Studies On Support Technologies For Enterprise Integration Based On Knowledge Management

As enterprise system integration developing from bottom-level physical system integration and application integration towards high-level knowledge integration, Enterprise Modeling and Integration (EMI) methodology and techniques are being syncretized with Knowledge Management (KM) during recent years. A new direction of inter-disciplinary research, Enterprise Integration based on Knowledge Management has been formed.So far the research about this direction is at its incipient stage. A lot of problems are desiderated to solve and mainly manifested in following aspects. (1) For methodological syncretization of EMI and KM, existing Reference Architectures (RAs) do not clearly reflect the level characteristics of enterprise knowledge and its organization and application modes. (2) For enterprise knowledge capture and application, existing enterprise modeling methods face the dilemma of how to facilitate friendly collaboration and communication between system analysts/developers and enterprise staffs, and how to help system analysts/developers utilize model knowledge to carry out effective quantitative analysis. (3) For knowledge re-use, it lacks powerful knowledge repository systems for enterprise model re-use and corresponding mechanisms for knowledge extraction, classification and index. Well-defined reference models, which can be widely accepted by industries, are still scarce to see. (4) For Knowledge Based System (KBS) development for enterprise integration, the problems of Knowledge Representation (KR) are still not well solved. It lacks formal modeling methods that can be used to describe enterprise in-depth knowledge.In present dissertation, studies from three aspects, RA for EMI based on KM, relevant methods, and software tool development, were carried out. The aim is to satisfy the real needs for syncretizing KM into EMI and try to provide solutions corresponding to current research shortcomings, and the focus lies in knowledge management and decision support during the lifecycle of implementing Business Process Reengineering (BPR) and Enterprise Engineering (EE). The main contributions can be summarized as follows. (1) A new RA for EMI based on KM was established by introducing the idea of CommonKADS expertise model into Stair-Like CIM System Architecture. Based on this RA, relevant software support environment design, tool development and partial engineering applications were carried out. (2) IDEF3 method, which is widely used for Process modeling was extended by introducing derivative diagrams, so that a "process-driven" way of collecting enterprise information was formed. Based on extended IDEF3, a business process simulation modeling method was also derived for model application. (3) A set of realizable knowledge abstraction, classification and retrieval mechanisms was established for effectively managing enterprise model repository by synthetically applying fuzzy theory, artificial neural networks and system engineering methods. (4) A formal enterprise diagnostic model based on fuzzy set-covering was proposed and an instance of this generalized model was generated for real enterprise diagnostic expert system development. (5) A set of reasonable and pragmatic group decision support methods was designed for satisfying the requirements of decision-making in EE implementation.The contributions of this research will bring benefits for improving the technical level in EMI and make the syncretization of KM and EMI more operable.