EMSCa

EMSca Enterprise Model (EMSCa)

Research project

Description

Reference models have great potential for both practice as well as academics: Firstly, they promise organizations to serve as a "blue print" for designing their processes and structures. Enterprises can benefit from documented experiences and knowledge that have gone into the reference model. This allows them to design and create business processes, organizational structuresor IT landscapes in a more efficient and effective way – withouth the need to "reinvent the wheel".

Secondly, reference models are also interesting for academics. They can be used to illustrate the specifics of both a certain domain as well as the utilized modeling languages. In teaching, students can therefore benefit from them as they provide an illustrative and understandable example. In research, reference models can be subject to new research projects, too, for example when new extensions to modeling langauges are tested and exemplified with existing reference models.

Against this background, the Chair of Information Systems and Enterprise Modelling developed a comprehensive enterprise model that can be used as sample application for both research and teaching. This enterprise model makes use of respective domain-specific modeling languages (DSMLs) from the MEMO family to create an extensive and integrated enterprise model of a fictional enterprise, namely a bank ("Enterprise Modelling Show Case", EMSCa bank). The model claims to be - at least in parts - representative for the financial sector and hence can be used as reference model for mid-sized banks. At the same time, it should be noted that this enterprise model is not complete.

The aim of this project is therefore to improve the enterprise model by differentiating selected aspects of mid-sized banks using literature, expert experiences, and creative, analytical reflections. This is achieved by recreating various aspects from enterprises step-by-step using the work in progress enterprise modeling approach MEMO. Furthermore, the enterprise model is enriched with a handful of design alternatives that should illustrate the ample scope and serve as a starting point for developing use cases in the context of new methods and modeling languages.

The worked on aspects of the enterprise model include (* = completed in first version):

  • Strategy and value chain models (MEMO SML)
  • Goal models* (MEMO GoalML)
  • Business process models on different abstraction levels (e.g. process map, business process modelle) (MEMO OrgML)
  • Models of organizational structure* (MEMO OrgML)
  • Models of IT landscape* (MEMO ITML)
  • Models of IT security (MEMO SecML)
  • Models of (IT) risks (MEMO RiskML)
  • Models of internal control and internal control system (MEMO ControlML)
  • Models of indicators and indicator systems (MEMO MetricML)