Abstract

IDEON™: An Extensible Ontology for Designing, Integrating,
and Managing Collaborative Distributed Enterprises

Azad M. Madni, Ph.D., Weiwen Lin, Ph.D., and Carla Conaway Madni
Intelligent Systems Technology, Inc.

Jeff Plaut and David Zarnow
Raytheon Company

Abstract

An organization's ability to achieve and sustain competitive advantage in the face of continual change depends, to a large extent, on the adaptability, interoperability, and maintainability of its enterprise management approach and supporting software implementation. In this regard, the major challenges facing organizations are: (a) achieving seamless integration of enterprise design, management and control processes and supporting applications; (b) ensuring interoperability between new and legacy business applications; and (c) adapting business strategies and ongoing operations to changes in the external and internal environments. The latter requires integrated planning and execution of enterprise processes. This paper presents IDEON™, a unified, extensible enterprise ontology that has been designed in response to these needs. Two specific applications of IDEON™ are presented along with the specific extensions for each application.

From:

Madni, A.M., Lin, W., and Madni, C.C., Systems Engineering: The Journal of the International Council on Systems Engineering, Vol. 4, No. 1, 2001.