Methodology for enterprise interoperability assessment

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia Electrotécnica e de ComputadoresWith the evolution of modern enterprises and the increasing market competitiveness, the creation of ecosystems with large amounts of data and knowledge generally needing to be exchanged electronically, is arising. However, this enterprise inter and intra-connectivity is suffering from interoperability issues. Not visible when it is effective, the lack of interoperability poses a series of challenging problems to the industrial community, which can reduce the envisaged efficiency and increase costs. Those problems are mostly caused by misinterpretations of data at the systems level, but problems at the organizational and human levels may pose equivalent difficulties. Existing research and technology provides several frameworks to assist the development of collaborative environments and enterprise networks with well-defined methods to facilitate interoperability. Nonetheless, the interoperability process is not guaranteed and is not easily sustainable, changing upon frequent market and requirement variations. For these reasons, there is a need for a testing methodology to assess the capability of enterprises to cooperate at a certain point in time. This dissertation proposes a methodology to assess that capability, with a corresponding framework to evaluate the interoperability process, applying eliminatory tests to assess the structure of the organizations, the conceptual models and their implementation. This work contributes to increase the chances enterprises have of interoperating effectively, and enables the adoption of extraordinary measures to improve their current interoperability situation