As a result, feudalism, power, and separateness issues cross organizational lines. Hostility between organizational components threatens survival. Under these conditions it is difficult to address the issues of strategic planning, vision, and culture of the organization as a whole.

To help create a shared organizational identity, a general model of identity is presented here.

From quantum physics we know that the natural order of the world or connection or "non-locality". All objects are connected by space and time within a larger system.

Your identity is your "perception of connection" to the surrounding world.

Your identity is the major component of loyalty, commitment, family, ownership, stewardship, love, teamwork, and resistibility. A second component of each is choice. Persons and groups of persons are empowered individually or collectively by their identity and choices. Choices that expand connection/identity are integrative. Choices that weaken/deny/diminish connection, thus generating a sense or thought of separation/barriers, are disintegrative.

A person's perceptive is based either on a paradigm that their word is either separated into unique islands (bounded systems) of reality (duality), or that it is unitary, and integrated whole. Note that in the unitary paradigm, something can be distinct and/or unique, and still not separated from its environment.

Your identity is based on your perception of connection to the surrounding world.

The world contains both order and change. Your identity (connection) is derived from your awareness of change from a previous state of order.

The natural order of the world is seen in the pattern and flow of matter, energy, and information. Patterns give the perception of a stable and mechanical reality, whereas flow gives the perception of a changing and dynamic reality. Since all patterns eventually decompose and flow into new patterns (entropy). reality is naturally flowing and dynamic. However, people's senses and thoughts are often focused solely on the patterns, and they are therefore confused by the flow. They expect stability while experiencing only constant change.

Since change is constant, your identity is never static. Rather it is flowing and continuously changing with the world around you, and your perceived connection to it

The world and your identity in it are fluid and dynamic, not static and mechanical. The faster the rate of change and resultant rate of order-flow, the greater your change in connection and identity.

What is needed then is a tool which organizes the flow and pattern of information and aids individuals, groups, and organizations in asking and answering questions from the most unitary perspective possible. With these, answers, they gain awareness of the order of their world and the changes going on within it. They can then dynamically adapt to those changes.

One way to acquire such a tool is through applying selected modeling techniques, creating an enterprise that manages it information resource, along with its other resources, from a unitary view of continuously improving quality, using a dynamic enterprise model.

Note that this approach is not about data processing or computing, because processing and computing are the activity preformed by information technology. It is rather about information, and information systems whose purpose is to "inform", which a human requires for increasing their perception.

Our information technology has given us orders of magnitude increase in our ability to organize and process work, but has done very little us about the work, the enterprise, and the work environment.

Various methods are used to implement continuous improvement of both the human and business components of the organization.

Human change involves components of the organization culture and focus.

Business change involves components of technologies, structures, processes, and products.

Note that human change is also subsequently referred to as qualitative change, while business change is referred to as quantitative change.

An enterprise such as an organization can be thought of as a single man/machine system.

From this ergonomic perspective, rigorous methods of system analysis, design, and management can be implemented.

When dealing with such large and complicated systems as organization, the term Macro-Ergonomics would apply. Macro-Ergonomics deals with mankind's endeavors in relation to their environment.

Endeavor is defined here as "the search for who you are in relation to the continuum, and how you express what you find". The expression is the enterprise. Who you are in relation to the continuum is the knowledge. Your identity results from your past, is changed by your choices, and is a cause of future events.

In any of mankind's endeavors, they must have information. The management of that information is achieved through applying various forms of technology to create systems to inform them.

Mankind performs activities which results in processed information.

Specific instances/events within mankind's activities create specific data values.

Mankind's information systems connect them directly, through their senses, or indirectly, through some mechanism separate from their bodies, with their environment, including other persons.

The information technology that they utilize are products of their own bodies in a manual form, or products of their society in mechanical, electrical, or computer form.

Development of mankind's organization requires development of their information.

This development of organization requires that mankind change themselves and their culture.

Next their interface with their environment must be defined.

Then the appropriate technology can be applied to process and structure their information.

A broad spectrum of change methods can be applied to create an organization whose culture is focused on the customer and continuous improvement.

When the members of such an organization share the identity of the organization, the organization's customers are their customers, the business methods they're improving are their methods, and a sense of ownership and responsibility belongs to every member, regardless of role or position.

This diminishes the likelihood of apathy, anomie, and demoralization among the members.

The culture, focus, and improvement efforts could be categorized as shown.

Each component could be managed with a separate programmatic approach, all from an integrated perspective of creating a continuous quality improvement customer focused enterprise.

A variety of functional management, leadership, and transition styles could be enabled, while many dysfunctional styles could be diminished over time.

The functional styles could lead to appropriate expressions of leadership, empowerment, and appreciation of diversity, while building every member up by managing and strengthening their common traits.

A continuous quality improvement enterprise would maintain integrated efforts in these areas.

Worker morale and worker performance would both tend to improve, yielding a reduction in process and product variation, indicating an increase in quality.

