Enterprise Model Library for Business-IT-Alignment

The knowledge of the world is passed on through libraries. Accordingly, domain expertise and experiences should also be transferred within an enterprise by a knowledge base. Therefore, models are an established medium to describe good practices for complex systems, processes, and interconnections. However, there is no structured and detailed approach for a design of an enterprise model library. The objective of this work is the reference architecture of a repository for models with function of reuse. It includes the design of the data structure for filing, the processes for administration and possibilities for usage. Our approach enables consistent mapping of requirements into models via meta-data attributes. Furthermore, the adaptation of reference architectures in specific use cases as well as a reconciliation of interrelationships is enabled. A case study with industry demonstrates the practical benefits of reusing work already done. It provides an organization with systematic access to specifications, standards and guidelines. Thus, further development is accelerated and supported in a structured manner, while complexity remains controllable. The presented approach enriches various enterprise architecture frameworks. It provides benefits for development based on models

Semantic Virtual Factory supporting interoperable modelling and evaluation of production systems

Modelling, simulation and evaluation of manufacturing systems are relevant activities that may strongly impact on the competitiveness of production enterprises both during the design and the operational phases. This paper addresses the application of a semantic data model for virtual factories to support the design and the performance evaluation of manufacturing systems, while exploiting the interoperability between various Digital Enterprise Technology tools. The paper shows how a shared ontology-based framework can be used to generate consistent 3D virtual environments and discrete event simulation models, demonstrating this way how the proposed solution can provide an interoperable backbone for heterogeneous software tools

Understanding the Role of Organizational Culture for Design and Success of Enterprise Architecture Management

Enterprise architecture management is considered a valuable means to guide the consistent design and evolution of increasingly complex information systems. Despite existing research on EAM methods and models, organizations often face serious difficulties making EAM effective. The paper proposes to take organizational culture as a highly aggregated construct describing the context of EAM initiatives for building situational - or for that matter culture sensitive EAM methods - into account. We find that organizational culture significantly moderates the impact of EAM’s design on EAM’s success. In group culture, hierarchical culture and developmental culture it is essential to develop EAM from a passive into an actively designing approach to make it effective. Particularly in group culture it is rewarding to strive for an EAM approach that impacts stakeholders outside the IT department

Innovation, skills and performance in the downturn: an analysis of the UK innovation survey 2011

The link between firms’ innovation performance and economic cycles, especially major downturns such as that of 2008-10, is a matter of great policy significance, but is relatively under-researched at least at the level of micro data on business behaviour. It is, for example, often argued that economies need to ‘innovate out of recessions’ since innovation is positively associated with improvements in productivity that then lead to growth and better employment (Nesta, 2009). The issues of how individual firms respond to downturns through their investment in innovation, and how this impacts on innovation outputs and ultimately business performance and growth during and after downturns, has been less studied because relevant data has not been readily available. The UK Innovation Survey (UKIS) 2011 now makes this possible. The UKIS 2011 with reference period 2008 to 2010 covers the downturn in economic activity generated by the global financial crash. The build-up of panels over the life of the UKIS also supports analysis of the longer-term interactions between innovation and the business cycle. This report analyses the last four waves of the surveys. Further, the latest survey includes questions on whether firms employ a specific set of skills, which adds materially to the ability to research the role of skills and human capital in innovation at the micro level

A Rigorous Approach to Relate Enterprise and Computational Viewpoints

Multiviewpoint approaches allow stakeholders to design a system from stakeholder-specific viewpoints. By this, a separation of concerns is achieved, which makes designs more manageable. However, to construct a consistent multiviewpoint design, the relations between viewpoints must be defined precisely, so that the consistency of designs from these viewpoints can be verified. The goal of this paper is to make the consistency rules between (a slightly adapted version of) the RM-ODP enterprise and computational viewpoints more precise and to make checking the consistency between these viewpoints practically applicable. To achieve this goal, we apply a generic framework for relating viewpoints that includes reusable consistency rules. We implemented the consistency rules in a tool to show their applicability

