Achieving Enterprise Model Interoperability Applying a Common Enterprise Metamodel

As response to changes in competitive conditions in many industries [1], enterprises specialize in specific core competencies, and rely on the outsourcing of less relevant business activities [2]. This increases the demand for close inter-organizational collaboration and makes the collaborative activities themselves more complex. Interoperability - defined as “ability of two or more systems or components to exchange information and to use the information that has been exchanged” [3] is a prerequisite for successfully implementing collaborative business. For enterprises which are documenting the different dimensions of their business (e.g. processes, organizational structures, decisions) with the help of enterprise models, the ability of a mutual understanding of semantic and syntax of these models over organizational borders is necessary for obtaining interoperability. This paper illustrates an ATHENA approach to foster inter-company model exchange, by transforming them into a generic metamodel. The metamodel consists of different dimensions (process, product, organisation, infrastructure and decision) in order to enable companies to exchange the full range of models. For illustrating purposes this paper focuses on transformation between the process dimensions of the EML. The concept and its implementation will be exemplified by transformation between Event-Driven Process Chains (EPC) and Integrated Enterprise Modelling (IEM) format. EPC [4] enable business analysts to model processes on a non-technical level and are frequently used to represent business requirements, e.g. in the context of SAP with the SAP Reference Model