Aligning Business Processes and IT of Collaborating

183 Pages·2017·6.52 MB·English

by  Ayalew Kassahun

Aligning Business Processes and IT
of Multiple Collaborating Organisations
Ayalew Kassahun
Thesis committee

Promotors
Prof. A.J.M. Beulens
Emeritus Professor of Information Technology
Wageningen University & Research

Prof.Dr. B. Tekinerdogan
Professor of Information Technology
Wageningen University & Research

Other members
Prof.Dr M. Chaudron, Chalmers & Gothenburg University, Sweden
Prof.Dr P. Avgeriou, University of Groningen, The Netherlands
Prof.Dr M. Aksit, University of Twente, The Netherlands
Prof.Dr A.K. Bregt, Wageningen University & Research,

This research was conducted under the auspices of the Wageningen School of Social Sciences
(WASS)
Aligning Business Processes and IT
of Multiple Collaborating Organisations
Ayalew Kassahun

Thesis
submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of doctor
at Wageningen University
by the authority of the Rector Magnificus,
Prof. Dr A.P.J. Mol,
in the presence of the
Thesis Committee appointed by the Academic Board
to be defended in public
on Tuesday 20th of June 2017
at 1:30 p.m. in the Aula.
A. Kassahun
Aligning Business Processes and IT of Multiple Collaborating Organisations
182 pages.

PhD thesis, Wageningen University, Wageningen, NL (2017)
With references, and summary in English

ISBN: 978-94-6343-210-8
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18174/414988
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Figures .................................................................................................... viii
List of Tables ......................................................................................................... x
Chapter 1. Introduction ...................................................................................... 1
1.1 Background ................................................................................................................ 2
1.2 Objectives ................................................................................................................... 6
1.3 Approach .................................................................................................................... 7
1.4 Contributions .............................................................................................................. 8
1.5 Thesis Outline ............................................................................................................. 9
Chapter 2. The Research Methodology .......................................................... 11
2.1 Introduction .............................................................................................................. 12
2.2 Design Science Methodology ................................................................................... 12
2.3 The Relevance Cycle ................................................................................................ 12
2.3.1 Case Study 1: Requirements from Meat Sypply Chains ....................................... 13
2.3.2 Case Study 2: Requirements from Environmeantal Modelling ............................ 14
2.4 The Design Cycle ..................................................................................................... 14
2.4.1 Existing Design Artefacts ..................................................................................... 15
2.4.2 New Design Artefacts ........................................................................................... 16
2.5 The Rigor Cycle ........................................................................................................ 18
2.6 Summary ................................................................................................................... 18
Chapter 3. BITA*: Business-IT Alignment Framework of Multiple
Collaborating Organisations ........................................................ 19
3.1 Introduction .............................................................................................................. 20
3.2 Building Blocks ........................................................................................................ 22
3.2.1 Business Process Models ..................................................................................... 22
3.2.2 Workflow Patterns ................................................................................................ 23
3.2.3 IT models .............................................................................................................. 23
3.3 A Case Study and Problem Description ................................................................... 23
3.3.1 Case Study: Transparency System for Meat Supply Chains ................................ 24
3.3.2 Problem Description ............................................................................................ 26
3.4 BITA* Framework .................................................................................................... 28
3.4.1 Metamodel ............................................................................................................ 28
3.4.2 Systematic Approach ............................................................................................ 29
3.4.3 Alignment Viewpoints ........................................................................................... 33
3.4.4 Relational Model .................................................................................................. 39
3.5 Applying BITA* to the Case Study ........................................................................... 40
3.5.1 More on the Generic Reference Architecture....................................................... 40
3.5.2 Modelling Alignments .......................................................................................... 41
3.5.3 Using the Alignment Matrices .............................................................................. 49
3.6 Discussion ................................................................................................................ 50
3.7 Related Work ............................................................................................................ 52
3.8 Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 52
Chapter 4. Deriving a Reference Architecture for Transparency Systems
in Meat Supply Chains ................................................................. 55
4.1 Introduction .............................................................................................................. 56
4.2 Research approach ................................................................................................... 58
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4.3 The current state ....................................................................................................... 59
4.3.1 An illustrative example ......................................................................................... 59
4.3.2 fTRACE ................................................................................................................. 60
4.3.3 The architecture of the transparency system ........................................................ 62
4.4 Architectural requirements ...................................................................................... 65
4.4.1 Regulatory requirements ...................................................................................... 65
4.4.2 Business requirements .......................................................................................... 65
4.4.3 Consumer requirements ....................................................................................... 66
4.4.4 Technological requirements ................................................................................. 66
4.5 Results and Discussions ........................................................................................... 70
4.5.1 Transparency system based on EPCIS ................................................................. 70
4.5.2 Storing and sharing transparency data ................................................................ 71
4.5.3 Transparency system powered by cloud-based services ...................................... 72
4.5.4 Chain-wide transparency system usage scenarios ............................................... 73
4.6 Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 75
Chapter 5. Realizing Chain-Wide Transparency in Meat Supply Chains
using a Reference Architecture ................................................... 77
5.1 Introduction .............................................................................................................. 78
5.2 Background .............................................................................................................. 79
5.2.1 Software Architecture ........................................................................................... 79
5.2.2 A reference architecture for chain-wide transparency systems ........................... 80
5.3 Related work and problem statement ....................................................................... 85
5.3.1 An architecture following a centralized approach ............................................... 85
5.3.2 An architecture following the one-step-back/one-step-forward principle ........... 85
5.3.3 An architecture following the EPCIS specification .............................................. 86
5.3.4 Problem statement ................................................................................................ 87
5.4 Deriving a concrete architecture ............................................................................. 87
5.4.1 Approach for deriving a concrete architecture .................................................... 87
5.4.2 Deriving a concrete architecture for CMTS ........................................................ 89
5.5 Realization of the transparency system .................................................................... 90
5.5.1 The structure of transparency data ...................................................................... 91
5.5.2 Data capture ......................................................................................................... 92
5.5.3 Data query ............................................................................................................ 95
5.5.4 Discovery ............................................................................................................ 101
5.6 Conclusion .............................................................................................................. 102
Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................. 103
Chapter 6. Applying BITA* to Derive a Reference Architecture
for Environmental Modelling Collaboration Systems ............ 105
6.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................ 106
6.2 A Case Study and Problem Description ................................................................. 108
6.2.1 Case Study: Multi-organisational Collaboration in Environmental
Modelling ...................................................................................................................... 108
6.2.2 Problem Statement ............................................................................................. 110
6.3 Approach ................................................................................................................ 112
6.3.1 The BITA* Framework ....................................................................................... 112
6.3.2 A Bootstrap Referecne Architecture ................................................................... 114

