Enterprise Architecture 4.0 – A Vision, an Approach and Software Tool Support

Abstract

Industry 4.0 has begun to shape the way organizations operate by emphasizing the need for a duality between physical machines and sensors, and the (big) data they generate, exchange and use. Manufacturing is one of several industries which is expected to be impacted by this technological revolution. Increasing the information flows and integration of systems within organizations, and along the supply chain is considered one of the main challenges that needs to be addressed by these organizations. One approach for addressing this challenge is to investigate how this abundance of (big) operational data can be used in combination with IT-driven design approaches, such as Enterprise Architecture. Therefore, in this paper we propose our vision for Enterprise Architecture 4.0, i.e. an extended Enterprise Architecture approach for the context of Industry 4.0, and we give an account of our (work-in-progress) efforts to design a model management and analytics software platform supporting this vision. The usage of the software tool is exemplified with the help of a case study with an organization that develops IT and automation systems for the husbandry sector.