Interoperable enterprise systems: Principles, concepts, and methods

Interoperable enterprise systems (be they supply chains, extended enterprises, or any form of virtual organizations) must be designed, controlled, and appraised from a holistic and systemic point of view. Systems interoperability is a key to enterprise integration, which recommends that the IT architecture and infrastructure be aligned with business process organization and control, themselves designed according to a strategic view expressed in an enterprise architecture. The paper discusses architectures and methods to build interoperable enterprise systems, advocating a mixed service and process orientation, to support synchronous and/or asynchronous operations, both at the business level (business events, business services, business processes) and at the application level (workflow, IT and Web services, application programs).     

Enterprise information systems state of the art: Past,present and future trends

This state-of-the-art paper is intended to set the scene for a special issue of the Computers in Industry Journal on “Future Perspectives on Next Generation Enterprise Information Systems”. It gives a brief history of Enterprise Information Systems (EISs) and discusses various aspects of EISs, including EIS design and engineering, the impact of enterprise modelling, enterprise architecture, enterprise integration and interoperability and enterprise networking on EISs before concluding.     

A methodology for the semi-automatic creation of data-driven detailed business ontologies

In the context of technological expansion and development, companies feel the need to renew and optimize their information systems as they search for the best way to manage knowledge. Business ontologies within the semantic web are an excellent tool for managing knowledge within this space. The proposal in this article consists of a methodology for integrating information in companies. The application of this methodology results in the creation of a specific business ontology capable of semantic interoperability. The resulting ontology, developed from the information system of specific companies, represents the fundamental business concepts, thus making it a highly appropriate information integration tool. Its level of semantic expressivity improves on that of its own sources, and its solidity and consistency are guaranteed by means of checking by current reasoning tools. An ontology created in this way could drive the renewal processes of companies’ information systems. A comparison is also made with a number of well-known business ontologies, and similarities and differences are drawn, highlighting the difficulty in aligning general ontologies to specific ones, such as the one we present.     

Exploring the future of enterprise architecture: A Zachman perspective

Today, and for the foreseeable future, organizations will face ever-increasing levels of complexity and uncertainty. Many believe that enterprise architecture (EA) will help organizations address such difficult terrain by guiding the design of adaptive and resilient enterprises and their information systems. This paper presents the “Grand Challenges” that we believe will challenge organizations in the future and need to be addressed by enterprise architecture. As a first step in using enterprise architecture as a solution for overcoming identified challenges, the Zachman Enterprise Architecture Framework is used to guide and structure the discussion. The paper presents the “Grand Challenges” and discusses promising theories and models for addressing them. In addition, current advances in the field of enterprise architecture that have begun to address the challenges will be presented. In conclusion, final thoughts on the future of enterprise architecture as a research field and a profession are offered.     

Multi-sensor multi-rate fusion estimation for networked systems: Advances and perspectives

In industrial systems, the multi-rate sampling strategy has been widely used due to the advantage in balancing cost and performance as well as the psychical characteristics of the hardware. Accordingly, the analysis and synthesis problems of the multi-rate systems (MRSs) have received considerable research attentions owing to the significant engineering background. Among others, the state estimation problem, aims to estimate the system state based on the contaminated measurement signals, is one of the most important topics in the area of signal processing. In the past decades, plenty of research results have been obtained on the state estimation problems for MRSs. The intent of this survey is to provide a timely and systematic review with respect to the available state estimation algorithms for networked MRSs and the corresponding fusion methods. First, a general state–space model of the MRSs is given and the methods that transform the MRSs into single-rate ones are introduced. Then, the recent advances on the state estimation as well as fusion estimation problems for MRSs are discussed based on the performance indices used. Finally, some future research topics are given in the MRS state estimation problems.     

Towards a sustainable interoperability in networked enterprise information systems: Trends of knowledge and model-driven technology

In a turbulent world, global competition and the uncertainty of markets have led organizations and technology to evolve exponentially, surpassing the most imaginary scenarios predicted at the beginning of the digital manufacturing era, in the 1980s. Business paradigms have changed from a standalone vision into complex and collaborative ecosystems where enterprises break down organizational barriers to improve synergies with others and become more competitive. In this context, paired with networking and enterprise integration, enterprise information systems (EIS) interoperability gained utmost importance, ensuring an increasing productivity and efficiency thanks to a promise of more automated information exchange in networked enterprises scenarios. However, EIS are also becoming more dynamic. Interfaces that are valid today are outdated tomorrow, thus static interoperability enablers and communication software services are no longer the solution for the future. This paper is focused on the challenge of sustaining networked EIS interoperability, and takes up input from solid research initiatives in the areas of knowledge management and model driven development, to propose and discuss several research strategies and technological trends towards next EIS generation.     

