Llanos Cuenca

An enterprise engineering approach for the alignment of business and information technology strategy

Information systems and information technology (IS/IT, hereafter just IT) strategies usually depend on a business strategy. The alignment of both strategies improves their strategic plans. From an external perspective, business and IT alignment is the extent to which the IT strategy enables and drives the business strategy. This article reviews strategic alignment between business and IT, and proposes the use of enterprise engineering (EE) to achieve this alignment. The EE approach facilitates the definition of a formal dialog in the alignment design. In relation to this, new building blocks and life-cycle phases have been defined for their use in an enterprise architecture context. This proposal has been adopted in a critical process of a ceramic tile company for the purpose of aligning a strategic business plan and IT strategy, which are essential to support this process.

From UML or DFD models to CIMOSA partial models and enterprise components

Abstract The development of enterprise integration solutions requires the identification of core business processes, enterprise objects and their flows as well as essential resources and their use in day-to-day operations of an enterprise or of a network of enterprises. This paper focuses on the enterprise model creation process using the computer integrated manufacturing open system architecture (CIMOSA) modelling framework, assuming that the models of the enterprise environment to be analysed are available in the form of data flow diagrams (DFDs) or unified modelling language (UML) use cases. The method mostly concerns the development of partial models and the specification of enterprise components to support knowledge capitalization about the enterprise structure and operations. Not only information-oriented models (i.e. data schemas) are needed to support enterprise integration, but also models describing function, information, resource and organization aspects of the business. Planning and development of workflow applications also require such an approach. For these reasons, it is useful to start from DFDs or UML models, usually available in many companies or easy to draft from user explanations, and to adapt or extend them with the approach presented in the paper to plan enterprise integration projects or to analyse the business operations from an industrial engineering perspective.

Towards the development of the framework for inter sensing enterprise architecture

Inter-enterprise architecture (IEA) is a new concept that seeks to apply the tools and methodologies of enterprise architecture (EA) in a collaborative context, in order to model collaborative organizations in an inclusive manner. According to the main enterprise architectures proposed to this point, an EA should be conformed at least for a framework, a methodology and a modelling language. Sensing enterprise (SE) is an attribute of an enterprise or a network that allows it to react to business stimuli originating on the Internet. These fields have come into focus recently, and there is not evidence of the use of IEA for modelling a SE, while finding an interesting gap to work on. Thus, this paper proposes an initial framework for inter sensing enterprise architecture (FISEA), which seeks to classify, organize, store and communicate, at the conceptual level, all the elements for inter-sensing enterprise architectures and their relationships, ensuring their consistency and integrity. This FISEA provides a clear idea about the elements and views that create collaborative network and their inter-relationships, based on the support of Future Internet.

Structural elements of coordination mechanisms in collaborative planning processes and their assessment through maturity models: Application to a ceramic tile company

Maturity is defined as a measure to evaluate the capabilities of an organization in regards to a certain discipline. The Collaborative Planning Process is a very complex process and Coordination mechanisms are especially relevant in this field to align the plans of the supply chain members. The objective of this paper is to develop a maturity model and a methodology to perform assessment for the Structural Elements of Coordination Mechanisms in the Collaborative Planning Process. Structural elements are specified in order to characterize coordination mechanisms in a collaborative planning context and they have been defined as key areas to be assessed by the maturity model. The identified structural elements are: number of decision-makers, collaboration level, interdependence relationships nature, interdependence relationships type, number of coordination mechanisms, information exchanged, information processing, decision sequence characteristics and stopping criteria. Structural elements are assessed using the scheme of five levels: Initial, Repeatable, Defined, Managed and Optimized. This proposal has been applied to a ceramic tile company and the results are also reported.

The interoperability force in the ERP field

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems participate in interoperability projects and this participation sometimes leads to new proposals for the ERP field. The aim of this paper is to identify the role that interoperability plays in the evolution of ERP systems. To go about this, ERP systems have been first identified within interoperability frameworks. Second, the initiatives in the ERP field driven by interoperability requirements have been identified from two perspectives: technological and business. The ERP field is evolving from classical ERP as information system integrators to a new generation of fully interoperable ERP. Interoperability is changing the way of running business, and ERP systems are changing to adapt to the current stream of interoperability.

Business and IS/IT Strategic Alignment Framework

Incorporating information systems and information technology (IS/IT) in the organizations have considerable risks, and these risks are increased when a strategic plan for its incorporation is not done. The objective of this research is to contribute in the alignment between business and IS/IT strategies using concepts and techniques from engineering and enterprise architecture. To achieve this objective, this research proposes to define a modeling framework for business and IS/IT strategic alignment. The implementation of this proposal in a ceramic tile company has helped to validate its usefulness.

A model-driven DSS architecture for delivery management in collaborative supply chains with lack of homogeneity in products

Uniform product deliveries are required in the ceramic, horticulture and leather sectors because customers require product homogeneity to use, present or consume them together. Some industries cannot prevent the lack of homogeneity in products in their manufacturing processes; hence, they cannot avoid non-uniform finished products arriving at their warehouses and, consequently, fragmentation of their stocks. Therefore, final uniform product amounts do not match planned production ones, which frequently makes serving previous committed orders with homogeneous quantities impossible. This paper proposes a model-driven decision support system (DSS) to help the person in charge of delivery management to reallocate the available real inventory to orders to satisfy homogenous customer requirements in a collaborative supply chain (SC). The DSS has been validated in a ceramic tile collaborative SC.

Towards interoperability through inter-enterprise collaboration architectures

Most enterprise architectures published so far are capable of generating reasonably good descriptive models for individual enterprises to enable integration, organization and synchronization of enterprise elements: organizational structure, business processes, information systems and technology infrastructure, among others. However, research in this field applied to the extended enterprise or inter-enterprise architectures that takes into account the growing trend towards complex collaborative environments is very scarce. In this sense, this article seeks to analyze, link and synthesize the researches that has addressed the disciplines of enterprise architecture and business collaboration, in order to identify possible future research needs from the conceptualization made.

Inter-enterprise architecture as a tool to empower decision-making in hierarchical collaborative production planning

The novel idea of inter-enterprise architecture from the enterprise engineering perspective allows collaborative networks to integrate and coordinate different organizations. Therefore, inter-enterprise architecture offers multiple benefits, including: joint process harmonization, business strategy and information technology alignment, technological cost reduction, risk and redundancies reduction, customer services improvement and enhanced responsiveness. Inter-enterprise architecture can be used to solve the different issues that collaborative networks face on a daily basis. A conceptual model that addresses the problem of unexpected events management in the context of hierarchical production planning to improve decision-making in collaborative environments is proposed using inter-enterprise architecture. The proposed conceptual model is composed of a framework, a modeling language and the methodology. The conceptual model has been applied to a Spanish collaborative network from the ceramic tile sector.

Enterprise Architecture Framework with Early Business/ICT Alignment for Extended Enterprises

Incorporating information and communication technology (ICT) is strongly necessary in extended enterprises. To do this, enterprise engineering approach has important benefits; however, there is not a complete framework to model ICT components and ICT/business alignment. This paper presents an enterprise architecture framework for extended enterprises. The main aim enclosed in this paper is to provide a modeling framework from enterprise engineering approach which including ICT. A comparative analysis has been conducted in life cycle phases, modeling views and strategic alignment between different enterprise architectures. Next, the required building blocks have been proposed: ICT conceptualization, application portfolio, maturity model, alignment heuristics and strategic dependencies. This proposal has been applied in the collaborative order management process of a ceramic tile company.