Inter-enterprise architecture as a tool to empower decision-making in hierarchical collaborative production planning

Abstract

The novel idea of inter-enterprise architecture from the enterprise engineering perspective allows collaborative networks to integrate and coordinate different organizations. Therefore, inter-enterprise architecture offers multiple benefits, including: joint process harmonization, business strategy and information technology alignment, technological cost reduction, risk and redundancies reduction, customer services improvement and enhanced responsiveness. Interenterprise architecture can be used to solve the different issues that collaborative networks face on a daily basis. A conceptual model that addresses the problem of unexpected events management in the context of hierarchical production planning to improve decision-making in collaborative environments is proposed using inter-enterprise architecture. The proposed conceptual model is composed of a framework, a modeling language and the methodology. The conceptual model has been applied to a Spanish collaborative network from the ceramic tile sector. © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.