Reusing enterprise models to build platform independent computer models

Enterprises use enterprise models to represent and analyse their processes, products, decisions, organisation, information flows, etc. Nevertheless, the enterprise knowledge that exists in enterprise models is not used beyond these purposes. The main goal of this paper is to present a framework that allows enterprises to reuse enterprise models to build software. The framework includes these dimensions: (1) a methodology that guides the use of the other dimensions in the reutilisation of enterprise models in software generation; (2) a set of metamodels to represent enterprises at the Computation Independent Model (CIM) level; (3) a modelling guide to make enterprise models using the metamodels proposed in this paper; (4) an extraction algorithm to discriminate the part of the CIM model to reuse; and (5) a set of transformation rules to reuse enterprise models to build Platform Independent Models. In addition, a case example is shown to validate the work that was carried out and to identify limitations

Model driven validation approach for enterprise architecture and motivation extensions

As the endorsement of Enterprise Architecture (EA) modelling continues to grow in diversity and complexity, management of its schema, artefacts, semantics and relationships has become an important business concern. To maintain agility and flexibility within competitive markets, organizations have also been compelled to explore ways of adjusting proactively to innovations, changes and complex events also by use of EA concepts to model business processes and strategies. Thus the need to ensure appropriate validation of EA taxonomies has been considered severally as an essential requirement for these processes in order to exert business motivation; relate information systems to technological infrastructure. However, since many taxonomies deployed today use widespread and disparate modelling methodologies, the possibility to adopt a generic validation approach remains a challenge. The proliferation of EA methodologies and perspectives has also led to intricacies in the formalization and validation of EA constructs as models often times have variant schematic interpretations. Thus, disparate implementations and inconsistent simulation of alignment between business architectures and heterogeneous application systems is common within the EA domain (Jonkers et al., 2003). In this research, the Model Driven Validation Approach (MDVA) is introduced. MDVA allows modelling of EA with validation attributes, formalization of the validation concepts and transformation of model artefacts to ontologies. The transformation simplifies querying based on motivation and constraints. As the extended methodology is grounded on the semiotics of existing tools, validation is executed using ubiquitous query language. The major contributions of this work are the extension of a metamodel of Business Layer of an EAF with Validation Element and the development of EAF model to ontology transformation Approach. With this innovation, domain-driven design and object-oriented analysis concepts are applied to achieve EAF model’s validation using ontology querying methodology. Additionally, the MDVA facilitates the traceability of EA artefacts using ontology graph patterns

NEGOSEIO: framework for the sustainability of model-oriented enterprise interoperability

Dissertation to obtain the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Electrical and Computer Engineering(Industrial Information Systems)This dissertation tackles the problematic of Enterprise Interoperability in the current globally connected world. The evolution of the Information and Communication Technologies has endorsed the establishment of fast, secure and robust data exchanges, promoting the development of networked solutions. This allowed the specialisation of enterprises (particularly SMEs) and favoured the development of complex and heterogeneous provider systems. Enterprises are abandoning their self-centrism and working together on the development of more complete solutions. Entire business solutions are built integrating several enterprises (e.g., in supply chains, enterprise nesting) towards a common objective. Additionally, technologies, platforms, trends, standards and regulations keep evolving and demanding enterprises compliance. This evolution needs to be continuous, and is naturally followed by a constant update of each networked enterprise’s interfaces, assets, methods and processes. This unstable environment of perpetual change is causing major concerns in both SMEs and customers as the current interoperability grounds are frail, easily leading to periods of downtime, where business is not possible. The pressure to restore interoperability rapidly often leads to patching and to the adoption of immature solutions, contributing to deteriorate even more the interoperable environment. This dissertation proposes the adoption of NEGOSEIO, a framework that tackles interoperability issues by developing strong model-based knowledge assets and promoting continuous improvement and adaptation for increasing the sustainability of interoperability on enterprise systems. It presents the research motivations and the developed framework’s main blocks, which include model-based knowledge management, collaboration service-oriented architectures implemented over a cloud-based solution, and focusing particularly on its negotiation core mechanism to handle inconsistencies and solutions for the detected interoperability problems. It concludes by validating the research and the proposed framework, presenting its application in a real business case of aerospace mission design on the European Space Agency (ESA).FP7 ENSEMBLE, UNITE, MSEE and IMAGINE project

Un modelo para la obtención de requisitos de interoperabilidad de sistemas organizacionales

