organizations Maturity Model

The focus of this paper is to introduce a comprehensive model for assessing and improving maturity of business-IT alignment (B-ITa) in collaborative networked organizations (CNOs): the ICoNOs MM. This two dimensional maturity model (MM) addresses five levels of maturity as well as four domains to which these levels apply: partnering structure, information system (IS) architecture, process architecture and coordination. The model can be used to benchmark and support continuous improvement of B-ITa process areas in CNOs