Enterprise Modelling

Books and Journals:

ARIS - Business Process Frameworks, A.-W. Scheer

A very well structured and easy to follow description of the ARIS (Architecture of Integrated Information Systems) Framework. The book provides a wealth of information on ARIS and its underlying concepts. Starting from the business process modelling concept the levels of abstraction, the model views and the model life-cycle are introduced. The ARIS preliminary information model is structured around four basic classes: Function, Output, Information Object and Organisational Unit which represent four of the five ARIS views (Function, Output, Data and Organisation). The control view provides for the integration of the other four views. With the emphasis on the information model UML is used for the representation of the integrated ARIS information model. However, in a later section the author states his reservation on using UML as the all encompassing solution for business process modelling.

The ARIS application areas identified cover process engineering, process planning and control, workflow control and application systems. For each of these four areas specific applications are described in some detail. E.g. the area of process engineering describes eight different applications including such advanced areas as knowledge management, process evaluation and benchmarking, quality assurance and process warehouse.

The sections on standardisation suffer from their emphasis on de facto standards neglecting efforts of European (CEN) and international standards organisation (ISO, ISA). Only the efforts of OMG, OAG, Microsoft and SAP are referenced in the area of model interoperability and the "Generally Accepted Modelling Principles" developed by German Government supported "GoM" project is referenced for the modelling area. In spite of this lacking of references, ARIS itself is compatible with many of the current efforts on standards in the area of enterprise modelling.

The last two sections compare ARIS with a number of other concepts including object oriented modelling and CIMOSA and describe three practical procedures of deploying ARIS. The examples cover business process re-engineering, model based ISO 9000 certification and the use of models in knowledge management. Whereas the comparison is somewhat superficial and not always up-to-date, the description of the three examples provides some interesting aspects of their related modelling procedures.

Even with its focus on ARIS the book is written well enough to allow to compare and evaluate other business process modelling concepts for their completeness and effectiveness.

Springer-Verlag, 1999, 3rd ed., ISBN 3-540-65834-3

 

Return to main page