Managing re-engineering with the CIMOSA architectural framework

The objective of this paper is to present an approach for re-engineering processes in manufacturing using the architectural framework CIMOSA. New market requirements demand new production strategies. Therefore, enterprises follow re-engineering processes and are faced with consequent integration problems. We investigated the re-engineering processes in three European enterprises that applied CIMOSA in changing their manufacturing systems. Besides the CIMOSA framework, important factors in these re-engineering processes are the logical architectures and the physical architectures of the manufacturing systems. Appropriate usage of the CIMOSA modelling framework and the integrating infrastructure contributes to business integration and application integration. Although the CIMOSA framework has some gaps, the concepts behind it and the experiences gained show that it enables companies to manage integration difficulties.