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Article
Publication date: 22 May 2009

Mostafa Jafari, Peyman Akhavan and Elham Nouranipour

The main objective of this paper is to explore the role of knowledge architecture in an enterprise and to provide a model to architect enterprise knowledge based on the Zachman…

2920

Abstract

Purpose

The main objective of this paper is to explore the role of knowledge architecture in an enterprise and to provide a model to architect enterprise knowledge based on the Zachman framework.

Design/methodology/approach

This is a conceptual article providing a knowledge architecture model for an organization based on the Zachman framework that discussed several perspectives from the knowledge management point of view and information technology. To confirm the validity of the model a questionnaire was designed, applied and then analyzed by some statistical methods.

Findings

The paper provides a conceptual knowledge architecture model that can be applied to Iranian organizations practically. The validity of this model is confirmed by polling the opinion of knowledge architecture experts.

Research limitations/implications

The lack of resources directly related to the subject of the research, the novelty of this kind of research in Iran and the lack of organizations which perform a knowledge architecture model in reality are the restrictions of this research. The authors' suggestion for further research studies is to execute the model and survey from foreigner experts.

Practical implications

The paper may be beneficial for enterprise architects in the knowledge area.

Originality/value

The paper may be of high value to researchers in the knowledge management field and to practitioners involved with KM adoption in the organizations. It gives valuable information and guidelines that hopefully will help the leaders and the senior knowledge management managers to accomplish KM through their organization successfully.

Details

Management Decision, vol. 47 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0025-1747

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 18 April 2022

Hamdi Ercan and Mustafa Akın

In more than 100 years of aviation, significant progress has been made in flight control systems. The aircrafts that have entered service for the past ten years tend towards…

Abstract

Purpose

In more than 100 years of aviation, significant progress has been made in flight control systems. The aircrafts that have entered service for the past ten years tend towards power-by-wire flight control with electrical actuators. The purpose of this study is to analyse the effects of electrical actuation on power consumption, weight and fuel consumption on a commercial transport aircraft.

Design/methodology/approach

The Airbus A321-200 aircraft was chosen as a case study for analysing the effects of electrical actuation on the flight control actuation system (FCAS) architecture, and Pacelab SysArc software was used for design, modelling and analysis. As alternatives to the existing system, hybrid and all-electric models are built to a set of design guidelines with certain limitations.

Findings

Compared to the existing FCAS architecture model, 80 kg weight savings in the hybrid FCAS architecture model and 171 kg weight savings in the all-electric FCAS architecture model were observed. In terms of fuel consumption, it has been observed that there is 0.25% fuel savings in the hybrid FCAS architecture model, and 0.48% fuel savings in the all-electric FCAS architecture model compared to the existing FCAS architecture model at 3200 NM.

Practical implications

In line with the data obtained from this study, it is predicted that electrical actuation is more preferable in aircraft, considering its positive effects on weight and fuel consumption.

Originality/value

In this study, three different models were created: the existing FCAS architecture of a commercial transport aircraft, the hybrid FCAS architecture and the all-electric FCAS architecture. Hybrid and all-electric models are built according to a set of design guidelines, with certain limitations. Then, similar flight missions consisting of the same flight conditions are defined to analyse the effects of power consumption, weight, and fuel consumption comparatively.

Details

Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology, vol. 94 no. 10
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1748-8842

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 6 March 2020

Stefan Strohmeier and Felix Gross

The paper proposes the development of a graphical architecture description language (ADL) that allows a better understanding of software architectures for nontechnical actors and…

Abstract

Purpose

The paper proposes the development of a graphical architecture description language (ADL) that allows a better understanding of software architectures for nontechnical actors and purposes and, beyond, can serve as a communication tool between domain experts and IT experts, for instance, in a software development process.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper follows the methods and guidelines of design science research. By deriving characteristics and general requirements for ADLs from a research literature review and from industry standards, the paper provides a conceptual modeling approach for an ADL. The model design is based on typical requirements and suggestions derived from literature and related work. The application possibilities and advantages are then demonstrated with a usage scenario.

Findings

The paper elaborates a user-oriented ADL that makes software architecture comprehensible for stakeholders and end users. It provides a high level of abstraction and, thus, is not restricted to a particular domain. The paper also provides a corresponding modeling editor as well as an underlying catalogue with symbols and rules for the ADL.

Research limitations/implications

As this is a conceptual study, the ADL has not been practically evaluated yet. Thus, the usefulness of this academic approach for the industry remains to be validated.

Originality/value

The elaborated ADL can serve as a language to visualize software architectures, particularly in the business domain, in a comprehensible manner. Still, it retains the structured character of ADLs to facilitate communication on an IT-near level. In including nontechnical actors, the approach broadens the overall application capabilities of ADLs.

Details

Journal of Enterprise Information Management, vol. 33 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1741-0398

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 4 June 2018

Dina Tbaishat

Business process modeling has been given great attention due to its crucial role in developing computer-based systems that support (and automate) organizational processes. In…

Abstract

Purpose

Business process modeling has been given great attention due to its crucial role in developing computer-based systems that support (and automate) organizational processes. In information systems, building the right process architecture is vital, since a poor division of organizational processes can lead to complex designs or incoherent structure. Moreover, process architecture acts as a “big picture” of what the organization does, and represents dynamic relationships between the existing processes, which, in turn, helps understand how the organization works (Ould, 2005). The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper discusses the derivation of a process architecture diagram (PAD) using the Riva method in detail, in contrast to the PAD developed using Architecture of Integrated Information Systems (ARIS). The information system selected as an example for this comparative study is in the context of academic libraries, embedding various yet generic library processes.

Findings

Organizational process architecture provides a basis for business management, based on specific framework supported by integrated tools and methods (Kozina, 2006). ARIS and Riva process architecture methods can be used to visualize and document organizational processes. Understanding the merits and weaknesses of each method is essential to identify possible areas of application.

Research limitations/implications

The processes selected were generic in most academic libraries not taking into consideration special personalized processes. These can be added though.

Practical implications

Both techniques are feasible and can be used to view and analyze library processes, allowing bridging the gap between theory and practice.

Originality/value

A number of process architecture methods are available, however, few studies focused on assessing these methods, and comparing some of them to find out how easy they are to be used in particular contexts, and whether they can be standardized.

Details

Business Process Management Journal, vol. 24 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1463-7154

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 28 February 2022

Yi-Cheng Chen

Recently, more and more attention has been put forth on the application and deep learning, due to the widespread practicability of neural network computation. The purpose of this…

Abstract

Purpose

Recently, more and more attention has been put forth on the application and deep learning, due to the widespread practicability of neural network computation. The purpose of this paper is developing an effective algorithm to automatically discover the optimal neural network architecture for several real applications.

Design/methodology/approach

The author proposes a novel algorithm, namely, progressive genetic-based neural architecture search (PG-NAS), as a solution to efficiently find the optimal neural network structure for given data. PG-NAS also employs several operations to effectively shrink the search space to reduce the computation cost and improve the accuracy validation.

Findings

The proposed PG-NAS could be utilized on several tasks for discovering the optimal network structure. The author reduces the demand of manual settings when implementing artificial intelligence (AI) models; hence, PG-NAS requires less human intervention than traditional machine learning. The average and top-1 metrics, such as error, loss and accuracy, are used to measure the discovered neural architectures of the proposed model over all baselines. The experimental results show that, with several real datasets, the proposed PG-NAS model consistently outperforms the state-of-the-art models in all metrics.

Originality/value

Generally, the size and the complexity of the search space for the neural network dominates the performance of computation time and resources. In this study, PG-NAS utilizes genetic operations to effectively generate the compact candidate set, i.e. fewer combinations need to be generated when constructing the candidate set. Moreover, by the proposed selector in PG-NAS, the non-promising network structure could be significantly pruned off. In addition, the accuracy derivation of each combination in the candidate set is also a performance bottleneck. The author develops a predictor network to efficiently estimate the accuracy to avoid the time-consuming derivation. The learning of the prediction process is also adjusted dynamically; this adaptive learning of the predictor could capture the pattern of training data effectively and efficiently. Furthermore, the proposed PG-NAS algorithm is applied on several real datasets to show its practicability and scalability.

Details

Industrial Management & Data Systems, vol. 122 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0263-5577

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 3 September 2020

Jinju Chen and Shiyan Ou

This paper aims to reorganize the relevant information of Chinese ancient architectures with the use of Semantic Web technologies and thus facilitate its deep discovery and usage.

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to reorganize the relevant information of Chinese ancient architectures with the use of Semantic Web technologies and thus facilitate its deep discovery and usage.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper proposes an ontology model for Chinese ancient architectures based on architectural narratives theory. To verify the availability of the ancient architecture ontology, we designed and implemented three experiments, including semantic retrieval based on SPARQL query, semantic reasoning with the use of Jena reasoner and visual analysis based on the Chinese Online Digital Humanities Resources Platform.

Findings

The proposed ontology provided a solution for the semantic annotation of the unstructured information of Chinese ancient architectures. On this basis, deep knowledge services such as semantic retrieval, semantic reasoning and visual analysis can be provided.

Practical implications

The proposed semantic model of ancient architectures can effectively improve the organization and access quality of the semantic content of Chinese ancient architectures.

Originality/value

This paper focuses on the semantic modelling for the unstructured information of Chinese ancient architectures to semantically describe the related entities (e.g. persons, events, places and times) and uncover their relationships, and thus it made contribution to the deep semantic annotations on ancient architectures.

Article
Publication date: 19 October 2010

Usama Abdulazim Mohamed, Galal H. Galal‐Edeen and Adel A. El‐Zoghbi

The previous generations of implemented B2B e‐commerce hub solutions (e‐Marketplaces) did not successfully fulfil the requirements of buyers and suppliers (“Participants”) in…

2221

Abstract

Purpose

The previous generations of implemented B2B e‐commerce hub solutions (e‐Marketplaces) did not successfully fulfil the requirements of buyers and suppliers (“Participants”) in different business domains to carry out their daily business and online commercial transactions with one another because of their inappropriateness, and lack of flexibility. The limitations of these provided solutions came from a lot of architectural and technological challenges in the provided technical architectures that were used to build these solutions. This research aims to provide a proposed architecture to build integrated B2B e‐Commerce hub solutions. It also aims to make use of bottom‐up/top‐down approaches to building an integrated solution and to resolve the reasons for the failure of previous generations of B2B e‐commerce hubs.

Design/methodology/approach

The research uses the EDI reference model, which is provided by the ISO organization to survey and analyze the challenges of previous generations of B2B e‐Commerce hubs solutions and their architectures. The study develops a proposed solution architecture based on the recent approaches to building IOSs to build a B2B e‐commerce hub solution architecture that can be used to implement vertical B2B e‐commerce hubs (vertical e‐Marketplaces). The paper assesses the capabilities of the proposed solution architecture for building vertical B2B e‐Marketplaces by applying the proposed architecture to the building of a vertical B2B e‐Marketplace for the oil and gas sector in Egypt.

Findings

Previous B2B e‐Commerce hub initiatives failed to extend their products and services to their “Participants”, and required substantial investment and effort from each “Participant” to join such a B2B e‐Commerce hub. The failure of these IOS projects lies in their inability to integrate B2B e‐Commerce networks based on IOS and consequently, they supported very few partners and “Participants”. These IOS approaches did not resolve the existing challenges of B2B e‐Commerce hubs, especially in the realm of interoperability.

Originality/value

The main contribution of the proposed architecture comes from the creation of a clear automatic path between a business requirements layer and a technology layer by combining both Service Oriented Architecture and management requirements in a single framework to provide dynamic products and flexible services. It provides a complete Multi Channel Framework to resolve the interoperability challenges.

Details

Journal of Enterprise Information Management, vol. 23 no. 6
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1741-0398

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 27 April 2010

Bahman Jahani, Seyyed Reza Seyyed Javadein and Hassan Abedi Jafari

The purpose of this paper is to present a model for measuring enterprise architecture (EA) readiness in organizations.

2954

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to present a model for measuring enterprise architecture (EA) readiness in organizations.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper reviews the literature of enterprise architecture, defines and extracts factors and indicators of enterprise architecture readiness with factor weighting and indicators. Thereafter the authors propose a model to measure organization EA readiness in practice.

Findings

In this paper nine factors and 34 indicators that affect enterprise architecture are defined and an enterprise architecture readiness model is constructed. The model of research is practical, because it specifies readiness of organization in enterprise architecture and helps to define current state of organization via factors and indicators, and from priorities of factors and indicators, alerts organization of an optimization strategy.

Research limitations/implications

In order to increase the utility of the model for use in other organizations, further studies can help to refine the model.

Originality/value

The essence of extracting and choosing factors and indicators in this study is from enterprise architecture processes and key success and failure factors of enterprise architecture in organizations. In addition selected factors and indicators related to organization infrastructure not related only to enterprise architecture project planning and executing are examined through the use of a questionnaire. The model derived from this study can be utilized as a multi‐dimensional and practical model because of its complexity and examination of organizational infrastructures.

Details

Business Strategy Series, vol. 11 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1751-5637

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 16 November 2021

Luis San Martín, Alfonso Rodríguez, Angélica Caro and Ignacio Velásquez

Security requirements play an important role in software development. These can be specified both in enterprise architecture models and in business processes. Enterprises…

275

Abstract

Purpose

Security requirements play an important role in software development. These can be specified both in enterprise architecture models and in business processes. Enterprises increasingly carry out larger amounts of business processes where security plays a major role. Business processes including security can be automatically obtained from enterprise architecture models by applying a model-driven architecture approach, through a CIM to CIM transformation. The aim of this article is to present the specification of transformation rules for the correspondence between enterprise architecture and business process model elements focusing on security.

Design/methodology/approach

This work utilizes motivational aspects of the ArchiMate language to model security in the business layer of enterprise architectures. Next, a set of transformation rules defined with the Atlas Transformation Language are utilized to obtain the correspondence of the enterprise architecture elements in a business process, modelled with a security extension of BPMN.

Findings

A total of 19 transformation rules have been defined. These rules are more complex than element to element relations, as they take into consideration the context of the elements for establishing the correspondence. Additionally, the prototype of a tool that allows the automatic transformation between both models has been developed.

Originality/value

The results of this work demonstrate the possibility to tackle complex transformations between both models, as previous literature focuses on semantic correspondences. Moreover, the obtained models can be of use for software developers applying the model-driven approach.

Details

Business Process Management Journal, vol. 28 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1463-7154

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 19 June 2018

Fotis Kitsios and Maria Kamariotou

Enterprise architecture (EA) is a means of a high level of abstraction of a business’ levels which helps organise planning and taking better decisions. Evidence has shown that the…

2683

Abstract

Purpose

Enterprise architecture (EA) is a means of a high level of abstraction of a business’ levels which helps organise planning and taking better decisions. Evidence has shown that the scope of EA is not restricted to technology planning, but the lack of business strategy and processes is the most common problem of EA frameworks. Consequently, a challenge stems from the fact that the formulation of strategy should not be modelled separately but as a holistic approach. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the contemporary problems in existing EA modelling frameworks concerning the optimisation of business strategy concepts and to identify areas for improvement.

Design/methodology/approach

Studies were spotted using a three phased literature review methodology which was suggested by Webster and Watson (2002).

Findings

Although, previous studies have attempted to use tools and models to visualise the technological business planning, limited previous study has focussed on modelling strategic planning. Due to issues concerning the lack of guidelines for modelling business strategy, a holistic approach is needed to be made.

Originality/value

The paper contributes to the existing literature by assessing the current EA modelling languages and their skilfulness to modelling strategy. Moreover, it contributes to the determination of difficulties in modelling, as well as to the examination of ease of use of language in the context of strategy. Second, this paper provides an overview to practitioners who would like to develop effective EA modelling projects, as well as to architects who try to solve the problems of business complexity.

Details

Business Process Management Journal, vol. 25 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1463-7154

Keywords

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