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Oscar A. Saenz*
Department of Industrial and Management Engineering,
Universidad del Turabo,
P.O. Box 3030 Gurabo, PR 00778-3030, USA
Fax: (787) 744-5476
E-mail: saenzo@suagm.edu
*Corresponding author
Chin-Sheng Chen
Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering,
College of Engineering and Computing,
Florida International University,
10555 West Flagler Street,
EC 3110 Miami, Florida 33174-1630, USA
Fax: (305) 348-3721
E-mail: chenc@fiu.edu
Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Saenz, O.A., Chen, C-S.,
Centeno, M. and Giachetti, R.E. (2009) Defining Enterprise Systems
Engineering, Int. J. Industrial and Systems Engineering, Vol.
Martha Centeno has been with the Industrial and Systems Engineering
Department at Florida International University since 1993, and in 1997
she became an Associate Professor. She has been principal investigator in
several NASA projects and visiting researcher at NASAs Kennedy Space
Center in Florida. Her areas of interest are: discrete simulation, operations
research, and the integration of artificial intelligence technologies for the
development of software for simulation modelling. She received her PhD from
Texas A&M University in 1990.
1 Introduction
Attempts to properly define Enterprise Systems Engineering (ESE) frequently fall back
on refining previous concepts of systems integration and interoperability rather than
on ESE as a whole; indeed, refining all of these concepts is useful, yet the focus is still on
modelling and integrating already-existing systems or components. Working on
integration, one of the most discussed aspects of ESE, Venkatachalam (2006) stated that
effective enterprise integration involves not only hardware, equipment, and data but also
Defining Enterprise Systems Engineering 485
people, technology and business processes. However, as Saenz (2005) explained, most
of the work on integration has been focused on hardware, equipment and data integration,
or, in terms of Giachettis (2004) framework for information integration, on lower levels
of integration as connectivity, data sharing, and application interoperability. This focus
on interoperability, while important, is incomplete.
What is needed is a comprehensive definition of ESE that goes beyond previous
piecemeal efforts. In fact Giachettis framework has already noted this problem and
stated that definitions play an important role in integration. Definition is needed
to identify the types of enterprise systems and how they are integrated. In the information
systems realm, definitions have played a pivotal role in advancing both theory and
practice. For example, the development of workflow expends considerable effort
on defining all the workflow elements in a formal and precise manner (van der Aalst and
Kumar, 2003). Abundant work on defining semantics and defining modelling approaches
is evident, as demonstrated by the widely used Unified Modelling Language (UML),
useful for visualising, constructing, and documenting the artifacts of software systems
(Reinhartz-Berger and Sturm, 2008). UML helps support the above-mentioned lower
levels of integration. The Unified Enterprise Modelling Language (UEML), a proposed
unified language for enterprise modelling, is an effort that aims at higher-levels of
integration, i.e., business process integration, and heavily emphasises the need
for achieving consensus regarding semantics and concepts definition (Vernadat, 2002).
One factor that constrains the use of enterprise architectures to guide decision making
regarding enterprise systems is that these architectures concepts are vaguely defined
(Weerakkody et al., 2007) and definitions are key for common understanding of
enterprise integration (Li and Williams, 2002). Grninger et al. (2000) goes beyond and
contends that enterprise design requires precise and formal definitions of the semantics of
enterprise models, through ontologies or formal descriptions of entities, their properties,
relationships, constraints, and behaviours.
Defining is also a basic philosophical activity and, as Xia (1999) asserted, a clear
definition of the objects under investigation is of prime importance in science. Without
a clear understanding of the subject of inquiry from the beginning, scientific research
cannot take place (Chakrabarti, 1995). Moreover, definitions are abstractions that
separate an object from the rest of the world in a way that gives new knowledge of the
object (Robinson, 1968). Definitions are needed to standardise terms to facilitate business
process integration. Integration is subset of engineering (Bernus et al., 2003; Giachetti,
2004; Li and Williams, 1994; Lim et al., 1997), thus, any integration effort is preceded
by engineering. Therefore, any effort towards achieving greater integration,
a contemporary challenge, transits through appropriate definitions. Our object of interest
is the enterprise; how to engineer an enterprise has become a field of study in its own
right, distinct from industrial engineering, manufacturing engineering, product
engineering, software or Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems engineering.
In order to contribute towards the development of this field, the objective of this paper is
to formulate a definition of ESE. In parallel, this research demonstrates an approach
grounded in the philosophy of science and product development theory to formulate and
validate definitions.
The paper is organised as follows. Section 2 presents the research background, which
reviews types of definition, techniques for defining, and, following product development
theory, proposes a set of specifications for definitions. Section 3 presents an analysis and
486 O.A. Saenz et al.
evaluation of Enterprise Engineering (EE) definitions in order to gain insight about their
strengths and limitations, and facilitate and avoid pitfalls in formulating our own
definition of ESE. Section 4 proposes and validates a definition of ESE. Section 5
concludes the paper and identifies areas for future research.
