Peter Bernus
<bernus@kurango.cit.gu.edu.au>
Fri Nov 4 14:29:09 EST 1994
It is widely believed in industry that the key to become and remain internationally competitive is the establishment of integrated business processes. This is achieved by re-engineering the business process in such a way that all activities within the enterprise contribute to the main company goals to fulfill its mission.
To undertake such deeply seated changes companies are in the need of ``Enterprise Reference Architectures,'' i.e. life-cycle models of the enterprise engineering process, taking them from the re-evaluation of the company's mission-vision-and-values statement through detailed business process design, implementation, and continuous improvement.
The gains to be achieved by businesses are enormous, ``the more progressive companies ... [are] achieving dramatic improvements of 30%or more'' (Industry Week, July 20, 1992, page 39 ). In the US, many major companies are following this path. However, the methods mostly remain in-house and hard to access for the rest of the international business and industry community.
In 1990 two International Organisations, IFIP (International Organisation for Information Processing) and IFAC (International Federation of Automatic Control) set up a joint Task Force to investigate the state-of-the-art of Enterprise Reference Architectures.
This Task Force, led by professor T.J.Williams of Purdue University, US and chairman of the Purdue Industry Consortium, has successfully accomplished its task in the 1990-92 triennium, and published its findings in the form of reports and articles. The results are also to appear soon in book form.
CIM-OSA was developed by the AMICE Consortium of the European Community and was one of the three most thoroughly studied by this Task Force.
Most members of the Task Force have background in manufacturing automation and manufacturing integration and the major initial concern has been the identification of methodologies for the integration of manufacturing activities and enterprises. In the course of the work the Task Force has found that the integration methodologies studied have a wider application, including other types of businesses or government organisations, therefore the scope was widened to reflect this finding.
Enterprise Integration Architectures give a model of the process by which enterprises can redesign their main business processes on any level. This includes the management of business processes, and the organisation as well (including the human element).
At the IFAC World Congress in Sydney (August 1993) it has been decided that the Task Force, having completed its first mandate should continue within IFAC as a new Technical Committee, with T.J. Williams as chair and Peter Bernus as the vice chair (1993-96).
Also the IFIP General Assembly in Tokyo (September 1993) proposed that the Task Force should continue as the new Working Group 5.12 of IFIP, on ``Architectures for Enterprise Integration'', with Peter Bernus as chair and T.J.Williams as vice chair (1994-97). Until this happens the group functions as a Special Interest group of IFIP TC5 under the chaimanship of T.J.Williams with Peter Bernus serving as vice-chair.
The union of the IFAC Technical Committee and the IFIP Working Group will be in the future the IFIP/IFAC Task Force on ``Architectures for Enterprise Integration'' with T.J. Williams as chair and Peter Bernus as the vice chair (1994-97).
The main goal of this organisational structure is to be able to define a Generic Enterprise Reference Architecture describing the method which enterprises can follow to develop their own integrated business system.
One demonstration of the success of this approach was recently held by the AMICE Consortium in Europe (AMICE comprises the largest European automobile manufacturers, several computer vendors, machine tool manufacturers and research institutions).
The organisational structure, as shown on Figure 1, reflects the finding that to achieve the integration of business processes companies need to rely on a wide basis of disciplines and no single discipline has the full control over this technology.
Large multi-nationals with sufficient capital power are able to undertake the changes which position them even higher to dominate the markets. Smaller companies with less ability to invest in projects to fundamentally rethink and improve their business processes can not enjoy the same benefits, unless they are given guidance and standards to support them.
The IFIP/IFAC Task Force and its respective parts (IFIP TC5 Special Interest Group and IFAC TC) are in a unique position to assess, coordinate and influence the development of a General Reference Architecture for Enterprises. This is because a./ the mix of the membership include both information technology and manufacturing technology and control experts b./ key persons from the developers of the most important architectures are members and are in the position of influencing international standardisation in the area.
Australian organisations, in order to cope with diverse and changing overseas markets, need methods by which the business process can take into account the special features of this diversity.
Enterprise Integration technology enables businesses to (re)design the business process allowing smooth information and material flow within the enterprise while possibly distributing physical activities over a wide area internationally. The goal of these methods is to allow enterprises to design a strategic use of IT through the entire value chain from market analysis, design, planning, scheduling, dispatching, and marketing.
It is believed that to maintain business competitivity under these circumstances needs even more elaborate methods to ensure that the physical distribution of activities does not effect the fast reaction time needed to succeed in the markets.
The techniques involved include the possible (re)design or improvement of the
One of the many successful applications of enterprise (re)engineering are reported in Industry Week, (June 18, 1990 page 50) about the way IBM has completely redesigned the IBM San Jose disk-drive factory, cutting the number of parts in the design by 30%and the necessary floor space by half, and its cycle time to on third of the original.
Enterprise Integration technology is an opening a marketplace for IT industry products. Three entire families of products are connected with enterprise integration: