Home // International Journal On Advances in Systems and Measurements, volume 5, numbers 3 and 4, 2012 // View article
Authors:
Peter De Bruyn
Herwig Mannaert
Keywords: Normalized Systems; Systems Engineering; Enterprise Engineering; Modularity; Stability; Entropy
Abstract:
Current organizations need to be able to cope with challenges such as increasing change and increasing complexity in many or all of their aspects. Modularity has frequently been suggested as a powerful means for reducing that complexity and enabling flexibility. However, the proper use of modularity to actually achieve those benefits cannot be considered trivial or straightforward. Normalized Systems (NS) theory has proven to introduce this evolvable and diagnosable modularity in software systems. This paper discusses the generalization of NS concepts to the analysis and design of modules in systems and enterprise engineering as evolvability and diagnosability are deemed to be appealing for most modular structures. In order to do so, this paper highlights the importance of distinguishing blackbox and whitebox views on systems and the fact that a true blackbox requires fully and exhaustively defined interfaces. We further discuss the functional/constructional transformation and elaborate on how NS theory uses the concepts of modularity, stability and entropy to optimize certain properties of that transformation. We argue how some aspects of organizational systems can be analyzed based on the same reasoning, suggesting some viable approaches for Enterprise Engineering. By means of a tentative reflection, we provide a discussion regarding how the concepts of stability and entropy might be interpreted as different manifestations of coupling within modular structures.
Pages: 216 to 232
Copyright: Copyright (c) to authors, 2012. Used with permission.
Publication date: December 31, 2012
Published in: journal
ISSN: 1942-261x