International Conference on Enterprise Integration Modeling Technology 1997 (ICEIMT'97)

Workshop 1, NIST, Gaithersburg MD USA: 1997 April 16/18

Subject: Workshop on ENTERPRISE ORGANIZATION AND HUMAN ISSUES

ICEIMT Objectives: The purpose of the ICEIMT was to develop an international pre-normative consensus among both suppliers and users on a synthesized set of technical issues sufficient to provide a common context for the discussion and comparison of EI technology alternatives. Further, we tried to enumerate the various approaches and characterize them so as to reach consensus on where they overlap, complement, and conflict. Where they conflict, we tried to develop approaches for resolution, potentially leading to collaborative research demonstrations. The workshop reports identify problems and gaps in the current technologies that point to new research. Where applicable, the report refers to relevant standardization efforts aiming on a coherent set of standards supporting enterprise integration.

Workshop 1 Objectives: ENTERPRISE ORGANIZATION AND HUMAN ISSUES:

• Identify relations between the different organisational concepts (extended enterprise, agile enterprise, virtual enterprise, holonic enterprise, others) and with the current state of enterprises. Propose concept for evolution.
• Clarify impact of EI on human role in organisations (co-operation across organisation boundaries, workgroups/teamwork, social relations, decision making in flat organisations, others). Identify research areas.
• Develop concept for technology transfer to industry (information dissemination, demonstration of success stories, education).

Workshop 1 Themes:

Assess the impact of EI on organizational evolution of enterprises and consider human factors and society aspects. This would be all of the executive-level stuff that comprise the real barriers--even more than technical ones.

Related Themes:

• Extended enterprise, agile enterprise, virtual enterprise, and holonic enterprise
• Enterprise integration and human aspects, Information dissemination to industry (SMEs) and workforce education issues concerning EI and IT, Business process reengineering and the organization structure.
• Cultural dimensions of groups and teamwork in organizations, Social impact of EI problems if integration succeeds.
• Salary incentives to encourage cooperation, Organizational power, Span-of-control problems
• Government incentives needed?

Workshop 1 Format:

April 16: Familiarization--Participants presentations, Development of Expectations
April 17: Direction--Open brainstorming on Alternatives (Workgroups)
April 18: Commitment--Consolidate Workgroup Results, Formulate and adopt plans of action.

Workshop 1 Reports:

A Human Factors Taxonomy and Human Modeling in Enterprises, Workshop 1, Working Group 1.
Ronald E. Giachetti (editor), Andrew Kusiak, Keith Toh, and Martin Zelm

This paper reports on the discussions and findings of the breakout session entitled, "Human-Machine Interaction" as part of the Workshop on Enterprise Organization and Human Modeling.

Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) can be approached from a techno-centered or model-centered point of view. The former implies describing and modeling the resources of an enterprise primarily in terms of machines and computers, an approach which has not worked very well in the past. Recently, the socio-technical or human-centered approach in CIM has gained more attention. It emphasizes the role of humans in the enterprise and methods to represent humans in an enterprise model.

There exist many enterprise activities and situations where modeling of human aspects is required. The following two issues are considered: what human aspects to model and tool characteristics required to support human modeling tasks. Additionally, promoting human modeling activities and tools in industry is discussed at some length.

Current modeling of resources needs to be extended to capture characteristics that are uniquely human. A categorization of human factors to model organized as a taxonomy would facilitate discussion and modeling activity. A detailed examination of human aspects and the development of a taxonomy of human factors is discussed. Finally an approach to linking the human model and the human factors taxonomy is considered.

The human role in the enterprise has been largely unappreciated and consequently ignored in our models. The following issues are recognized: (1) what human activities need modeling? (2) what human aspects to model so that the necessary activities are captured in our models, and (3) what tool characteristics are required for human modeling?

This proposal aims to address this deficiency by establishing a domain-independent representational formalism for modeling human aspects in enterprise models. The proposed representation consists of a human factors taxonomy, a human model, and a methodology for linking the human factors to the human model within the scope of an enterprise-wide model. The authors identified the development of a taxonomy of human factors as a necessary first step.

Human Factors and Enterprise Integration; Workshop 1, Working Group 2.
Mark Fox, Ted Goranson (editor), Bernhard Katzy, Ted Williams, and Dennis Wisnosky.

This is the report of Breakout Group 2 from the First ICEIMT97 Workshop that addressed Human Factors. The group had wide-ranging discussion which it was felt could be best organized by beginning at the beginning, with a definition of the problems of human centric enterprise integration. The original charter was human factors, but the group extended the scope to a larger range of soft factors.

