A Systematic Evaluation of Enterprise Modelling Approaches on Their Applicability to Automatically Generate ERP Software

Customising Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software to the enterprise's needs is still a technical endeavour often involving enabling/disabling modules, modifying configuration files, etc. This is quite surprising given the large body of work on Enterprise Modelling and Model-Driven Software Engineering. Ideally, one models one's enterprise and, with a press on a button, the ERP software supporting the enterprise is generated. In this paper, we present a systematic evaluation of Enterprise Modelling approaches for their applicability to automatically generate ERP software supporting an enterprise. Inspired by the work of an ERP vendor, which, next to generating ERP software to support an enterprise, also wants to incorporate the common-sense of an enterprise in the ERP software, we also evaluate Enterprise Ontologies since current Enterprise Modelling languages lack semantics on the instance level. None of the existing approaches are tailored towards automated (ERP) software generation without the need for programming. However, the approaches possess valuable aspects which can aid in the ERP software generation process. Therefore, next to the evaluation, we present take-home points from the approaches, e.,g., reasoning capabilities to make common-sense suggestions when something is not possible.

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