2 Research background
Innovation Management using synthesis; Sharma et al. (2007) defined fuzzy sets, to
mention a few.
This section presents existing definitions of EE and evaluates them against the set of
specifications to formulate definitions proposed in the preceding section, in order to gain
insight into formulating a definition for ESE. Note that this research does not redefine
EE; instead, it offers its own definition of ESE.
and almost 50 modelling tools appeared in the late 1980s targeting different enterprise
elements (e.g., information and activities). The emergence of new enterprise engineering
architectures and methodologies in the 1990s, each presenting a different scope
and process for EE, combined with divergent definitions, created confusion among
potential users of EE and resulted in the limited success of enterprise modelling
methodologies, a small user community, and little common understanding and
terminology (Kosanke, 1995; Kosanke et al., 1998; Zelm and Kosanke, 1999).
The background and the overview presented above help to elucidate the fact that the
proposal of a definition is more than a description exercise and needs to adhere to its own
theory and accepted criteria, which is one of the objectives of this paper.
Figure 1 Conceptual relationships among the terms enterprise, systems, and engineering
Within this effort to synthesise the meaning of the term ESE it is clear at this point that
the understanding of the three individual terms enterprise, systems, and engineering
is different from any combination of the component terms; that is, enterprise system,
enterprise engineering (both presented before), and systems engineering. Systems
engineering attempts to define system behaviour and to design system structure so that
emergent behaviour can be predicted and controlled within desirable bounds (ISO, 1999a;
Thom, 1993).
A tenet of this research is that an enterprise system is viewed as a product, for it has
to be specified, designed, built, and put into operation (Bernus and Nemes, 1996;
Bernus et al., 2003); thus, the proposed definition has a product development orientation.
Viewing an enterprise as a product is valid for new and existing enterprises; the latter
may be considered as an existing product suitable for redesign. Analogous to product
engineering, the last authors stressed that the theories, tools, methodologies, and activities
used to engineer an enterprise should be applicable without regard to the nature of the
business.
Defining Enterprise Systems Engineering 497
The main criticism for existing enterprise engineering definitions is rooted in their
scope. Two out of seven are considered narrow and five out of seven are considered
broad (Table 3). This does not mean that they are incorrect, but it is argued that broad
definitions do not give uniqueness to the field because they connote more than their
definiendum intends to. Contrasting with this, the narrow definitions leave the feeling of
excluding crucial aspects while at the same time specialising in certain aspects that
invade the realm of other engineering fields. The proposed definition has a precise scope:
specification, analysis, design, and implementation of an enterprise for its life cycle.
The proposed definition has clarity. All the terms in the definition are expressed in
clear, literal, unambiguous, and non-obscure language. To further guarantee adherence to
this criterion, other key terms as engineering, system, enterprise, and enterprise elements
have been assigned a distinct and accepted meaning in this research to avoid ambiguity.
The proposed ESE definition as expressed is affirmative and direct; it is not expressed
in negative terms. To test that the proposed definition is simple enough without being
indefinite, three tests were checked: economy of presentation, economy of relationship,
and economy of constitution (Chakrabarti, 1995). Regarding presentation, the definien
provides enough information to convey and understand the concept of ESE. No attributes
of the enterprise, the system it represents, the engineering process, or the possible
methodologies to use are given because this is not a denotative definition, e.g., in some
definitions of enterprise engineering it is not clear when the definition ends or if the
enumeration of attributes is part of it, as in Martin (1995) and ISEE (2002). Regarding
economy of relationships, all the terms used are directly related to the definiendum, that
is, to the constituent terms enterprise, systems, and engineering, at the same time giving a
new and clear meaning to the ordered set of terms. Regarding economy of constitution,
the definien contains nothing beyond what is necessary to explain the meaning of the
definiendum.
In short, the proposed definition of ESE states essential attributes, is non-circular,
has a definite scope, and is clear, affirmative, and simple. Therefore, it is a valid
definition.
5 Conclusions
definitions of the same subject, and shed light on how attempts to define a new field of
study contribute to differentiate it from or confound it with other fields. Third, this
research highlights the importance of stating what kind of definition is being formulated
and what criteria are being used in its formulation. The proposed definition of ESE
addresses one goal of science, understanding, by putting forth a new theoretical
foundation to create or change enterprise systems. Future research could investigate in
greater depth the use of the philosophy of science to develop a potentially more
cross-disciplinary conceptualisation of ESE.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the reviewers and the Editor for their constructive and
valuable comments and suggestions. This research was partially funded by Universidad
del Turabo.
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