An integrated enterprise is one that achieves process intra- and inter-operability by the most effective means possible. Process interoperability is accomplished by optimizing a system comprised of people, machines, and information, in response to the enterprise's goals. Usually those goals concern response to market demands by a company or group of companies. But we intend to specifically include the view of enterprise systems as value chains and not exclude more novel types of enterprises.

Key problems in the optimal design of an integrated enterprise include:

• how to provide the right information (enabled by enterprise modeling) at the right time and place (enabled by the information infrastructure);
• how to enhance decision-making in the face of overwhelming complexity (enabled by smart algorithms and real-time systems);
• how to enable cooperation in decisionmaking and actions (enabled by coordination theory);
• how to rethink the role of humans in a process, in order to take maximal advantage of their capabilities; and,
• how to continuously upgrade and broaden skills.

All of these define enterprise integration problems with a human component; the first three are currently accomplished to some, mostly inadequate, degree by employing existing information architectures and concepts while the last two currently have scant existing support.

Three specific goals need to be supported: the roles that humans play, how they manage trust and the relatively simpler way of how skills are understood and represented.

There are several areas in which high payoff research would be sponsored:

• better ways of incorporating skills in activity and agent representations;
• better ways of understanding the motivation of a user of the infrastructure in order to determine the appropriateness of what, when and how tailored projections are presented;
• better ways of integrating and managing the multitude of different motivations supporting different roles and goals in the enterprise;
• better ways of representing soft characteristics: partly known, ambiguous and intangible features and relationships in such a way that limited reasoning across them can be accomplished;
• better ways of on-demand extraction of human-sensitive tailored projections by means more practical than defining and structuring the view beforehand; and,
• better ways of integrating context and relevant notions of scale into the enterprise representations.

Changes in Organisation and Process Structures; Workshop 1, Working Group 3.
Dietrich Brandt, Kurt Kosanke, Jim Nell, and François Vernadat (editor).

The paper presents the conclusion of Working Group 3 of ICEIMT'97 Workshop I dealing with investigating the management of change in the context of Enterprise Integration taking into consideration human factors. The paper concludes with a proposal for a research project on the impact of organisation structures on process structures and vice-versa for developing flexible, responsive organisational structures.

The management of change and related system complexity in the context of enterprise evolution were already recognised as critical factors in building flexible, responsive organisational structures during ICEIMT'92. The structure of an organisation must be adapted to the nature of the business processes to be performed and managed and is constrained by the enterprise environment. In addition, this structure will heavily rely on available resource skills and capabilities as well as necessary resource interactions. This is especially true for human resources. Therefore, the working group was chartered by ICEIMT'97 to investigate the relevant mechanisms required for the management of change, consider the role of human factors in the management of change and investigate the impact of process changes on organisation structures.

Because enterprise integration is a never-ending process there should be some continuous-process-improvement mechanisms put in place to be able to identify opportunities for improvement; to adjust goals, strategies, structure, and culture, as well as to tune performances of the enterprise whenever necessary; and at the appropriate level (strategic, tactical, operational).

Humans are mostly characterised by their skills and competencies, knowledge, know-how and motivations. According to these and tasks to be executed, they are empowered with responsibilities and authorities. Their behaviour is certainly the most important factor to take into account but is difficult to appraise because psychological factors are involved and it may change depending on the kind of working environment people are involved in, such as working alone, teamwork, and stressful work conditions.

The goal of the project is to develop a methodology to deal with the enterprise evolution process and propose models and tools to build flexible and responsive organisation structures to deal with the management of change of process structures.

Problems and questions to be addressed include:

• How to define performance indicators in the feedback loops to anticipate management of change?
• Is output in accordance with expectations of customers?
• Is current mission still valid?
• Is long term vision defined?
• How to move from today's hierarchical organisation to less hierarchical structures. Impact of teamwork?
• How to move from today's individual enterprises to supplier chains and enterprise networks, both nation-wide and internationally?
• How to deal with the dynamics of organisation structures?
• How to reorganise the organisational structure according to enterprise evolution?
• Assessment of human aspects, agent interaction modes, agent intention
• Investigate the impact of process changes on organisation structures and vice versa

Return to: ICEIMT'97 home page.
Edited by: JG Nell, NIST. Updated 1997-September-24.
Send message to: nell@nist.gov, or kosanke@ipa.fhg.de, or both.