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We introduce the concept of structural analysis of a business enterprise. The practice of enterprise structural analysis amounts to the construction of an enterprise model using business entities defined in an enterprise ontology or enterprise architecture and creating specific views of the enterprise based on relationships among the entities. As we demonstrate through a simple yet illustrative example of a hypothetical coffee shop business, these views can provide many insights and points of analysis. Structural analysis provides an interactive, analytical environment for a user to view an enterprise from multiple perspectives, an approach not unlike On-Line Analytical Processing (OLAP) but for analyzing the qualitative or structural aspects of the enterprise.

daviding says: This article describes business entities, and works concretely through an example with activities, resources and organization in a coffee shop.

Print ISBN: 9780470382417 Online ISBN: 9780470569627 DOI: 10.1002/9780470569627 Industrial Engineering What you need to know to engineer the global service economy. As customers and service providers create new value through globally interconnected service enterprises, service engineers are finding new opportunities to innovate, design, and manage the service operations and processes of the new service-based economy. Introduction to Service Engineering provides the tools and information a service engineer needs to fulfill this critical new role. The book introduces engineers as well as students to the fundamentals of the theory and practice of service engineering, covering the characteristics of service enterprises, service design and operations, customer service and service quality, web-based services, and innovations in service systems.

daviding says: I was thinking about (output) coproduction and (value) cocreation, and came across these proceedings, which includes a short article by Rafael Ramirez and Ulf Mannervick on "Designing value-creating systems".

Essay Archive Edited by Lucy Kimbell and Victor P. Seidel, collected in this innovative and highly illustrated volume are findings from the designing for services project. Particular focus is on the practices of an emerging discipline of service design grounded in the arts and humanities. Three case studies in which service design companies worked with science and technology-based enterprises are discussed, from a range of academic perspectives.

In an age in which consumers, businesses and governments are increasingly focused on socially responsible actions, much of our planet's natural and financial resources are being squandered simply by conducting business as usual: Much of the world's food supply never makes it to consumers. A considerable portion of the water used each year is frivoled away by poor agricultural water management. And road congestion, poor routing and other traffic issues around the globe contribute to substantial crude oil waste. Much - if not most - of this inefficiency can be attributed to the fact that we have optimized the way the world works within silos, with little regard for how the processes and systems that drive our planet interrelate. We've tuned these processes to generate specific outcomes for individual communities, nations, enterprises and value chains. To root out inefficiencies and reclaim a substantial portion of that which is lost, businesses, industries, governments and cities will need to think in terms of systems, or more accurately, a system of systems. We'll also need to collaborate at unprecedented levels. Certainly, no single organization owns the world's food system, and no single entity can fix the world's healthcare system. Success will depend upon understanding the full set of cause-and-effect relationships that link systems and using this knowledge to create greater synergy. The chief obstacle that remains is mindset - moving from short-sighted to long-term perspectives, from siloed to system-of-systems decision making. Download the IBM Institute for Business Value executive report, "The world's trillion-dollar challenge: Using a system-of-systems approach to build a smarter planet," to discover a framework for helping solve real-world problems using a system-of-systems approach.

daviding says: The use of the phrase "systems of systems" in a report from IBM Global Business Services (i.e. the management consulting arm) is interesting.