Information Integration 1 Enterprise Integration in a Manufacturing Environment

Enterprise integration in a manufacturing environment can give way to new possibilities that allow a company to prosper and stay current with what customers want. EA is a structured framework with each company moving through the 4 stages, which are business silos, technology standardization, core-business optimization, and business modularity. ERP, IERP, and SCM software has allowed manufacturing companies to successfully incorporated enterprise integration into the business processes. ERP when implemented in a manufacturing environment had limitation and IERP made up for and solved the limitations. Some of the limitations that ERP has are difficult configuration and no room for adaptability. Manufacturing has benefited from enterprise integration and the software that is used to provide this integration. Information Integration 3 Enterprise Integration in a Manufacturing Environment Technology has created the ability to overcome drastic hurdles in all aspects of business and manufacturing. The advancements in technology has paved the way for new and improved ways of handling whole manufacturing processes and allowed companies to improve, perfect, and integrate their manufacturing process to improve production and customer satisfaction. Enterprise architecture and integration has opened up the door to make these improvements possible, by integrating and controlling the whole supply chain process and offered businesses the tools to perfect their business processes. Kappelman & Zachman (2013) state, “We are blessed with and evolving abundance of wondrous new IT products for supporting just about and activity, function, process, or service, as well as for storing, virtualizing, switching, serving, powering, monitoring, trouble shooting and managing IT itself” (P. 87). This paper will introduce and explain the definition and purpose of enterprise architecture, the stages of enterprise architecture, the purpose and benefits of enterprise integration, the different categories of integration, and briefly discuss the tools used to manage integrated enterprises. Enterprise integration in a manufacturing environment has allowed businesses to continue to evolve and improve on the production processes in order to stay competitive and excel in the ever growing business market. Enterprise Architecture Enterprise architecture or EA is a broad term that is difficult to explain and is based on the concept of a shared infrastructure and language that allows for successful management of a corporation. It helps if you look at it, not as a whole, but as individual pieces. An enterprise is a company that provides a product or services and has a mission or goal that guides the company’s overall business decisions. An enterprise can be large or small and is not categorized by its size, Information Integration 4 but by its overall ambitions and goals. Architecture is the structure, which is efficient, adaptable, and allows a company to maintain its overall goals and keep up with the changing market. Enterprise architecture is not a permanent structure, it can be can shaped and molded to fit the needs of the business at any given time throughout the company’s lifetime. Business needs and trends change rapidly and every successful company must keep up with this change to have continual success EA involves more than just the business processes and workflows, but it encompasses the people, services, and goods and how all these pieces fit together. How all of these pieces fit together determines how a company accomplishes its overall business goals and how theses goals support the overall business structure. EA also defines how a company can handle and adapt to change. EA is defined by Bijata and Piotrkowki as “... a formal description of the structure and functions of the components of an enterprise (including people, processes, information and technologies) the interrelations between these components and principles and the guidelines governing their creation and development over time” (p. 181). EA is an ever evolving concept and a company starts out at the bottom and progress through several stages, with some never reaching the top. Stages of Enterprise Architecture Enterprise architecture is modeled in a tier based format with different layers that represent where a company stands in overall cohesion and integration. There are four levels of enterprises architecture and a company is ranked and critiqued against each layer to see were they fall in terms of goals and functions. The four stages of enterprises architecture are business silos, technology standardization, core-business optimization, and business modularity. In each stage the company has certain characteristics, such as modularity, cohesion, integration, and automation, which can determine how dedicated and advanced a company’s enterprise system is Information Integration 5 and the company’s maturity level. On average each stage takes around five years to complete depending on the overall dedication of the company and the amount of mistakes the company makes along the way. Gruman writes, “Each stage takes about five years to get through, says Ross, though that period could shorten as more companies go through the process and learn what missteps to avoid” (2006, Para. 7). A vast majority of businesses never make it to the final stages of enterprise architecture, but remain in the first two stages forever.