Search Results (7)

In today’s fast-paced technological landscape, businesses must adapt to evolving business models and harness the power of data to thrive. Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) face significant challenges in aligning IT infrastructure with business objectives while navigating digital transformation. This systematic review, conducted using PRISMA 2020 guidelines, investigates the role of Enterprise Architecture (EA) and Information Management (IM) in driving IT growth and sustaining competitive performance in SMEs. Through a synthesis of academic research, industry analysis, and case studies from the last decade, this review identifies key frameworks—such as TOGAF, Zachman, and FEAF—that support the alignment of IT capabilities with organizational goals. The integration of IM within EA frameworks is found to enhance decision-making, resource allocation, and operational efficiency. Emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cloud computing are highlighted for their transformative impact, enabling real-time data analysis, improved scalability, and enhanced agility. Our review reports that 43.44% of the studies focused on cloud-based solutions, while 24.59% adopted hybrid models, offering SMEs scalable and flexible IT infrastructures. The findings emphasize the necessity of strong governance frameworks to ensure compliance, adaptability, and long-term sustainability in a dynamic environment. This research contributes to a comprehensive roadmap for SMEs, enabling them to leverage EA and IM for sustained growth and competitive advantage in the digital era. Full article

IT (Information Technology) support plays a major role in CPSs (cyber-physical systems). More and more IT solutions and CIS (complex information system) modules are being developed to help engineering systems to a higher level of efficiency. The different specificities of different technological environments require a very different IT approach. Increasing the efficiency of different manufacturing processes requires an appropriate architecture. The Zachman framework guidelines were applied to design a suitable framework architecture for the welding process. A literature search was conducted to explore the conditions for component matching to a complex information system, in which advanced data management and data protection are important. In order to effectively manage the standards, a dedicated module needs to be created that can be integrated into the MES-ERP (Manufacturing Execution System-Enterprise Resource Planning) architecture. The result of the study is the creation of business UML (Unified Modeling Language) and BPMN (Business Process Model and Notation) diagrams and a roadmap to start a concrete application development. The paper concludes with an example to illustrate ideas for the way forward. Full article

Companies have tried to innovate in their training processes to increase their productivity indicators, reduce equipment maintenance costs, and improve the work environment. The use of Augmented Reality (AR) has been one of the implemented strategies to upgrade training processes, since it optimizes, through User Interface (UI) Design, experiences designed for users (UX) that are focused on education and training contexts. This research describes the definition and implementation of an IT architecture based on the ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010 standard using the Zachman and Kruchten frameworks. The methodological proposal presents an architecture seen from a business perspective, taking into account the strategic and technological components of the organization under a strategic alignment approach. The result is a six-layer architecture: The Government Strategy Layer (1) that accounts for the strategic component; the Business Layer (2) that presents the business management perspective; the Information Layer (4) that defines the metrics system: efficiency through task time, effectiveness through tasks completed, and satisfaction with overall satisfaction. In the Data Layer (4), the data collected with the metrics are structured in an industrial scenario with a cylinder turning process on a Winston Lathe. The experiment was carried out with two groups of 272 participants. In the Systems and Applications Layer (5), two applications were designed: a web client and a mobile application with augmented reality, and finally, the Networks and Infrastructure Layer (6), which delivers the two functional applications. The architecture validation was carried out using the mobile application. The analysis of the results showed a significance value of less than 0.001 in the three indicators: efficiency, effectiveness, and satisfaction in the Levene test and Student’s t-test. To corroborate the results, a test of equality of means with the Mann–Whitney U was carried out, showing that the three indicators presented significantly different values in the two experimental groups of this study. Thus, the group trained with the application obtained better results in the three indicators. The proposed architecture is adaptable to other training contexts. Information, data, and systems and application layers allowed for the exchange of training processes so that the augmented reality application is updated according to the new requirements. Full article

Measuring project management performance is complex and requires tools to capture the dynamic nature of the processes involved. Since the conception of system dynamics in the 1950s, the method has been used to solve complex projects. Project management possesses dynamic characteristics that involve planning, human resources, implementation, and control elements; thereby, using system dynamics to measure project management performance is a realistic approach. A research study was conducted using system dynamics to develop project management performance measures to capture the complexity of the process in local government agencies. The research approach considers measuring project engineering management performance as a holistic system influenced by leadership involvement, project management processes, and project engineering manager’s ability. The Zachman architectural framework was used to develop the project-management performance system’s ontology as the system dynamics model’s foundation. A case study was conducted for three cities with local government agencies to better understand the model components and factors that influence performance. Leadership involvement, project management processes, and project manager abilities were identified as critical factors that influence the project management performance level. To validate the results of the case study, the project management performance was further studied for the City of El Paso in terms of capability, capacity, and maturity level. The research study concluded that system dynamics is a feasible method and effective tool to measure management performance for engineering projects at local government agencies. Full article

