Scalable Enterprise Systems: Exploratory Research on Reconfigurable and Scalable Enterprise Planning Systems

这项探索性研究资助为开发正式方法提供资金，这些方法允许信息系统设计人员和系统管理人员设计和实施电子商务世界中的企业资源规划（ERP）和制造执行系统（MES）软件。 形式主义将采取企业系统的控制理论观点，并将建立在这样的原则上，即管理企业运营的业务规则只应软连接到支持ERP和MES的信息系统的设计。同时，该方法也为企业级可重构、可扩展的软件系统提供了必要的理论基础。 将开发的方法采取的业务流程和规则的形式的工作流系统，并将它们转换成有限自动机。形式化方法将根据有限自动机和离散事件系统的理论来开发，以综合控制律，如果将其施加于企业操作，则将保证符合指定的业务规则。 将开发的理论结果，如果包括在合成过程中，将提供企业软件系统的容错性和故障自恢复等重要属性。 分析方法将被开发来研究冲突的业务规则，冗余的业务规则和要求，以及多功能代理的分配。 在这项研究的结论，包括前端的原型系统，具有使用传统的过程建模工具，如DFD/结构化分析和UML将开发演示的形式主义。原型将在一个具有电子商务能力的现有企业上进行测试，如果成功，这项研究的结果可用于建立一个通用的软件环境，其中包括综合、分析和优化，同时提供实施的蓝图。 软件将允许动态信息系统设计，并为管理层提供控制律，以便对企业中正在进行的物理流和信息流的操作施加不断变化的业务规则集。在前端，将为IT工程师或企业经理提供更传统的建模工具，用于结构化分析、业务流程建模和需求规范。到有限自动机形式主义的转换将是自动的。该软件的核心将是一个计算引擎，它将综合控制律并分析它们的理想特性。可以构建额外的模块来翻译这些控制规则，并将其提供给ERP，MES和支持数据库。

This exploratory research grant provides funding for the development of formal methods that allow information system designers and system managers to design and implement software for Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) in e-commerce world. The formalism will take a control-theoretic view of enterprise system and will be built on the principle that the business rules, which govern the operation of the enterprise, should only be soft-wired to the design of the information system, which supports ERP and MES. Furthermore, the formalism will provide the necessary theoretical foundation for re-configurable and scalable software system for enterprise operation. Methods will be developed to take the business process and rules in the form of workflow system and translate them into finite automata. Formal methods will be developed, based on the theory of finite automata and discrete event systems, to synthesize control laws, which if imposed on the enterprise operation will guarantee conformance to the specified business rules. Theoretical results will be developed, which if included in the synthesis procedure will provide the enterprise software system with such important properties as fault tolerance and self-recovery from failures. Analytical methods will be developed to study conflicting business rules, redundancy in the business rules and requirements, and allocation of multi functional agents. At the conclusion of this research, a prototype system including the front end featuring the use of traditional process modeling tools such DFD/structured analysis and UML will be developed to demonstrate the formalism. The prototype will be beta sited on an existing enterprise with e-commerce capabilities.If successful, the results of this research can be used to build a generic software environment, which encompasses synthesis, analysis and optimization while providing a blue print for implementation. Software will allow for a dynamic information system design and will provide the management with the control laws for imposing changing set of business rules over the operation of the physical flows and information flows going on in the enterprise. At the front end, the IT engineer or enterprise manager will be provided with more traditional modeling tools for structured analysis and business process modeling and requirements specification. The translation to finite automata formalism will be automatic. At the core of this software there will be a computational engine, which will synthesize control laws and analyze them for desirable properties. Additional modules can be built to translate these control laws and feed them to ERP, MES and the supporting database.