A reusable enterprise model

Enterprise activities are intricate, as companies often produce multiple pr oduct families which require a complex mixture of production modes. Modelli ng techniques are commonly applied to expose the behaviour of an enterprise and to investigate the feasibility of achieving business objectives Howeve r, enterprise modelling can be a: slow process and models become invalid if business objectives are changed, because their information content may be overtaken by fast changing market conditions. The modelling process is acce lerated if new models can use Part or all of the information from previous models. This paper addresses these issues by introducing a reusable enterpr ise model, called a factory data model (FDM). It has been implemented using an object-oriented approach, and contains five hey has hierarchies. The mo del can be specialised to meet the requirements of individual enterprises; hence, less time and effort are involved in creating new models to satisfy changes in enterprise requirements.