Enterprise Modelling

Papers and reports:

Enterprise Modelling - towards a user oriented methodology, M. Zelm, K. Kosanke

Requirements for harmonisation and improved guidance in the modelling methodology and tool support are discussed. To make enterprise modelling a business tool in the day to day operation, it is mandatory to provide comprehensive, yet practical and natural methods and tools. To illustrate these requirements, an example of enterprise modelling of a simple manufacturing scenario built on the CIMOSA is described with the goal to demonstrate the best practice state of the art and point out potentials for further improvements in user oriented enterprise modelling.

Enterprise modelling provides the means to describe, structure and decompose the enterprise system into manageable parts. The relevant information can best be gathered through process models. Process models describe both the functionality and the dynamics of the enterprise and identify all the needed and produced information. The focus of the paper is on enterprise modelling from the view point of the business user. The reader will be familiarised with the CIMOSA concepts and the CIMOSA modelling language, which have both been implemented in international and European pre-standards.

The modelling methodology, which will guide the model creation must be defined in well structured way, prescribing both the modelling steps to be taken and their order. The methodology should be realised in a menu driven way implemented in a modelling tool. To model his business, the user must only employ business modelling constructs. Constructs which are captured with simple templates and represented with easy to understand graphic symbols and illustrated with icons. All modelling tasks concerned with information and communication technology (ICT) must hidden from the user.

Proc. Intelligent Industrial Automation (IIA'99), Genoa, Italy, 99-06-02/04

 

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