Understanding and explaining small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) growth is important for sustainability from multiple perspectives. Research indicates that SMEs comprise more than 80% of most economies, and their cumulative impact on sustainability considerations is far from trivial. In addition, for sustainability concerns to be prioritized, an SME has to be successful over time. In most developing countries, SMEs play a major role in solving socio-economic challenges. SMEs are an active research topic within the information systems (IS) discipline, often within the enterprise architecture (EA) domain. EA fundamentally adopts a systems perspective to describe the essential elements of a socio-technical organization and their relationships to each other and to the environment in order to understand complexity and manage change. However, despite rapid adoption originally, EA research and practice often fails to deliver on expectations. In some circles, EA became synonymous with projects that are over-budget, over-time and costly without the expected return on investment. In this paper, we argue that EA remains indispensable for understanding and explaining enterprises and that we fundamentally need to revisit some of the applications of EA. We, therefore, executed a research study in two parts. In the first part, we applied IS theory perspectives and adopted the taxonomy and structural components of theory to argue that EA, as represented by the Zachman Framework for Enterprise Architecture (ZFEA), could be adopted as an explanatory IS theory. In the second part of the study, we subsequently analysed multiple case studies from this theoretical basis to investigate whether distinguishable focus patterns could be detected during SME growth. The final results provide evidence that EA, represented through an appropriate framework like the ZFEA, could serve as an explanatory theory for SMEs during start-up, growth and transformation. We identified focus patterns and from these results, it should be possible to understand and explain how SMEs grow. Positioning the ZFEA as explanatory IS theory provides insight into the role and purpose of the ZFEA (and by extension EA), and could assist researchers and practitioners with mediating the challenges experienced by SMEs, and, by extension, enhance sustainable development. Full article

With the wide variety of information systems and applications for motor transport and transport logistics control we have today, one may think we are already living in the digital era of general welfare, and digital tools would easily ensure sustainable development and prosperity of businesses. However, the experience of deployment and introduction of such solutions shows that their value for transport business is significantly lower than expected. Moreover, in some projects, business performance of transport companies had no correlation with introduction of information systems. In the best-case scenario, they provided for a slight decrease in document flow transaction costs. The change of the strategic status of a company in the transportation service market is a fairly complicated task, which, as analysis of literary sources shows, is achievable for few enterprises, primarily small and medium-sized businesses. Such situations show that information solutions were introduced without analyzing or assessing the business models of certain companies which could be used a basis for digital landscape of business as a whole. In recent years, the basic concept of forming a single information space of an enterprise has been the enterprise architecture. It provided for coordination between all the business processes in order to achieve a company’s strategic goals. The fundamentals of the concept were developed by J. Zachman in his famous Zachman Framework, and it was later developed with numerous models of enterprise architecture (e.g., TOGAF (Department of Defense Architecture Framework), GERAM (Generalised Enterprise Reference Architecture and Methodology), DoDAF (Department of Defense Architecture Framework)). However, currently some researchers note that sustainable corporate development should stem not only from a “correct assembly” of all its business elements, which was the purpose of enterprise architecture, but also from the interaction of these elements when reaching the emergence effect. In this context, one should pay attention to comprehensive activity analysis of a transport and logistics business using ontological and architecture approaches. Full article

Enterprises choose Enterprise Architecture (EA) solution, in order to overcome dynamic business challenges and in order to coordinate various enterprise elements. In this article, a solution is suggested for the Enterprise Architecture based on a conceptual model of Enterprise Ontology (EO). Enterprise Ontology provides a common structure for data collection. First, conceptual model of Enterprise Ontology based on the Zachman Framework is presented. Then, the Enterprise Architecture development process based on Enterprise Ontology is proposed. Using this solution, Staffs, stakeholders, users, architects, and systems achieved a common understanding of enterprise concepts and relationships and therefore, architecture data are collected in a correct way. The primary focus is collecting accurate architecture data instead of developing architecture artifacts; also meet the decision maker's needs by fit for purpose modeling. Finally, we demonstrate our solution in a case study and show the appropriate results and conclusions. Full article