Generalised Enterprise Reference Architecture and Methodology
[1] This framework was developed in the 1990s by a joint task force of both the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC) and the International Federation of Information Processing (IFIP) on enterprise architectures for enterprise integration.
GERAM provides a generic description of all the elements recommended in enterprise engineering and integration.
Generalised Enterprise Reference Architecture and Methodology (GERAM) is an enterprise-reference architecture that models the whole life history of an enterprise integration project from its initial concept in the eyes of the entrepreneurs who initially developed it, through its definition, functional design or specification, detailed design, physical implementation or construction, and finally operation to obsolescence.
The architecture aims to be a relatively simple framework upon which all the functions and activities involved in the aforementioned phases of the life of the enterprise-integration project can be mapped.
[3] The task force established the requirements to be satisfied by candidate enterprise-reference architectures and their associated methodologies to fulfill the needs of industry for such aids to enterprise integration.
The result has been called GERAM, for "Generalized Enterprise-Reference Architecture and Methodology", by the Task Force.
Adopting a recursive view of integration altogether five entity types with their associated life-cycles can be identified.
However, it is always the operational phase of the entity-life cycle in which the lower entity is defined, created, developed and built.
Figure 5 shows the reference architecture for those enterprise entity life cycle phases which require generic constructs.
The methodologies will guide the user in the engineering task of enterprise modelling and integration.
Different methodologies may exist which will guide the user through the different tasks required in the integration process.
[1] Enterprise-engineering methodologies should orient themselves on the life-cycle concept identified in GERA and should support the different life cycle phases shown in Figure 2.
This allows not only a very good representation of the methodology for its understanding, but provides for identification of information to be used and produced, resources needed and relevant responsibilities to be assigned for the integration process.
Process representation of methodologies should employ the relevant modelling language discussed below.
[1] Modelling the enterprise operation means to describe its processes and the necessary information, resources and organisational aspects.
Therefore, modelling languages have to provide constructs capable of capturing the semantics of enterprise operations.
Business processes will be represented using the generic modelling-language constructs defined above for the relevant engineering methodology.
[1] Ontological theories (OT) formalise the most generic aspects of enterprise related concepts in terms of essential properties and axioms.
[1] This article incorporates public domain material from the National Institute of Standards and Technology
