Reconfigurable, component-based systems and the role of enterprise engineering concepts

General requirements of next generation enterprise systems are considered and classified. This highlights the potential importance of emerging component-based approaches that facilitate the detailed design of IT systems and their rapid implementation and ongoing development. It also highlights the need for complementary systems engineering approaches that address enterprise engineering on a broad scale, taking into account business and human aspects of large scale projects as well as technical aspects. This characterises the role that current generation enterprise engineering concepts can play in support of the conceptual design of future enterprise engineering systems and in the specification of sets of enterprise components from which large scale, change-capable enterprise systems can be constructed. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.