Development of an integrated methodology for enterprise engineering

Existing public domain enterprise engineering methodologies provide a backb one of modelling concepts designed to maintain consistency between common e ngineering concerns during different life phases of enterprise systems. The literature reports industrial examples of the use of such a backbone of mo delling concepts to structure formally and to support large-scale systems e ngineering. This has led to improved problem decompositions and improved re use of models (and hence knowledge) describing large-scale systems integrat ion issues, mainly within a single business. Generally, however, existing e nterprise engineering methodologies and modelling backbones cover less well the development and reuse of models of collaboration and interaction betwe en business units. This makes them less well suited to modelling certain dy namic aspects of partner interactions both between businesses and within a single business. Therefore, there arises a need for an extended backbone of enterprise engineering methods and modelling concepts. This paper describe s the Integrated Methodology for Enterprise Engineering (IMEE) which has be en developed to meet key aspects of modelling multi-partner enterprises. IM EE incorporates two complementary kinds of modelling concept, namely (1) pr ocess oriented modelling in support of enterprise requirements capture and analysis, centred on 'function', 'activity' and 'dynamic systems' modeling and simulation approaches; and (2) object-oriented modelling in support of the conceptual design of multiple business systems, centred on 'function', 'information' and 'behaviour' modelling. Where practical, existing and well -proven concepts have been selected and integrated into the IMEE modelling backbone, the purpose being to improve the completeness, acceptability and practicability of its approaches to business integration.