Dynamic enterprise modeling

Overview

• Enterprise structure diagrams: The company site structure is visualized with the dispersed geographic locations, the headquarters, manufacturing plants, warehouses, and supplier and customer locations. Physical as well as logical multi-site organizations for internal logistic or financial flow optimization can be diagrammed.
• Business control model : The business control model represents the primary processes of the organization and their control, grouped in business functions. The DEM reference model exists of one main Business Control Model, resulting in several other Business Control Models per function area of the organization.
• Business function model : The business function model is a function model that focuses on the targets of the several functions within the company.
• Business process model : The business process model focuses on the execution of the functions and processes that originate from the business control model and the business function model. Processes flows are depicted and processes are detailed out.
• Business organization model : The business organization model focuses less on the processes and more on the organizational aspects such as roles and responsibilities.

Dynamic enterprise modeling topics

Business control model

• Request-feedback-loop: A link from, to, or between business functions is called a request-feedback-loop, which consists of 4 states that complete the process and information flows between both business functions. The states are labeled: requested, committed, completed and accepted.
• Workflow case. A workflow case is the description of the execution and the target of the process that occurs between two business functions. The most important critical factors of the workflow case are quantity, quality and time. The 4 states of Request-feedback-loop the together represent the workflow case.
• Triggers: Business functions are aggregates of business processes and focus mainly on the triggers between processes, thus not on the information flows.
• Business functions : In an optimal situation for the modeling process, a company has only one business function. Business functions are however subdivided when:
• * The nature and characteristics of workflow cases fluctuate
• * The frequency in underlying processes fluctuate
• * Detail-level fluctuates
• * More than 1 type of request triggers a function

• External business function : this is a group of processes that are part of the organization, but that is outside of the scope of the reference model.

• Processes within or between business functions are executed by triggers, which can be event-driven or time-driven.
• Exceptions in a system are handled, according to the set handling level in the business process configuration, when the success path of the model is not met in practice.

• Management business functions: These are functions that manage the business process itself and that thus support the execution and triggering of the main business functions.

Constructing the business control model

• First, the scope of the business is defined. The scope includes scoping what to model and includes the definition of the agents and external business functions that relate to the business.
• Next, the scope is depicted to a model of the black box with al the agents and external business functions surrounding the black box.
• The next step is to define the process and information flows between the agents and external business functions to and from the black box of the business control model. Defining the request-feedback flows enables the modeler to define what processes are inside the black box.

• In case of a production business it is vital to define the customer order decoupling point, referring to the split in the physical process where processes are based on the customer order instead of forecasts.
• Service based businesses on the other hand do not have a physical goods flow and thus do not require a physical process model. It is however imaginable that the same type of process flow can be utilized to construct a business control model for a service based business, as a service can be interpreted as a product as well. In this way, a business control model can be constructed similarly for a service based business as for a physical goods production business, having intangible goods instead of tangible.
• Next to the low-level physical production process, the high-level business functions need to be defined as well. In most cases the higher level business functions relate to planning functions and other tactical and strategical business functions, followed by functions as sales and purchase.

Business process model

• State : A state element represents the state of a job token and is followed by the activity that executes the job token of the state.
• Processing activity : A processing activity is the activity that processes the job token of a state, transforming the state of the job token to another state.
• Control activity: A control activity navigates the process activity but does not execute it.
• Subprocess : A subprocess is a collection of different other processes, aggregated in a single element by means of complexity management.

• OR-split / XOR-split : This structure creates 2 new states out of 1 state, signaling the creation of 2 job tokens out of 1 job token. If the new state can be both of the output tokens, the split is OR, if not, the split is an exclusive OR split.
• AND-join construction : 2 job tokens are both needed to enable the control activity, creating 1 new job token.
• OR-join / XOR-join : 2 job tokens are needed to enable the control activity, creating 1 new job token.

An example

• The Petri net built model expresses the transformation from a single man and woman to a married couple through marriage and back to single individuals through divorce.
• The model starts with the two states called man and woman.
• Through an AND-join construction the two states are joined within the control activity called coupling to the new state called couple.
• The couple state then is transformed through the processing activity called marriage, resulting in the transformed state of married couple.
• The state married couple is then transformed to the state divorced couple using the process activity called divorce, resulting in the state called divorced couple.
• The control activity called decoupling finally splits the divorced couple state into the states of man and woman.

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