An Approach to Relate Viewpoints and Modeling Languages

The architectural design of distributed enterprise applications from the viewpoints of different stakeholders has been proposed for some time, for example, as part of RM-ODP and IEEE 1471, and seems now-a-days to gain acceptance in practice. However, much work remains to be done on the relationships between different viewpoints. Failing to relate viewpoints may lead to a collection of viewpoint models that is inconsistent, and may therefore lead to an incorrect implementation. This paper defines an approach that helps designers to relate different viewpoints to each other. Thereby, it helps to enforce the consistency of the overall design. The results of this paper are expected to be particularly interesting for Model Driven Architecture (MDA) projects, since the proposed models can be used for the explicit definition of the models and relationships between models in an MDA trajectory

Integration of decision support systems to improve decision support performance

Decision support system (DSS) is a well-established research and development area. Traditional isolated, stand-alone DSS has been recently facing new challenges. In order to improve the performance of DSS to meet the challenges, research has been actively carried out to develop integrated decision support systems (IDSS). This paper reviews the current research efforts with regard to the development of IDSS. The focus of the paper is on the integration aspect for IDSS through multiple perspectives, and the technologies that support this integration. More than 100 papers and software systems are discussed. Current research efforts and the development status of IDSS are explained, compared and classified. In addition, future trends and challenges in integration are outlined. The paper concludes that by addressing integration, better support will be provided to decision makers, with the expectation of both better decisions and improved decision making processes

Philosophy of Blockchain Technology - Ontologies

About the necessity and usefulness of developing a philosophy specific to the blockchain technology, emphasizing on the ontological aspects. After an Introduction that highlights the main philosophical directions for this emerging technology, in Blockchain Technology I explain the way the blockchain works, discussing ontological development directions of this technology in Designing and Modeling. The next section is dedicated to the main application of blockchain technology, Bitcoin, with the social implications of this cryptocurrency. There follows a section of Philosophy in which I identify the blockchain technology with the concept of heterotopia developed by Michel Foucault and I interpret it in the light of the notational technology developed by Nelson Goodman as a notational system. In the Ontology section, I present two developmental paths that I consider important: Narrative Ontology, based on the idea of order and structure of history transmitted through Paul Ricoeur's narrative history, and the Enterprise Ontology system based on concepts and models of an enterprise, specific to the semantic web, and which I consider to be the most well developed and which will probably become the formal ontological system, at least in terms of the economic and legal aspects of blockchain technology. In Conclusions I am talking about the future directions of developing the blockchain technology philosophy in general as an explanatory and robust theory from a phenomenologically consistent point of view, which allows testability and ontologies in particular, arguing for the need of a global adoption of an ontological system for develop cross-cutting solutions and to make this technology profitable. CONTENTS: Abstract Introducere Tehnologia blockchain - Proiectare - Modele Bitcoin Filosofia Ontologii - Ontologii narative - Ontologii de intreprindere Concluzii Note Bibliografie DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.24510.3360

A goal-oriented requirements modelling language for enterprise architecture

Methods for enterprise architecture, such as TOGAF, acknowledge the importance of requirements engineering in the development of enterprise architectures. Modelling support is needed to specify, document, communicate and reason about goals and requirements. Current modelling techniques for enterprise architecture focus on the products, services, processes and applications of an enterprise. In addition, techniques may be provided to describe structured requirements lists and use cases. Little support is available however for modelling the underlying motivation of enterprise architectures in terms of stakeholder concerns and the high-level goals that address these concerns. This paper describes a language that supports the modelling of this motivation. The definition of the language is based on existing work on high-level goal and requirements modelling and is aligned with an existing standard for enterprise modelling: the ArchiMate language. Furthermore, the paper illustrates how enterprise architecture can benefit from analysis techniques in the requirements domain