Elektronik und Informatik
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The digital transformation occurring in enterprises results in an in- creasingly dynamic and complex IT landscape that in turn impacts enterprise architecture (EA) and its artefacts. New approaches for dealing with more com- plex and dynamic models and conveying EA structural and relational insights are needed. As EA tools attempt to address these challenges, virtual reality (VR) can potentially enhance EA tool capabilities and user insight but further investigation is needed in how this can be achieved. This paper contributes a VR solution concept for visualizing, navigating, and interacting with EA tool dynamically-generated diagrams and models using the EA tool Atlas. An im- plementation shows its feasibility and a case study using EA scenarios is used to demonstrate its potential.
VR-EA: Virtual Reality Visualization of Enterprise Architecture Models with ArchiMate and BPMN
(2019)
The digital transformation occurring throughout enterprises results in an increasingly dynamic and complex IT landscape. As the structures with which enterprise architecture (EA) deals become more digital, larger, complex, and dynamic, new approaches for modeling, documenting, and conveying EA structural and relational aspects are needed. The potential for virtual reality (VR) to address upcoming EA modeling challenges has as yet been insufficient- ly explored. This paper contributes a VR hypermodel solution concept for visu- alizing, navigating, interacting with ArchiMate and Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) models in VR. An implementation demonstrates its feasibil- ity and a case study is used to show its potential.
A complex and dynamic IT landscape with evermore digital elements, relations, and content presents a challenge for Enterprise Architecture (EA). Disparate digital repositories, including Knowledge Management Systems (KMS), Enterprise Content Management Systems (ECMS), and Enterprise Architecture Tools (EAT), often remain disjointed. And even if integrated, insights remain hindered by current visualization limitations, making it increasingly difficult to analyze, manage, and gain insights into the digital enterprise reality. This paper contributes our nexus-based Virtual Reality (VR) solution concept VR-EA+TCK that enhances and amalgamates EAT with KMS and ECMS capabilities. By enabling visualization, navigation, and interaction in VR with dynamically-generated EA diagrams, knowledge/value chains, and KMS/ECMS digital entities, it sets the groundwork for stakeholder-accessible grassroots enterprise modeling/analysis and future collaboration in a metaverse. An implementation shows its feasibility, while a case study demonstrates its potential using enterprise analysis scenarios: ECMS/KMS coverage in the EA, business processes, knowledge chains, Wardley Maps, and risk analysis.
Today’s Industry 4.0 Smart Factories involve complicated and highly automated processes. Nevertheless, certain crucial activities such as machine maintenance remain that require human involvement. For such activities, many factors have to be taken into account, like worker safety or worker qualification. This adds to the complexity of selection and assignment of optimal human resources to the processes and overall coordination. Contemporary Business Process Management (BPM) Systems only provide limited facilities regarding activity resource assignment. To overcome these, this contribution pro- poses a BPM-integrated approach that applies fuzzy sets and rule processing for activity assignment. Our findings suggest that our approach has the potential for improved work distribution and cost savings for Industry 4.0 production processes. Furthermore, the scalability of the approach provides efficient performance even with a large number of concurrent activity assignment requests and can be applied to complex production scenarios with minimal effort.
As the size of software program code bases in software development projects increases, insight into and comprehension of their underlying dependency structures presents a challenge for programmers. The increasing availability of virtual reality (VR) systems brings VR-based visualization of program code structures into practical reach for software developers and could support program comprehension and insight. However, the complete visual immersion with VR presents a cognitive burden and potential distractions. Applying gamification to such a VR visualization capability has hitherto been insufficiently investigated as to its potential motivation and program comprehension factors. This paper describes and evaluates a VR digital gamification approach for program code called VR Gamified Immersion in Software structures (VR-GaImS), which applies digital gamification to a multi-metaphor VR visualization of software program structures. The results of a preliminary empirical investigation utilizing our prototype indicate its potential to increase enjoyment and motivation, focus attention, and encourage the exploration of software structures.
Production processes in Industry 4.0 settings are usually highly automated. However, many complicated tasks, such as machine maintenance, must be executed by human workers. In current smart factories, such tasks can be supported by Augmented Reality (AR) devices. These AR tasks rely on high numbers of contextual factors like live data from machines or work safety conditions and are mostly not well integrated into the global production process. This can lead to various problems like suboptimal task assignment, over-exposure of workers to hazards like noise or heat, or delays in the production process. Current Business Process Management (BPM) Systems (BPMS) are not capable of readily taking such factors into account. There- fore, this contribution proposes a novel approach for context- integrated modeling and execution of processes with AR tasks. Our practical evaluations show that our AR Process Framework can be easily integrated with prevalent BPMS. Furthermore, we have created a comprehensive simulation scenario and our findings suggest that the application of this system can lead to various benefits, like better quality of AR task execution and cost savings regarding the overall Industry 4.0 processes.
Enterprise Architecture (EA) Frameworks (EAFs) have attempted to support comprehensive and cohesive modeling and documentation of the enterprise. However, these EAFs were not conceived for today’s rapidly digitalized enterprises and the associated IT complexity. A digitally-centric EAF is needed, freed from the past restrictive EAF paradigms and embracing the new potential in a data-centric world. This paper proposes an alternative EAF that is digital, holistic, and digitally sustainable - the Digital Diamond Framework. D2F is designed for responsive and agile enterprises, for aligning business plans and initiatives with the actual enterprise state, and addressing the needs of EA for digitized structure, order, modeling, and documentation. The feasibility of D2F is demonstrated with a prototype implementation of an EA tool that applies its principles, showing how the framework can be practically realized, while a case study based on ArchiSurance example and an initial performance and scalability characterization provide additional insights as to its viability.