Enterprise modelling with CIMOSA: Functional and organizational aspects

TLDR

Enterprise modelling is a central activity in enterprise engineering and enterprise integration. The paper aims to define enterprise modelling, revisit its core principles, and introduce recent developments of the CIMOSA event‑driven process‑based language for enterprise system analysis and enactment. The authors extend CIMOSA by separating processes (workflows) from agents/resources (state‑machines), linking them through functional operations, resource capabilities, and competencies, and adding support for modeling organizational aspects. An illustrative example demonstrates the application of the proposed CIMOSA extensions and the modelling approach.

Abstract

Enterprise modelling is a central activity in enterprise engineering (EE) and enterprise integration (EI). In this paper, we first present our definition and recall fundamental principles of enterprise modelling. Then we focus on new developments of the CIMOSA modelling language, which is an event-driven process-based modelling language suitable for enterprise system analysis and model enactment. New features of the language concern a clear separation between the concept of processes (modelled as workflows) and the concept of agents or resources (modelled by state-machines). The link between the two concepts is materialized by functional operations (elementary actions) as well as resource capabilities and competencies. Another extension of the language concerns modelling of organization aspects. An example illustrates concepts and methods used in the modelling approach.