KEY-PROBLEMS AND MULTI-SCREEN VIEW

A Framework to Perform the Aligment of Manufacturing IS

Virginie Goepp and François Kiefer

INSA de Strasbourg

24, Boulevard de la Victoire

67084 – Strasbourg Cedex, France

Keywords: Manufacturing information system, information alignment, multi-screen view tool, B-SCP.

Abstract: In today highly competitive environment, the complete alignment of information systems (IS) that is to say

not only with the strategy but also with the environment and with the uncertain evolution is crucial. For

manufacturing IS these alignments are complex. The state of the art concerning IS alignment shows that the

existing frameworks mainly concern managers and do not fit to the IS manufacturing context. On the one

hand, B-SCP tends to operationalize these frameworks by coupling them to requirements engineering.

However, only the alignment with the strategy is tackled. On the other hand, the dialectical analysis based

approach of IS manufacturing development tries to integrate multiple alignments through the “multi-screen”

view tool. However, the underlying concepts of this tool remain fuzzy. Therefore, this paper addresses the

formalisation of the “multi-screen” view, in order to work out a framework for analysing mechanisms of

multiple alignments of manufacturing IS. To do this, the contributions of coupling dialectics and “multi-

screen” view to manufacturing IS are detailed through UML class diagrams. Moreover, to better grasp these

contributions its similarities and differences with the B-SCP are outlined.

1 INTRODUCTION

In today highly competitive environment,

information systems (IS) and related information

technologies (IT) have become real competitive

weapons. In this boarder, the IS alignment is crucial.

In (Camponovo, 2004) it is suggested to study the IS

alignment not only from the strategic alignment

point of view, but to add two other levels enabling to

achieve a global and complete alignment of the IS.

The three proposed levels are the following:

• Alignment with the strategy (or strategic

alignment): it focuses on aligning IS strategy to

business strategy.

• Alignment with the environment: it concerns the

alignment of the IS with the actors involved,

their needs, uses, issues.

• Alignment with uncertain evolution: evolutions

of the strategy and of the environment would

require the IS to be aligned repeatedly. This

level tends to incorporate, in the IS, features to

cope with these evolutions.

As it is exposed in (Goepp, 2006), the alignment

of manufacturing IS is complex. manufacturing

facilities. Research in the strategic alignment field

focuses mainly on the management issues by

proposing theoretical frameworks. For example the

framework proposed in (Polallis, 2003) provides a

co-alignment model and a set of guidelines for

theory building of IS and business practice aspects

of IS. This kind of framework concerns managers

and is difficult to put into action with the

stakeholders involved in the development of

manufacturing IS. Other researches like the B-SCP

approach described in (Bleistein, 2006) suggests to

operationalize strategic alignment frameworks by

coupling them to a requirement engineering (RE)

framework. B-SCP integrates the three themes

strategy, context and process using a RE notation for

each theme. This goal-driven approach enables to

outline the business process elements, which are

“critical” for the evolution. Here, the consistency

between requirements and strategy is checked at a

given moment. The alignment with uncertain

evolution is not tackled. The complete application of

B-SCP requires to work out a detailed business

process model, a complete i* goal model, and a

study of their interactions.

In (Goepp, 2006) it is shown that, for

manufacturing IS, the drawbacks linked to the

difficulty for domain experts to deal with the fuzzy

521

Goepp V. and Kiefer F. (2007).

KEY-PROBLEMS AND MULTI-SCREEN VIEW - A Framework to Perform the Aligment of Manufacturing IS.

In Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - ISAS, pages 521-524

DOI: 10.5220/0002366705210524

 SciTePress

and abstract concept of a goal, can be tackled

through a key-problem driven approach. It combines

a generic key-problem framework to an exploitation

procedure in order to speed up the working out of an

“aligned” IS architecture.

The key-problem framework is fully detailed in

(Goepp, 2003), it is composed of three

contradictions defined as:

• The contradiction for a class of systems to limit

the study field,

• The contradiction associated to a generic

function to be fulfilled by this class of systems,

• The contradiction between two performance

parameters of this function,

• The contradiction expressed through a

characteristic element of the function.

Alignment with the environment is implicitly

ensured through mutually negotiated elicitation of

the requirements. The use of the “multi-screen” view

enables to perform a coarse alignment with the

uncertain evolution and with the strategy. Indeed, it

relocates (cf. Figure 1) the system under study both

on a time scale (past, present, future) and on a

systemic scale (sub-system, system, super-system).

This key-problem based approach is limited by the

scope of the projects it could tackle. Moreover, the

“multi-screen” view, that supports alignment, is

based on general but also fuzzy concepts. It is then

not yet possible to formalise a structured approach to

build efficiently a robust “alignment model”.

Figure 1: “Multi-screen” view tool.

This paper addresses the formalisation of the

“multi-screen” view, in order to work out a

framework for analysing mechanisms of multiple

alignments of manufacturing IS. To do this, the

contributions of coupling dialectics and “multi-

screen” view, to the alignment manufacturing IS

have to be detailed. Moreover, to better grasp these

contributions its similarities and differences with the

B-SCP are outlined. In section 2, B-SCP is

introduced. In section 3, a model for the “multi-

screen” view and an instantiation procedure are

proposed. Corresponding concepts of B-SCP are

discussed. In section 4, conclusions, perspectives

and further research directions are discussed.

