Definition and Validation of a Business IT Alignment Method for Enterprise Governance Improvement in the Context of Processes Based Organizations

These days, it is remarkable to note the growing of interest in professional responsibility. Specifically, the responsibility a person commits to when he or she performs a task. Based on a review of research currently performed in the field of policy (from corporate to technical ones), we observe that the perception of responsibility has often been limited to a combination of rights and obligations. In addition, we are seeing a re-emergence in business (for example, in the financial sector) of a belief that business ethics foundation can be improved and that a renewed focus in this area would help to prevent future breakdowns in the system. With regard to improving business/IT alignment and corporate ICT governance, it becomes increasingly important to define a commonly accepted personal responsibility model that embodies important and well-known concepts like accountability, capability and commitment. Moreover, because responsibility constitutes a fundamental notion of management theory, it is likewise identified as a meaningful bridge toward organizational artifacts. Exploiting process-based approach to define policy seems to offer new research opportunities since process-based organization becomes a continuous widely spread structure.ICT Governance, Responsibility model, Capability, Accountability, Commitment.

Internet enabled modelling of extended manufacturing enterprises using the process based techniques

The paper presents the preliminary results of an ongoing research project on Internet enabled process-based modelling of extended manufacturing enterprises. It is proposed to apply the Open System Architecture for CIM (CIMOSA) modelling framework alongside with object-oriented Petri Net models of enterprise processes and object-oriented techniques for extended enterprises modelling. The main features of the proposed approach are described and some components discussed. Elementary examples of object-oriented Petri Net implementation and real-time visualisation are presented

Enterprise Modeling in the context of Enterprise Engineering: State of the art and outlook

[EN] Enterprise Modeling is a central activity in Enterprise Engineering and can facilitate Production Management activities. This state-of-the-art paper first recalls definitions and fundamental principles of enterprise modelling, which goes far beyond process modeling. The CIMOSA modeling framework, which is based on an event-driven process-based modeling language suitable for enterprise system analysis and model enactment, is used as a reference conceptual framework because of its generality. Next, the focus is on new features of enterprise modeling languages including risk, value, competency modeling and service orientation. Extensions for modeling collaborative aspects of networked organizations are suggested as research outlook. Major approaches used in enterprise modeling are recalled before concluding.Vernadat, F. (2014). Enterprise Modeling in the context of Enterprise Engineering: State of the art and outlook. 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A manufacturing model to support data-driven applications for design and manufacture

This thesis is primarily concerned with conceptual work on the Manufacturing Model. The Manufacturing Model is an information model which describes the manufacturing capability of an enterprise. To achieve general applicability, the model consists of the entities that are relevant and important for any type of manufacturing firm, namely: manufacturing resources (e.g. machines, tools, fixtures, machining cells, operators, etc.), manufacturing processes (e.g. injection moulding, machining processes, etc.) and manufacturing strategies (e.g. how these resources and processes are used and organized). The Manufacturing Model is a four level model based on a de—facto standard (i.e. Factory, Shop, Cell, Station) which represents the functionality of the manufacturing facility of any firm. In the course of the research, the concept of data—driven applications has emerged in response to the need of integrated and flexible computer environments for the support of design and manufacturing activities. These data—driven applications require the use of different information models to capture and represent the company's information and knowledge. One of these information models is the Manufacturing Model. The value of this research work is highlighted by the use of two case studies, one related with the representation of a single machining station, and the other, the representation of a multi-cellular manufacturing facility of a high performance company

Modeling Architectures and Reference Models: Development and Maintenance Open Source ERP

The adoption Enterprise Resource Planning (ERPs) by small and medium-sized businesses may not possible its cost. At same time, whenever adapt ERP specific needs company, user becomes dependent developers due to the lack access and knowledge respective code. Free and open source software can promote advantages companies, however, for their adoption, it is necessary to develop techniques tools facilitate implementation and maintenance code. This article highlights the importance of defining modeling architectures and reference models for development and maintenance open source ERPs, especially the ERP5 project

Towards a new approach for enterprise integration : the semantic modeling approach

Manufacturing today has become a matter of the effective and efficient application of information technology and knowledge engineering. Manufacturing firms’ success depends to a great extent on information technology, which emphasizes the integration of the information systems used by a manufacturing enterprise. This integration is also called enterprise application integration (here the term application means information systems or software systems). The methodology for enterprise application integration, in particular enterprise application integration automation, has been studied for at least a decade; however, no satisfactory solution has been found. Enterprise application integration is becoming even more difficult due to the explosive growth of various information systems as a result of ever increasing competition in the software market. This thesis aims to provide a novel solution to enterprise application integration. The semantic data model concept that evolved in database technology is revisited and applied to enterprise application integration. This has led to two novel ideas developed in this thesis. First, an ontology of an enterprise with five levels (following the data abstraction: generalization/specialization) is proposed and represented using unified modeling language. Second, both the ontology for the enterprise functions and the ontology for the enterprise applications are modeled to allow automatic processing of information back and forth between these two domains. The approach with these novel ideas is called the enterprise semantic model approach. The thesis presents a detailed description of the enterprise semantic model approach, including the fundamental rationale behind the enterprise semantic model, the ontology of enterprises with levels, and a systematic way towards the construction of a particular enterprise semantic model for a company. A case study is provided to illustrate how the approach works and to show the high potential of solving the existing problems within enterprise application integration

Metodología dirigida por modelos para las pruebas de un sistema distribuido multiagente de fabricación

