Enterprise Architects, in their endeavor to achieve Enterprise Integration, have limited guidance on how best to use Enterprise Models and Modeling Tools to support their practice. It is widely recognized that the practice of engineering enterprises needs a number of models, but how to maintain the relation between these models with ease is still a problem. Model interoperability is an issue on multiople counts: - How to interchange models between enterprise modeling tools? - How to maintain the interdependencies between models - whether they describe the enterprise on the same level (but from different points of view), or from the same point of view (but on different levels of abstraction and granularity)? - How to maintain a coherent and evolving set of enterprise models in support onf continuous change processes? - How to use and reuse enterprise models as a knowledge resource? The answers to these questions are of great importance to anyone who is implementing ISO9001:2000 requirements, whether through using enterprise architecture practice or not - although it can be argued that a well executed architecture practice should satisfy ISO9001 without additional effort. This volume attacks the problem on three fronts: 1. Authors working in international standardisation and tool development as well as in enterprise modeling research present the latest developments in semantic integration; 2. Authors who are practitioners of, or conducting active research in, enterprise architecting methodologies give an account on the latest developments and strategic directions in architecture frameworks and methodologies; 3. Authors who use or develop information integration infrastructures present best practice and future trends of this aspect of enterprise integration. Chapters of this book include contributions to the International Conference on Enterprise Integration and Modelling Technology (ICEIMT'04), and those presented at the Design of Information Infrastructure Systems for Manufacturing (DIISM'04) Workshop. While DIISM is traditionally oriented at supporting manufacturing practice, the results have a far greater domain of applicability.

The topic of Enterprise Information Systems (EIS) is having an increasingly relevant strategic impact on global business and the world economy, and organizations are undergoing hard investments in search of the rewarding benefits of efficiency and effectiveness that these ranges of solutions promise. Organizational Integration of Enterprise Systems and Resources: Advancements and Applications show that EIS are at the same time responsible for tremendous gains in some companies and tremendous losses in others. Therefore, their adoption should be carefully planned and managed. This title highlights new ways to identify opportunities and overtake trends and challenges of EIS selection, adoption, and exploitation as it is filled with models, solutions, tools, and case studies. The book provides researchers, scholars, and professionals with some of the most advanced research, solutions, and discussions of Enterprise Information Systems design, implementation, and management.

Discusses the main issues, challenges, opportunities, and trends related to the impact of IT on every part of organizational and inter-organizational environments.

Knowledge management principles, strategies, models, tools, and techniques have been proven in government, business, and industry. More recently, knowledge management has emerged as an essential enabler for the successful pursuit of scholarly activities in higher education. Knowledge management has significant contributions to make in capturing, storing, processing, and disseminating knowledge between and across these stakeholder entities and their processes to better support these interrelated processes and activities. Given the impetus provided by the United Nations Global Knowledge Economy Policy, institutions worldwide are actively pursuing the use of knowledge management in all facets of social and economic development. The importance of knowledge management research and application in academia is a critical element of this multifaceted endeavor. Enhancing Academic Research and Higher Education With Knowledge Management Principles is a compendium of cutting-edge research on the use of knowledge management in higher education and provides original, theoretical, and application-oriented research within this domain. The book will also provide insights on the management of expertise, knowledge, information, and organizational development in different types of work communities and environments. By including research on global perspectives, the implementation of knowledge management at universities, current trends in the field, and the results, this book is a valuable reference work for professionals and researchers working in the field of information and knowledge management in various disciplines, and academics, analysts, developers, students, technologists, education consultants, higher education administrators, academicians, stakeholders, and practitioners seeking to learn, improve, and expand their theoretical and applied knowledge of knowledge management tools and techniques, models, processes, and systems in higher education.

Enterprise solutions have emerged as promising tools for integrating and extending business processes across business functions. Supplying a clear and comprehensive introduction to the field, this book provides a detailed description of enterprise information integration-from the development of enterprise systems to extended enterprise information

Some 70 percent of U.S. manufacturing output currently faces direct foreign competition. While American firms understand the individual components of their manufacturing processes, they must begin to work with manufacturing systems to develop world-class capabilities. This new book identifies principles-termed foundations-that have proved effective in improving manufacturing systems. Authored by an expert panel, including manufacturing executives, the book provides recommendations for manufacturers, leading to specific action in three areas: Management philosophy and practice. Methods used to measure and predict the performance of systems. Organizational learning and improving system performance through technology. The volume includes in-depth studies of several key issues in manufacturing, including employee involvement and empowerment, using learning curves to improve quality, measuring performance against that of the competition, focusing on customer satisfaction, and factory modernization. It includes a unique paper on jazz music as a metaphor for participative manufacturing management. Executives, managers, engineers, researchers, faculty, and students will find this book an essential tool for guiding this nation's businesses toward developing more competitive manufacturing systems.