Introduction: this article is the product of the research called a framework to support the elicitation of interoperability requirements (IR) based on the needs of an organization's business processes, developed at the Universidad del Cauca in 2019. Problem: within the requirements elicitation process, stakeholders generally fail to articulate IR according to the business needs, causing the development of systems incompatible with systems in other functional areas. Objective: to identify, define and classify a set of attributes that constitute the interoperability at the business level, which must be considered during the elicitation of an IR. Methodology: the development of the model followed these activities: (i) establishment of the aspects to be considered in the interoperability at the business level, (ii) identification of the attributes that make up each aspect, (iii) definition of the identified attributes and the options that can be obtained in response, and (iv) classification of the attributes. Results: a model that describes 21 attributes that constitute the interoperability at the business level, classified in the following views: emitters and receivers, types of interaction, data flow properties, and conditions to use the communicated data. Conclusion: from the application of the model in the elicitation of a set of IR of two functional areas of an organization, it was identified that the attributes favor the common understanding among members of different areas and support the analysis and planning of the exchanges of information. Originality: to identify and define a set of attributes that constitute interoperability at the business level. Limitations: the model must be used by a process that guides the elicitation of the attributes that make up the IR.Introducción: este artículo es producto de una investigación denominada marco para apoyar la elicitación de requisitos de interoperabilidad (RI) en función de las necesidades de los procesos de negocio de una organización, desarrollada en la Universidad del Cauca en 2019. Problema: dentro del proceso de obtención de requisitos, las partes interesadas a menudo no logran articular los IR de acuerdo con las necesidades del negocio, lo que provoca el desarrollo de sistemas incompatibles con los sistemas en otras áreas funcionales. Objetivo: identificar, definir y clasificar un conjunto de atributos que constituyen la interoperabilidad a nivel empresarial, los cuales deben ser considerados al momento de obtener RI. Metodología: el desarrollo del modelo siguió las siguientes actividades: (i) establecimiento de aspectos a considerar en interoperabilidad a nivel empresarial, (ii) identificación de los atributos que componen cada aspecto, (iii) definición de los atributos identificados y las opciones que pueden ser obtenidas en la respuesta y (iv) clasificación de atributos. Resultados: modelo que describe 21 atributos que constituyen la interoperabilidad a nivel empresarial, clasificados en las siguientes vistas: emisores y receptores, tipos de interacción, propiedades del flujo de datos y condiciones de uso de los datos comunicados. Conclusión: a partir de la aplicación del modelo en la elicitación de un conjunto de RI de dos áreas funcionales de una organización, se identificó que los atributos favorecen el entendimiento común entre miembros de diferentes áreas y apoyan el análisis y planificación del intercambio de información. Originalidad: identificar y definir un conjunto de atributos que constituyen la interoperabilidad a nivel empresarial. Limitaciones: el modelo debe ser utilizado por un proceso que oriente la elicitación de los atributos que componen los RI

The coevolution of AEC professional work practices with technology: collaborative delivery framework modelling for BIM projects

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD). Johannesburg, 2018Despite BIM’s potential to alleviate persistent construction industry challenges, its use does not guarantee results. Therefore, it was argued and established from a theoretical and practical standpoint that the implementation of BIM, an evolving technology, within pre-BIM organisational and project team work practices (as activity systems), induces their evolution through dysfunctions created in the systems and their resolution. A multi-stage\multi-method research design involving a study of BIM implementation cases, documents analysis, swimlane modelling and multi-domain-mapping (MDM) of pre-BIM and BIM-enabled project delivery processes was employed. This was to develop an understanding of how construction professional work practices evolve with the implementation of BIM. The findings show that evolutionary change of work practices within organisations precedes that of project teams. The findings further suggest a link between organisational attitude towards BIM as a method of working and success at implementing it. Using activity theory, a novel conceptual analysis of BIM induced change in professional work practices aided a theoretical understanding of the implications of implementing BIM on construction professional work practices. The theory provided a basis for analysing historical and future change patterns in professional work practices with BIM and indeed similar work mediating tools. An in-depth conceptualisation and new theoretical insight were developed on the phenomenon of new role legitimation, establishing that new BIM role takers are legitimated to exercise authority within project teams and organisations mainly because they leverage knowledge as a strategic resource. By implication, they will remain legitimate only as long as the constraint or dysfunction prompting their creation subsists. Furthermore, using swimlane and MDM modelling methods in complement, the BIM change impact on pre-BIM workflows was modelled. An objective evaluation of the BIM change impact at the pre-construction phase showed that the BIM-enabled project delivery workflows structure, compared to the pre-BIM is more connected and integrated.MT 201

