Conclusion

This Case Study demonstrates the value that a formal Enterprise Architecture approach, with standardized visual modeling, provides to operational business improvement, using techniques that are applicable to any manufacturing organization.

ArchiMate models provide the big picture of business processes and their underlying IT, while intentionally leaving out the design details …

Enterprise Architecture provides a holistic view of the enterprise, and captures essentials of the business, its information systems, and their evolution. As such, it is a crucial component of enterprise transformation initiatives. The Case Study illustrates in particular how The Open Group ArchiMate standard for high-level architectural modeling can be used to analyze, design, and guide enterprise transformation processes. ArchiMate models provide the big picture of business processes and their underlying IT, while intentionally leaving out the design details of processes, applications, and technical infrastructure. The ArchiMate modeling language instead focuses on the global structure of these domains and on the relationships between them. This helps stakeholders ranging from business executives to engineers understand the alignment between components such as business processes and their supporting applications.

The concepts of the ArchiMate modeling language are sufficiently generic and expressive to model many aspects of business structure, motivation, and function, along with the structure and function of supporting technology. However, the ArchiMate language is not designed to replace languages for specific and detailed design, such as BPMN™ [4] for business processes or UML^® [5] for software. Rather, the ArchiMate language frames and integrates work between levels through high-level architecture models.

The ArchiMate language can also be used with standards specific to business domains. In this Case Study, ArchiMate is used with the ISA-95 standard [3] for integrating information systems used in manufacturing enterprises. ISA-95 governs the exchange of information between enterprise systems and control systems for production, maintenance, and quality.

Like the fictional ArchiMetal, virtually all organizations must change significantly at some point – if not continuously – in order to survive or prosper. The ArchiMate language is a powerful tool for developing and communicating the motivations, business, application, and technology transitions, and implementation approaches for complex, mission-critical transformations.