Is the Enterprise Information Portal (EIP) knowledge management's killer app? Leading expert Joseph M. Firestone, the first author to formulate the idea of the Enterprise Knowledge Portal, breaks new ground and looks to the future with a practical, but comprehensive approach to enterprise portals and their relationship to knowledge management. Providing a clear and novel overview, Firestone tackles a wide range of topics ranging from functional EIP applications, estimating costs and benefits of EIPs, variations in EIP technical architecture, the role of intelligent agents, the nature of knowledge management, portal product/solution segmentation, portal product case studies, to the future of the EIP space. 'Enterprise Information Portals and Knowledge Management' is the book on portals you've been waiting for. It is the only book that thoroughly considers, explores, and analyzes: * The EIP orientation, outlook and evolution * A new methodology for estimating EIP benefits and costs * EIP and Enterprise Knowledge Portals (EKP) architecture * The approaching role of software agents in EIPs and EKPs * The current and future contribution of EIP and EKP solutions to Knowledge Management * The role of XML in portal architecture * A comprehensive, multi-dimensional, and forward-looking segmentation of EIP products accompanied by portal product case studies * Where EIP sector companies are headed and the pathways they will follow to get there

At the foundation of today's leading-edge manufacturing companies is a common vision for virtual, distributed enterprise in an agile environment where organizations can swiftly and cost-effectively bring products from concept to production - and respond dynamically to changes in customer and market requirements. Totally Integrated Enterprises: A Framework and Methodology for Business and Technology Improvement provides a framework and a methodology for understanding and mapping current enterprise configurations as well as for designing the revised architecture needed for the totally integrated enterprise. It also helps you select the MRPII, MES, APS, SCM, or ERP software most appropriate for your needs and for achieving total enterprise integration. MRPII, MES, APS, SCM, and ERP. Without a strategic direction it is just alphabet soup. How do you determine what is best for your organization? Which software system is most appropriate to your needs? Courses, classes, seminars, and experts galore are available to help you learn and implement the fine details of every value-add, cost-saving, customer-pleasing, quality-improving, buzzword-compliant business initiative you have ever heard of, and many that you haven't. What has been missing is a way to tie them together. Until now. Totally Integrated Enterprises: A Framework and a Methodology for Business and Technology Improvement gives you a high-level enterprise architecture that makes the implementation of best practices and technologies - both existing and emergent - manageable. This book shows you how to: Improve your product and process integration, as well as develop and deliver new products within a virtual enterprise Incorporate business strategies and functions to drive product design and manufacturing requirements, operations, and post-production activities Integrate designers, manufacturers, and suppliers to operate as a virtual enterprise Create, staff, and empower integrated product teams resulting in higher quality products Communicate enterprise information to and from every stakeholder in the virtual enterprise in real or near-real time Manage production among facilities and exchange production data and status information as a routine basis of business Acquisitions and mergers have left many enterprises with a legacy of varied cultures, resources, and processes that must be reshaped into a single, integrated whole. Increasing pressures from global competition force enterprises to become cost-effective, high-quality providers to traditional customers and push them to develop new markets and product lines. Nearly every enterprise needs to make the transition to a globally interdependent business paradigm. Totally Integrated Enterprises: A Framework and Methodology for Business and Technology Improvement gives you the key definitions that allow you to understand and communicate with vendors, consultants, and experts in the field. Using the techniques in this book you will see the results so often promised - but not realized - from technology.

This volume thoroughly documents Integrated Enterprise Excellence (IEE) benefits and measurement techniques and provides a step-by-step Project Define-Measure-Analyze-Improve-Control (P-DMAIC) roadmap, enabling a true integration of Six Sigma and Lean tools.

The international initiative on Enterprise Inter- and Intra-Organisational Integration (EI3-IC) had the objective to increase both international consen sus (IC) and public awareness on enterprise integration. In these proceedings we intend to present the current status in inter- and intra-organisational inte gration for electronic commerce and thereby to further increase awareness and consensus within academia and industry about enterprise inter-and intra organisational integration. The conference proceedings contain the papers presented at the ICEIMT conference in Valencia, Spain, selected papers presented at the different workshops and three papers on the initiative itself: overview, history and results. The proceedings follow the conference structure with each section (Parts 2 to 5) starting with the workgroup reports, followed by a particular view on the section theme and additional papers either presented at the con ference or during the related workshop. Section editorials discuss the differ ent contributions. As stated in the paper by Nell and Goranson in section 1 the results from all workshops indicate the important role of business processes in the area of e-commerce and virtual enterprises. Sharing relevant knowledge between co operating partners and making it available for decision support at all levels of management and across organisational boundaries will significantly en hance the trust between the partners on the different levels of partner opera tions (strategy, policy, operation and transaction). Clearly business process modelling can significantly enhance establishment, operation and decom mission of the required collaboration.