The most important aspect of creating a continuous quality improvement enterprise is in implementing the human changes necessary to bring about the customer focus and the continuous improvement culture.

If this is not managed well, and in an integrated fashion, business change such as project management, reorganizations, systems integration, process improvement, rightsizing, or reengineering is going to be less effective at improving the enterprise.

Such attempts at mostly quantitative change meet tremendous human/culture barriers to implementation, thereby negating or diminishing results.

Likewise, mostly human or qualitative change has limited effect in improving the core products, processes, or structure of the organization. Many qualitative changes made without improving the business side of the organization can disintegrate over time, perhaps because of frustration or resigned apathy on the part of organization members with business being in the "same old rut".

Rigorous and disciplined action, an engineered approach, is required to bring about Quantitative/ business change and improvements in product, process, and structure.

In conjunction, similarly rigorous action is required to bring about qualitative/ human change in the way the suppliers and customers perceive each other and treat each other.

The question would then be, "what would such and engineered approach that integrates all of these efforts look like"? That question will be answered in subsequent pages.

People have a tendency to build a protective shell around themselves and their possessions.

This shell adds nothing to their function, tends to burden them with excess weight, and decreases their adaptability and responsiveness.

Soon they spend more of their resource on the shell that they do on their personal growth and creative expression, their endeavor.

The efforts to trim off the accumulated shell, enabling them to respond more energetically to their changing environment, is a continuous challenge in maintaining the quality of mankind's endeavors.

A typical organization "bureaucratizes" itself over time, primarily because of this protection/possession tendency. The majority of an organization's internal structure and rules are examples of such a shell.

Consider the previous perspectives, how can we go about creating a continuous quality improvement enterprise? To begin, a generalized model of human enterprise was created.

A structured analysis and design technique was used in creating this general enterprise model, a paradigm which provides a framework for process improvement, resource life cycle management, customer focus, and statistical process control.

The GEM is designed to be supplemented by each specific enterprise to create an initial form of DEM, representing the enterprise "AS-IS" profile.

This can be done in preparation for process improvement efforts such as Activity Modeling and Data Modeling (AM/DM), Functional Economic Analysis (FEA), and Activity Based Costing (ABC), in order to increase the effectiveness, efficiency, and speed of these efforts, and to ensure the ease of integrating of separate efforts.

Prior to Activity modeling, the question "who performs this activity and where are they?" must be asked. Without this preparatory information, many of the process improvement efforts may not bring the proper stakeholders and knowledge workers into the modeling efforts, resulting in incomplete or distorted models. This blocks future efforts at model integration. The DEM provides this preparatory information.

The results of AM/DM, FEA, and ABC are then fed back into the DEM to refine it. As a result, the DEM becomes a tool which can be used to derive the evolutionary steps towards the "TO-BE" enterprise profile.

These seven categories of enterprise objects have fixed relationships to each other. Every descendant objects of these top level entities carries the same relationships as their parent objects, although the specific relationships between these objects instances may be more refined.

Every "thing" of interest to an enterprise can probably be placed into one of these object classes. The DEM holds a record of these things and the specific relationships between them. The DEM answers the basic questions about each thing.

The enterprise objects are entities that are acted upon in accordance with the basic relationships. Specific action (transaction) on an entity is modeled in the Activity (.05.) object class.

The general enterprise model implements and encompasses the functionality of the ANSI X3 Three Schema Model and the Architecture Enterprise Model.

It allows for the object classes, their specific object instances, and the relationships between them to be managed within a single normalized data environment. It maintains the specific object instances, and their composition and distribution context, within the enterprise as a whole.

It provides for shared data, created and maintained by source data entry, using a shared software unit repository for processing all routine transactions.

By creating a dynamic enterprise model in manageable phases, much redundancy and duplication of effort within the enterprise can be identified and reduced, along with associated administrative and operational overhead, yielding permanent responsiveness/ efficiency/ effectiveness gains.

All of the data, information, and knowledge necessary to create the model currently exists within each enterprise. It would not function otherwise, However, it is not usually well structured. It is often confusing and unwieldy, with unconstrained variation. It therefore contains too much non-informing data, which is noise/ overhead, a waste of resources. The most likely object classes to contain or generate excessive overhead are the organization and function object classes.

Building the DEM resolves/organizes this data, information, and knowledge into a simple ordered structure, which can be used as the basis for simultaneous analysis and transaction processing, and for a change management. It also provides the capability for the enterprise to be viewed in many forms, all variations on a common theme.

A logical implementation of the DEN catalog function would look something like this. It would require a database management system that could perform relational self-joins.

With this catalog, users could query into the object classes as deeply as they were disaggregated/categorized.

The software unit controlling an object's transactions would be accessible through the catalog, as would the detailed attributes of each enterprise object (either shared data or object-specific data).

The DEM catalog would serve as a Table of Contents to the enterprise management environment.

