A Formal Approach to Enterprise Modeling

Model driven development for software systems provides us with many advantages in quality, productivity, or reusability. For accurate modeling, we have to create many kinds of models from various viewpoints. When applying model driven development to enterprise information systems, those viewpoints include not only software oriented matters but also business oriented matters. Such complexity in modeling often causes inconsistency between models. This paper presents a formal and systematic way to create consistent and integrated enterprise models that reflect those various viewpoints. Set theory, Colored Petri Nets (CPNs), and Unified Modeling Language (UML) are used for this formalism. In addition, the paper proposes a set theoretic approach to evaluating consistency between enterprise models. The consistency is discussed in traditional hierarchical organization and modern matrix organization.