Enterprises are rather complex systems which have to be managed for their internal affairs, but more importantly for the many relations to the different environments in which they are operating. Today, these environments are changing much more rapidly and the need for relevant information becomes of paramount importance in the decision making processes at all levels of enterprise management, Fluctuations in market demands, technology evolution and changing regulations require very flexible enterprise operations, capable of reacting to those changes. These reactions must be based on relevant and up-to-date information which must be supported by new decision support technology. The challenges in decision support concern the identification of relevant information, easy access and intelligent use of this information. Building and maintaining the enterprise knowledge base and enabling its efficient use for decision support are major tasks of enterprise engineering. Enterprise integration and its subsequent operation in the global environment of customers, suppliers and regulatory bodies will heavily depend on the availability and the continuous extension of this knowledge base. Enterprise modelling will play an important role in creating the knowledge base and in using it for enterprise integration and operational decision support. The paper discusses enterprise engineering as an enterprise life-cycle oriented discipline for identification, design, and implementation of enterprises and their continuous evolution. Current problems in the field are identified and initiatives are presented. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
