Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

Enterprise Integration (EI) is a key concept of Enterprise Engineering (EE) programs. This paper modifies the definition of Enterprise Integration through a broad vision of the field. Typical approaches are studied and reclassified based on recent results from the use of the Purdue Enterprise Reference Architecture. Theories of descriptiveness and prescriptiveness are proposed to support the newly established concept of Approach 2 Architectures as well as their general requirements.

This paper describes how Business Process Management has been implemented based on a Reference Framework defined based on Enterprise Integration Engineering concepts. The Reference Framework includes the following components: strategy definition (competitive, supply chain, operational), performance evaluation system, process design/re-design, and enabling technologies. It describes how all these issues have to be considered in an integrated way to align the company strategy with process improvement projects in order to achieve excellent performance. One case study is reviewed to describe how the reference model has been used in a OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) to achieve change management and best manufacturing practices implementation.

Enterprise Engineering and Enterprise Integration have been leveraged as key topics in Enterprise Management. Since the 80s multiple approaches, methodologies, languages and, frameworks have been proposed. Despite the numerous results currently existing, new trends and solutions are continuously emerging. This paper provides a landscape of the current problems on Enterprise Engineering and Integration, the strategies, solutions and our vision about future trends.

Organizations today face increasing pressure to reduce time to market, i.e. to improve the design and the operations of business processes in terms of lead time and meeting due dates. Formal analysis using a mathematical graph-based approach can help to achieve this kind of improvement.

We will apply business graphs to scheduling workflows in terms of time-based optimization. We will concentrate on performance measures like completion time, flow time and tardiness. From a business process network we derive two types of directed graphs, one representing the task net (task graph) and the other one representing the resource net (resource graph). In the task graph a node is representing a task and its duration and arcs are representing different kinds of precedence constraints between tasks. The resource graph is similar to a Petri net and represents resource constraints and flows of jobs.

In order to compute optimal or near-optimal workflow schedules the algorithms have to relate to the structure of the business graphs. We will show that a variety of data structures commonly assumed in modern scheduling theory can be represented within the framework of business graphs. Based on these data structures specific scheduling algorithms to optimize time-based performance measures can be applied with the objective to reduce time to market.

Enterprise Integration and Networking has been the topic of extensive research. Achievements deal with theoretical definition of reference models and architectures, modeling languages and tools, and development of relevant standards. The impact on today business has somehow been limited; therefore a revision of relevant issues and trends is required to establish a coherent vision for future research. This paper summarizes the underlying principles and challenges for enterprise modeling and integration, and its impact on enterprise networking.

This paper chronicles the different approaches for enterprise integration used in the field of healthcare over the past decade, and which approach succeeded and which failed. It ends with the new approach just launched through the Health Level 7 standards organization with support from the Health and Human Services in US.

Teams are engineered by dependent processes involving a spectrum of activities commencing with the initial identification of need, extending through to the realisation of that need and in some cases dissolution of the team. A new model of the team systems engineering life cycle is described in this paper which includes four main groupings of activities corresponding to: ‘design’, ‘build’, ‘operate’ and ‘maintain’ (DBOM) life phases through which a typical team system progresses. The paper illustrates how Enterprise Modelling concepts and the DBOM model can be innovatively deployed in order to systematically capture published knowledge about teams; thereby providing an analytic basis on which teams can be designed, built, operated and maintained. Here EM modelling constructs were used to document and visually represent relatively enduring aspects of team systems. This paper illustrates the approach by creating a semi-generic model of project teams.

Customer satisfaction and service reliability are not any more the assets but the unavoidable condition for a company to be accepted as a supplier of a product or service. The creation of value added in a company concerns all functions and specifications that are involved in delivering a product or service to the customer. Part of that value enhancing chain is the Supply Chain Management (SCM) conception which is defined as all management principles by which the supply chain is considered as a whole.

In order to support European industry in its transition process towards the knowledge-based enterprise a set of novel information-based tools for enabling knowledge, skill and data transfer is needed. Their design depends on the organic and functional enterprise infrastructure features and relations between the heterogeneous agents involved across the whole value added chain. This paper presents two approaches aiming at overcoming interoperability barriers arising in communication process among humans and machines. First one is an ontological approach, which focuses on computer-supported human collaboration and human-machine interaction by means of natural languages, enabling semantic independence of shared knowledge and data contents. The second one proposes an approach for machine data exchange and sharing, applying standards as highly extruded common knowledge.

The advent of a global economy is forcing companies to improve competitiveness more than ever and to increase collaboration by providing for ICT based interoperability. These needs generate the necessity to focus on company core processes and increase operational flexibility to satisfy customer requirements. The paper is aimed on strengthening the enterprise adaptation to changing markets focusing on the integration between strategic planning and business processes, using enterprise modeling as documented in CEN/ISO 19439 and 19440.