Formalisation of enterprise modelling standards using UML and the B method.

International audienceThis paper deals with the verification of the existing enterprise modelling standards. Our approach is based on the UML meta-modelling of enterprise standards in order to establish enterprise constructs and to use the formal B method to cover verification issues. Two points are discussed : the checking of the global consistency of the standard itself, and the verification of the instantiation of constructs to design particular enterprise models. This work is illustrated using the ENV12204/N177 particular enterprise constructs standard

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

Contribution à la définition d'un langage générique de modélisation d'entreprise

Cette thèse traite de la définition d’un langage unifié de modélisation d’entreprise (UEML). Celle-ci aborde, dans un premier temps, l’existant en modélisation d’entreprise. Nous exposons différentes approches et langages qui au cours des années ont eu pour objectif d’unifier des langages et nous montrons, qu’à l’heure actuelle, ils ne permettent pas de répondre à notre problématique. Par la suite, un exemple simple de traduction entre une activité SADT et une activité GRAI des réseaux GRAI est traité par une approche empirique. Il permet de faire ressortir un ensemble de difficultés inhérentes à la définition d’UEML, et, à partir de celui-ci, nous exposons notre point de vue ainsi qu’un ensemble de principes auxquels nous adhérons. Ensuite, nous proposons une approche basée sur la méta-modélisation des langages, en utilisant le langage UML, ainsi que sur la théorie des ensembles. Cette approche permet l’identification des composants élémentaires nécessaires à la définition de notre langage unifié. Enfin, nous présentons un exemple complet d’élaboration d’un UEML, en partant de trois langages de modélisation d’entreprise (GRAI, IEM et EEML) et en procédant par une approche ascendante. Ces travaux ont été réalisés dans le cadre du réseau thématique UEML. Nous exposons, finalement, les différences entre les deux approches et les éléments importants que l’on peut en dégager.This thesis deals with the definition of a unified enterprise modelling language (UEML). In a first step, the existing enterprise modelling languages are studied. We expose various approaches and languages which during years have aimed to unify languages and we show that at the present time, they do not allow to answer our problematic. Therefore, we will present a simple example of model translation between the SADT activity and the GRAI activity of GRAI nets, performed by an empiric approach. It allows to highlight a set of difficulties inherent to UEML definition and, from these ones, we expose our point of view and a set of principles to which we subscribe. Then, we propose an approach based on meta-modelling of the languages, by using UML language, and on the set theory. This approach allows the identification of the elementary constructs needed for the definition of our unified language. Finally, we present a whole example of an UEML elaboration, by starting from three enterprise modelling languages (GRAI, IEM and EEML) and by using a bottom-up approach. These works have been done in the framework of UEML thematic network. At last, we expose the differences between these two approaches and the pertinent elements which can come up from them