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

Actor based behavioural simulation as an aid for organisational decision making

Decision-making is a critical activity for most of the modern organizations to stay competitive in rapidly changing business environment. Effective organisational decision-making requires deep understanding of various organisational aspects such as its goals, structure, business-as-usual operational processes, environment where it operates, and inherent characteristics of the change drivers that may impact the organisation. The size of a modern organisation, its socio-technical characteristics, inherent uncertainty, volatile operating environment, and prohibitively high cost of the incorrect decisions make decision-making a challenging endeavor. While the enterprise modelling and simulation technologies have evolved into a mature discipline for understanding a range of engineering, defense and control systems, their application in organisational decision-making is considerably low. Current organisational decision-making approaches that are prevalent in practice are largely qualitative. Moreover, they mostly rely on human experts who are often aided with the primitive technologies such as spreadsheets and visual diagrams. This thesis argues that the existing modelling and simulation technologies are neither suitable to represent organisation and decision artifacts in a comprehensive and machine-interpretable form nor do they comprehensively address the analysis needs. An approach that advances the modelling abstraction and analysis machinery for organisational decision-making is proposed. In particular, this thesis proposes a domain specific language to represent relevant aspects of an organisation for decision-making, establishes the relevance of a bottom-up simulation technique as a means for analysis, and introduces a method to utilise the proposed modelling abstraction, analysis technique, and analysis machinery in an effective and convenient manner

Enterprise reference architectures for higher education institutions: Analysis, comparison and practical uses

Enterprise Architecture (EA) is currently accepted as one on the major instruments for enabling organisations in their transformation processes to achieve business-technology alignment. Despite that over the last years EA has been successfully adopted in many industries, Higher Education still represents one of the sectors with lower levels of adoption and maturity of EA practices. The present thesis puts the emphasis particularly on the study Enterprise Reference Architectures (ERAs), as a particular type of EA artefact, in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). After formally clarifying the concept of ERAs and giving a panoramic view of the current state-of-the-art of existing HEI-oriented ERAs, the thesis proposes an artefact framework build through a Design Science Research (DSR) approach aimed to facilitate practitioners their (re-)use or application in their own real practical settings. The purpose of the constructed artefact is to support practitioners when conducting the necessary adjustments to exiting HEI-oriented ERAs in order to be successfully applied for their specific needs.La Arquitectura Empresarial (AE) es actualmente reconocida como una disciplina que permite configurar procesos de trasformación organizativa a objeto de alinear el negocio con la tecnología. A pesar de que en los últimos años la AE se ha ido adoptando progresivamente de forma exitosa en diversas industrias, la educación superior representa todavía hoy en día uno de los sectores con menores niveles de adopción y de madurez en lo que se refiere a las prácticas de AE. La presente tesis hace especial hincapié en el estudio de las Arquitecturas de Referencia Empresariales (AREs), entendidas como un artefacto específico de AE, en Instituciones de Educación Superior (IES). Así, después de clarificar formalmente el concepto de ARE y de ofrecer una visión panorámica del estado del arte relativo a las AREs para IES existentes, la tesis propone un framework de trabajo construido a través de un enfoque de investigación basado en la Ciencia del diseño destinado a facilitar su (re-)utilización o aplicación práctica en dominios de trabajo reales. El objetivo del artefacto es proporcionar soporte práctico a los profesionales para realizar los ajustes necesarios a las AREs para IES existentes para que puedan aplicarlas con éxito a sus necesidades específicas.L'Arquitectura Empresarial (AE) és actualment reconeguda com una disciplina que permet configurar processos de transformació organitzatius a fi d'alinear el negoci amb la tecnologia. Tot i que en els darrers anys l'AE s'ha anat adoptant progressivament amb èxit en diverses indústries, l'educació superior representa encara avui dia un dels sectors amb menors nivells d'adopció i de maduresa pel que fa a pràctiques d'AE. Aquesta tesi posa especial èmfasi en l'estudi de les Arquitectures de Referència Empresarials (AREs), enteses com un artefacte concret d'AE, a Institucions d'Educació Superior (IES). Així, després d'aclarir formalment el concepte d'ARE i oferir una visió panoràmica de l'estat de l'art relatiu a les ARE per a IES existents, la tesi proposa un framework de treball construït a través d'un enfocament de recerca basat en la ciència del disseny destinat a facilitar-ne la seva (re-)utilització o aplicació pràctica en dominis de treball reals. L'objectiu de l'artefacte és proporcionar suport pràctic als professionals per realitzar els ajustaments necessaris a les AREs per a IES existents de forma que les puguin aplicar amb èxit a les seves necessitats específiques.Tecnologies de la informació i de xarxe