2 B-SCP

B-SCP has been fully described in (Bleistein, 2006).

It proposes to operationalize the strategic alignment

modeling framework originally proposed in

(Walsham, 1993) by coupling it to RE notations and

techniques. This modeling framework is structured

around three themes: business strategy, context and

process in B-SCP. The strategy theme refers to how

an organization intends to use IT to compete within

its market or industry. The context theme refers to

the business and organizational environment in

which an organization operates. The process theme

refers to business activities, their support systems

and other organizational resources, roles, entities

and the interactions among all of these. For each

theme a specific RE notation and technique is used.

To the strategy corresponds the i* goal model, to the

context the Jackson context diagram and to the

process the role activity diagram. B-SCP suggests to

use these techniques in an integrated. Concerning

the strategy theme the i* goal taxonomy is

completed with the Business Rules Group’s Model

for Organisational Motivation (BRG-Model). It puts

in relation ends of the system (vision, goal and

objective) and related means (mission, strategy,

tactic) to achieve these ends. To perform strategic

alignment the top-level problem diagram has to be

refined by progression of problems.

3 “MULTI-SCREEN” VIEW TOOL

MODEL

The “multi-screen” view tool is a two dimensional

diagram, that organizes relevant concurrent

evolutions of company sub-systems along time.

One dimension is obviously the time. A time pitch

corresponds to the time span between two releases

of the studied sub-system of the company: here the

manufacturing IS of the company. The last time

pitch corresponds to the longest time at which

evolutions can be imagined.

The other dimension is the systemic scale at

Present

Short

Medium

Term

Long

Term

Manufacturing

system

As-is

Analysis

alignment

between

the

screens

Com

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which the company and its environment could be

observed. The upper level is the Business

Organization corresponding to the company and its

relations with the market. This level is required to

ensure, for the studied manufacturing IS, the

alignment with the strategy. The lower level should

be at least the level of Functional Units of the

Company. Indeed, this level is understandable by all

manufacturing IS users and therefore can support the

alignment with the environment.

Relevant evolutions are classified according to

these two dimensions. More it enables to model the

network of impacts between evolutions.

3.1 Time Patches

Between the as-is time and the longest time at which

evolutions can be imagined, the “multi-screen” view

tool aims, at least, to identify the next release of the

system. Therefore, there are at least: (1) as-is, (2)

next-term and (3) long-term time pitches. However

their number is not limited.

3.2 System Levels

While using B-SCP technics, intermediate levels are

added by projections from upper level to the

machine level. These system levels could be

modeled into the “multi-screen” view tool by adding

some intermediate system levels: at least the

Business Process level, required for IS design (IS

support business processes) (cf. Figure 2) but also,

for instance, Enterprise Activities and Functional

Operations according to the CIM-OSA Framework

(Berio, 1999).

However, due to the number of business

processes, in which the manufacturing functional

units are implied in, and due to the detailed level of

analysis required to address the machine level for

manufacturing IS because of the heterogeneity of

ITs involved on manufacturing facilities, this

projection and alignment process are time

consuming. More, it is difficult to ensure its

robustness because manufacturing IS actors are not

IS specialists.

3.3 Strategy Components

B-SCP focuses only on strategic alignment and

relies on a strategy component taxonomy: the system

means and the system ends. This taxonomy enables

to deploy the company strategy on the IS.

Extending the IS alignment to the alignment with

uncertain evolutions supposes to align both the IT

evolutions along time (at the manufacturing IS

level), and the evolutions within the communities of

practice implied in the functional units. Performing

it implies to deploy an IT strategy along time and a

community of practice strategy. To succeed it we

propose to analyze the evolutions between two time

pitches by relying on the same taxonomy as B-SCP

(cf. Figure 3).

Therefore evolutions gathered in the “multi-

screen” view model have to be linked to the two

kind of strategy components.

3.4 Evolutions

Evolutions modeled in the “multi-screen” view are

linked to a time pitch, a system level and a strategy

component (cf. Figure 4). We propose to model

evolutions linked with the two kinds of strategy

components on separate lines, at each system level.

According to the B-RG model, it helps to clarify

strategy deployment.

Figure 2: System level class diagram.

KEY-PROBLEMS AND MULTI-SCREEN VIEW: A Framework to Perform the Aligment of Manufacturing IS

523

Figure 3: Strategy components class diagram.

Figure 4: Evolution class diagram.

4 CONCLUSION

Figure 5 shows, at the concept level, how the

underlying principles of dialectic analysis used in

the key-problem based approach, helps performing a

complete IS manufacturing alignment through the

use of the “multi-screen” view tool. Indeed,

gathering evolution contradictions highlights main

variables (linked to system means) and states of

performance (linked to system ends). It enables to

spot the evolutions constrained by alignment

concerns (pinpointed in B-SCP by shared

phenomena) in the beginning of the analysis. Further

work will aim to detail the links between evolutions

and corresponding IS architectures.

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Figure 5: Links with dialectical analysis.

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