Las presiones del mercado han empujado a las empresas de fabricación a reducir costes a la vez que mejoran sus productos, especializándose en las actividades sobre las que pueden añadir valor y colaborando con especialistas de las otras áreas para el resto. Estos sistemas distribuidos de fabricación conllevan nuevos retos, dado que es difícil integrar los distintos sistemas de información y organizarlos de forma coherente. Esto ha llevado a los investigadores a proponer una variedad de abstracciones, arquitecturas y especificaciones que tratan de atacar esta complejidad. Entre ellas, los sistemas de fabricación holónicos han recibido una atención especial: ven las empresas como redes de holones, entidades que a la vez están formados y forman parte de varios otros holones. Hasta ahora, los holones se han implementado para control de fabricación como agentes inteligentes autoconscientes, pero su curva de aprendizaje y las dificultades a la hora de integrarlos con sistemas tradicionales han dificultado su adopción en la industria. Por otro lado, su comportamiento emergente puede que no sea deseable si se necesita que las tareas cumplan ciertas garantías, como ocurren en las relaciones de negocio a negocio o de negocio a cliente y en las operaciones de alto nivel de gestión de planta. Esta tesis propone una visión más flexible del concepto de holón, permitiendo que se sitúe en un espectro más amplio de niveles de inteligencia, y defiende que sea mejor implementar los holones de negocio como servicios, componentes software que pueden ser reutilizados a través de tecnologías estándar desde cualquier parte de la organización. Estos servicios suelen organizarse como catálogos coherentes, conocidos como Arquitecturas Orientadas a Servicios (‘Service Oriented Architectures’ o SOA). Una iniciativa SOA exitosa puede reportar importantes beneficios, pero no es una tarea trivial. Por este motivo, se han propuesto muchas metodologías SOA en la literatura, pero ninguna de ellas cubre explícitamente la necesidad de probar los servicios. Considerando que la meta de las SOA es incrementar la reutilización del software en la organización, es una carencia importante: tener servicios de alta calidad es crucial para una SOA exitosa. Por este motivo, el objetivo principal de la presente Tesis es definir una metodología extendida que ayude a los usuarios a probar los servicios que implementan a sus holones de negocio. Tras considerar las opciones disponibles, se tomó la metodología dirigida por modelos SODM como punto de partida y se reescribió en su mayor parte con el framework Epsilon de código abierto, permitiendo a los usuarios que modelen su conocimiento parcial sobre el rendimiento esperado de los servicios. Este conocimiento parcial es aprovechado por varios nuevos algoritmos de inferencia de requisitos de rendimiento, que extraen los requisitos específicos de cada servicio. Aunque el algoritmo de inferencia de peticiones por segundo es sencillo, el algoritmo de inferencia de tiempos límite pasó por numerosas revisiones hasta obtener el nivel deseado de funcionalidad y rendimiento. Tras una primera formulación basada en programación lineal, se reemplazó con un algoritmo sencillo ad-hoc que recorría el grafo y después con un algoritmo incremental mucho más rápido y avanzado. El algoritmo incremental produce resultados equivalentes y tarda mucho menos, incluso con modelos grandes. Para sacar más partidos de los modelos, esta Tesis también propone un enfoque general para generar artefactos de prueba para múltiples tecnologías a partir de los modelos anotados por los algoritmos. Para evaluar la viabilidad de este enfoque, se implementó para dos posibles usos: reutilizar pruebas unitarias escritas en Java como pruebas de rendimiento, y generar proyectos completos de prueba de rendimiento usando el framework The Grinder para cualquier Servicio Web que esté descrito usando el estándar Web Services Description Language. La metodología completa es finalmente aplicada con éxito a un caso de estudio basado en un área de fabricación de losas cerámicas rectificadas de un grupo de empresas español. En este caso de estudio se parte de una descripción de alto nivel del negocio y se termina con la implementación de parte de uno de los holones y la generación de pruebas de rendimiento para uno de sus Servicios Web. Con su soporte para tanto diseñar como implementar pruebas de rendimiento de los servicios, se puede concluir que SODM+T ayuda a que los usuarios tengan una mayor confianza en sus implementaciones de los holones de negocio observados en sus empresas

Human system modelling in support of manufacturing enterprise design and change

Organisations comprise human and technical systems that typically perform a variety of business, engineering and production roles. Human systems comprise individuals, people groups and teams that work systematically to conceive, implement, develop and manage the purposes of any enterprise in response to customer requirements. Recently attention has been paid to modelling aspects of people working within production systems, with a view to improving: production performance, effective resource allocation and optimum resource management. In the research reported, graphical and computer executable models of people have been conceived and used in support of human systems engineering. The approach taken has been to systematically decompose and represent processes so that elemental production and management activities can be modelled as explicit descriptions of roles that human systems can occupy as role holders. First of all, a preliminary modelling method (MM1) was proposed for modelling human systems in support of engineering enterprise; then MM1 was implemented and tested in a case study company 1. Based on findings of this exploratory research study an improved modelling method (MM2) was conceived and instrumented. Here characterising customer related product dynamic impacts extended MM1 modelling concepts and methods and related work system changes. MM2 was then tested in case study company 2 to observe dynamic behaviours of selected system models derived from actual company knowledge and data. Case study 2 findings enabled MM2 to be further improved leading to MM3. MM3 improvements stem from the incorporation of so-called DPU (Dynamic Producer Unit) concepts, related to the modelling of human and technical resource system components . Case study 4 models a human system for targeted users i.e. production managers etc to facilitate analysis of human configuration and also cost modelling. Modelling approaches MM2, MM3 and also Case Study 4 add to knowledge about ways of facilitating quantitative analysis and comparison between different human system configurations. These new modelling methods allow resource system behaviours to be matched to specific, explicitly defined, process-oriented requirements drawn from manufacturing workplaces currently operating in general engineering, commercial furniture and white goods industry sectors