Consistency in multi-viewpoint design of enterprise information systems

Different stakeholders in the design of an enterprise information system have their own view on that design. To help produce a coherent design this paper presents a framework that aids in specifying relations and consistency rules between such views. The contribution of our framework is that it provides a collection of basic concepts. These basic concepts aid in relating viewpoints by providing: (i) a common terminology that helps stakeholders to understand each others concepts; and (ii) re-usable consistency rules. We show that our framework can be applied, by performing a case study in which we specify the relations and consistency rules between three RM-ODP viewpoints.     

基于组织建模的企业级信息系统访问控制模型

针对企业级信息系统访问控制中由于用户、角色与资源客体数量多而引起的控制复杂这一问题,提出了基于组织建模的访问控制设计思想。借鉴组织视图建模思想对传统RBAC模型中角色概念进行拓展,对客体分类并进行组件化设计以支持访问粒度控制。在此基础上给出一个基于组织建模的企业级信息系统访问控制模型,定义了一组模型要素并给出了实现访问控制的机理。最后给出一个基于组织建模的访问控制模型实现,并结合具体实例表明了该模型的可行性和有效性。     

Risk factors in the collaborative development of management information systems for Nigerian universities

The authors discuss the risk factors associated with the collaborative development of information systems (IS) within the university environment in Nigeria. They use observations and reviews of relevant reports of the project as well as a variation of the Delphi Study in presenting their findings. The study shows that risks were associated with funding, top administrators' commitment, the number of participating universities, the role of the donor, as well as other factors. In addition, the challenges posed by each risk factor and the lessons learned are presented. Primarily, the study reports the scenario of IS development by universities in a developing economy in which the development process is characterized by collaboration. Opportunities for future research on the issue are also outlined. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

A decision model and system for planning and adapting the configuration of enterprise information systems

The decision to invest in an enterprise information system is usually made without taking into account the different types of subsequent decisions and without understanding the hidden implications of making them. This paper presents a decision-making model named DecISIonAl used to evaluate and manage implementation risks on ERP and CRM projects before the actual investment is made. This model was implemented into a web-based system to facilitate configuring, comparing, and selecting implementation plans by evaluating their impact in terms of cost, time, benefits, human resources capabilities, and risks. We apply our decision model to investment case studies in two enterprises. The results show a level of compliance between 80% and 83% when comparing the implications estimated by simulated scenarios and the actual investments.     

Big Data and virtualization for manufacturing cyber-physical systems: A survey of the current status and future outlook

The recent advances in sensor and communication technologies can provide the foundations for linking the physical manufacturing facility and machine world to the cyber world of Internet applications. The coupled manufacturing cyber-physical system is envisioned to handle the actual operations in the physical world while simultaneously monitor them in the cyber world with the help of advanced data processing and simulation models at both the manufacturing process and system operational levels. Moreover, a sensor-packed manufacturing system in which each process or piece of equipment makes available event and status information, coupled with market research for true advanced Big Data analytics, seem to be the right ingredients for event response selection and operation virtualization. As a drawback, the resulting manufacturing cyber-physical system will be vulnerable to the inevitable cyber-attacks, unfortunately, so common for the software and Internet-based systems. This reality makes cybersecurity penetration within the manufacturing domain a need that goes uncontested across researchers and practitioners. This work provides a review of the current status of virtualization and cloud-based services for manufacturing systems and of the use of Big Data analytics for planning and control of manufacturing operations. Building on already developed cloud business solutions, cloud manufacturing is expected to offer improved enterprise manufacturing and business decision support. Based on the current state-of-the-art cloud manufacturing solutions and Big Data applications, this work also proposes a framework for the development of predictive manufacturing cyber-physical systems that include capabilities for attaching to the Internet of Things, and capabilities for complex event processing and Big Data algorithmic analytics.     

Introduction to an integrated methodology for development and implementation of enterprise information systems

An integrated methodology for successful development and implementation of enterprise information systems is developed. This paper describes the methodology and defines five components and one repository which can be customized with business scenarios and patterns according to various business environments. Five components consist of information strategy planning, economic justification and measurement, enterprise information system appraisal, package software evaluation, and unified modeling tools. They characterize the methodology through its entire road map. Also, case studies are provided to prove its practical values.     

Comparison criteria for GDMO-based network management information models: A step towards the integration of management systems

The integration of Management Information Bases (MIBs) is one of the challenges of integrated network management. This is made more difficult by the existence of many different ways for structuring the MIB and defining managed objects. This paper addresses the issue of integrating GDMO-based MIBs created on the basis of different Management Information Models (MIMs). Three MIMs (NMF Library Release 1. 1, ITU-T M. 3100 and ETSI GOM) are analyzed with the help of a simple network configuration, and some MIM comparison criteria are proposed. The criteria can be used to assess the dificulty of integrating MIBs based on those models.