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6.4 Applying BITA* to the Case Study ......................................................................... 116
6.4.1 BP2BP View ....................................................................................................... 116
6.4.2 BP2IT View ........................................................................................................ 120
6.4.3 IT2IT View .......................................................................................................... 123
6.4.4 Applying the alignment models .......................................................................... 126
6.5 Discussion .............................................................................................................. 133
6.6 Conclusion .............................................................................................................. 133
Chapter 7. General Discussion ...................................................................... 135
7.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................ 136
7.2 Addressing Research Questions ............................................................................. 138
7.2.1 Exploring the Alignment Problem ...................................................................... 138
7.2.2 Deriving the BITA* Framework ......................................................................... 139
7.2.3 Applying the Alignment Framework .................................................................. 141
7.3 Evaluations ............................................................................................................. 141
7.3.1 Validity of Case Study Results ............................................................................ 141
7.3.2 Evaluation of Design Artefacts .......................................................................... 143
7.4 Implications of this Thesis ...................................................................................... 144
7.4.1 Theoretical Implications .................................................................................... 144
7.4.2 Practical Implications ........................................................................................ 145
7.4.3 Future Research ................................................................................................. 146
References ....................................................................................................... 149
Summary ....................................................................................................... 163
Acknowledgements .......................................................................................... 166

