Enterprise engineering: Complexity measures for enterprise process designs

Enterprise engineering is concerned with the analysis, design, implementation, and operation of enterprises. This research develops an analysis tool for the design of enterprises.; This research develops a set of quantitative measures to evaluate the complexity of enterprise designs. Complexity measures will be very useful in the development of improved enterprises. This research is based upon the premise that complex enterprises are inherently less efficient and less effective than would otherwise be the case. In this research, complexity is defined as how easy the enterprise is to understand, implement, operate, maintain, and change. The complexity measures are developed with respect to a holistic five-view architecture of the enterprise. The five views are business rule, activity, process, organization, and resource. The complexity measures use information available in versions of IDEF0 models, IDEF3 models and organization charts. Complexity is measured from each of the composite measure of enterprise complexity is also developed. Using this information, alternate enterprise compared prior to implementation. Early in the design process, a decision can be made to select an enterprise design that has less complexity.