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LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1-1: Deriving concrete architectures and the corresponding information systems
from a reference architecture. .............................................................................. 4
Figure 1-2: Three scenarios of applying a reference architecture. ........................................... 4
Figure 1-3: Deriving new reference architecture from existing reference and concrete
architectures. ............................................................................................................. 5
Figure 1-4: The outline of the thesis and reading guide. ........................................................... 9
Figure 2-1: The research methodology of this thesis following Hevner et al (2004). ............. 13
Figure 3-1: A conceptual model of meat supply chains ........................................................... 24
Figure 3-2: A query business collaboration process according to the EPCIS reference
architecture .............................................................................................................. 26
Figure 3-3: Business-IT alignment problem in multi-organisational collaboration ............... 27
Figure 3-4: The BITA* metamodel .......................................................................................... 30
Figure 3-5: The BITA* alignment process ............................................................................... 31
Figure 3-6. BP2BP allocation model ....................................................................................... 34
Figure 3-7: The BP2BP alignment model ................................................................................ 35
Figure 3-8: BP2IT allocation model ........................................................................................ 36
Figure 3-9: BP2IT alignment model ........................................................................................ 36
Figure 3-10: IT2IT allocation model ....................................................................................... 38
Figure 3-11: IT2IT alignment model ....................................................................................... 38
Figure 3-12: Concrete architecture of transparency systems at a meat processor ................. 41
Figure 3-13: A CFP diagram for the query business collaboration process model ................ 43
Figure 3-14. The elements of a chain-wide meat transparency system ................................... 50
Figure 4-1. Data flow in a German meat supply chain (courtesy of the representative
of the slaughterhouse; translated from German). ................................................... 60
Figure 4-2. An example of an intermediate meat product ....................................................... 61
Figure 4-3. fTRACE mobile app (version of January 2013 being tested in a Spanish
supermarket) ............................................................................................................ 61
Figure 4-4. The transparency system of the meat supply chain of the pilot study. .................. 63
Figure 4-5. The components of an EPCIS-based transparency system and how information
flows among the components. (adapted from EPCglobal 2007) ............................. 67
Figure 4-6. Sharing transparency data. ................................................................................... 71
Figure 4-7. A chain-wide transparency system based on FIspace: the various apps provided
by 3pTSPs and their users ....................................................................................... 72
Figure 4-8. A chain-wide transparency system based on FIspace: how various types of food
operators provide access to transparency information ........................................... 73
Figure 5-1. Relation between reference architecture and concrete architectures .................. 80
Figure 5-2. Reference architecture for chain-wide transparency systems for the meat sector 81
Figure 5-3. An architecture following a centralized approach as an instance of the reference
architecture .............................................................................................................. 85
Figure 5-4. An architecture following the one-step-back/one-step-forward principle as an
instance of the reference architecture ..................................................................... 86
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Figure 5-5. An architecture following the EPCIS specification as an instance
of the reference architecture .................................................................................... 87
Figure 5-6. Activity diagram representing the process for deriving a concrete architecture
from the reference architecture ............................................................................... 88
Figure 5-7. An architecture of CMTS derived from the reference architecture ...................... 90
Figure 5-8. The main screen of CMTS ..................................................................................... 91
Figure 5-9. The data entry app user interface showing one of the manual data entry
forms ....................................................................................................................... 93
Figure 5-10. Capturing a birth event using the EPCIS capture interface of the shared
EPCIS repository. .................................................................................................... 95
Figure 5-11. The two modes of the track & trace app: product- or location-based track &
trace ......................................................................................................................... 96
Figure 5-12. An example of track & trace data for a meat product item. ............................... 97
Figure 5-13. Tracking products that were at a given location and time period and all
products that are made from them. .......................................................................... 98
Figure 5-14. Querying for transparency data using the EPCIS query interface. .................. 101
Figure 5-15. The discovery service showing how the addresses of EPCIS repositories
are discovered given an EPC................................................................................. 102
Figure 6-1: A conceptual model of collaboration in multidisciplinary environmental
modelling studies ................................................................................................... 109
Figure 6-2: A generic modelling research collaboration process ......................................... 110
Figure 6-3. An example of a simplified water-stress mitiagation process inspired by the
AquaStress pilot studies ......................................................................................... 111
Figure 6-4: Reference architecture for research collaboration systems ............................... 115
Figure 6-5: Feature diagram of the various data types used in environmental
modelling study ...................................................................................................... 115
Figure 6-6: The relationship between the contents of DBs and KBs ..................................... 116
Figure 6-7: A CFP diagram for the reference collaborative query process model ............... 118
Figure 6-8. The HarmoniQuA modelling collaboration process (Scholten et al. 2007) ....... 127
Figure 6-9. A feature diagram showing part of the HarmoniQuA guideline ontology .......... 128
Figure 6-10: A screenshot of MoST (Scholten et al. 2007) .................................................... 129
Figure 6-11: Reference architecture for I3S ......................................................................... 131
Figure 7-1: The resulting design artefacts of this thesis ........................................................ 137
Figure 7-2: The application of BITA in the two case studies of this thesis. ........................... 138

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