Each software unit is only used to process a specific transaction within an activity, rather than several levels of process, work center, and tasks. As a result, transaction modeling and development of software is simpler. The reliance on large software design projects would diminish. Software units could be modularized down to the transaction level.

A logical view of the Cross Index function would look something like this. To create associations, a base object is selected from the Catalog. Then the Catalog is used to select those objects directly associated with the base object. In this way, a position incumbent or a planner defines an object's composition and distribution by picking from the Catalog. The users could then ask the basic questions about them or combinations of them.

The detail attributes that describe the association would be accessible through the Cross-Index, as would the standard software unit for associated Activity objects.

The data elements associated with the software systems, databases and tables, forms, publications, reports, spreadsheets, graphics, etc. could all be adjusted dynamically, from one data dictionary/glossary. Those items to be affected by a change would be known in advance, to the degree they were included in the enterprise model.

Seen from the perspective of forming a continuous quality improvement organization, the creation of a dynamic enterprise model would be accomplished in three phases.

Phase I would build the DEM baseline (AS-IS).

Phase II would transform the DEM into a corporate management environment providing a single pool of data.

Phase III would manage the organization using the DEM for continuous quality improvement (TO-BE).

The database created for the DEM could serve as the underlying database/repository for an integrated project management, modeling, geographic information, computer aided design, network management, visualization, simulation, and command and control system. This integrated visualization of change would serve as a dynamic enterprise information system.

The first phase of building the DEM is to define the baseline objects of the enterprise and their associations to each other. This diagram highlights the major tasks of that phase.

The principal workload in building and maintaining the baseline inventory is collecting, organizing, and maintaining the object instance attributes, relationships, and data values.

However, this workload already exists in all enterprise management efforts. The DEM approach can decrease the amount of that workload, while making the workload's products more useful and accessible.

The difference with the DEM approach is its unitary perspective, process, and control. Other approaches from a more fragmented perspective will have a more greater resultant overhead for processing, collection, dissemination, synchronization, validation, storage, transport, security, and presentation of the data.

Note that an important and usable product is created with implementation task and its integration with preceding task results. This is described in subsequent charts.

As a result of performing task 1.1, a networked location/ organization/ position/ function directory is created. This is referred to as Structural Model. It is displayed the locations, organizations (and their missions), production units (and their capabilities and support requirements), and the functions of interest to the enterprise, and the relationships between them.

A useful network product derived from the structural model could be a combination of :

locator (displaying location [nation/ state/ county-city/ town/ district/ building/ room/ wall/ outlet/ contact pin] in relation to organization, position, and/or function),

coordination/stakeholder/collaboration system (displaying which units, positions, organizations, and locations are involved with each function),

and telephone and network directory (displaying all of the above with added unit position telephone/fax/email numbers and position incumbent's name).

As a result of performing task 1.2, a networked activity directory is created, which is added to the functionality of the previous structural model. This combination is referred to as an Enterprise Directory. It displays the same information as the structural model, plus it allows the activities performed by each position, within their assigned functions, to be displayed in relation to the structural model.

A useful network product derived from the Enterprise Directory could be a distribution listing for each activity across the enterprise, broken down by: supported function(s); units/positions performing the activity (and their phone/fax numbers and network address); organizations responsible for producing the activity's outputs; and the locations (down to building and room number +) where the activity is performed.

The Enterprise Directory is an appropriate start point for business change efforts such as Total Quality Management, Business Reengineering, Process Improvement, and Activity Modeling. The ED allows the decision makers and planners to see who the appropriate stakeholders and functional and activity experts are, and where they are located, and facilitates subsequent coordination and integration of efforts in business change, adding robustness and completeness to the change results.

Building an Enterprise Directory is a logical preparatory phase for integrated business change such as Functional Process Improvement, and increase the likelihood of successful change.

As a result of performing task 1.3, a networked directory of standard and non-standard resources is added to the functionality of the Enterprise Directory. This is referred to as a Process Improvement Model. It displays the same information as the Enterprise Directory, and also allows those who are involved in improving business products, processes, and structure to identify the specific resource categories (both standard and non-standard) which the activities utilize and produce. As a result, an analyst/planner could identify the flow of work products or resources by tracking the time sequences of activity production, thus viewing/stimulating the flow in terms in activity outputs (as supplier) and a subsequent activity inputs (as customer). Additionally, activity modelers could use the directory of resources as a catalog to select specific predefined resources as Inputs, Controls, Outputs, or Mechanisms (ICOM) in their modeling efforts, or would add new or derived ICOMs to the catalog.

A useful network product derived from the process improvement model would be an integrated data dictionary, with each data element within the dictionary mapped to the activity transactions (form, table, database, report, publication, procedure, policy) which use that data element as an ICOM. The data dictionary then becomes an integral part of the data modeling process, with pre-defined data elements being brought into each data modeling effort in the form of a catalog, and into which are added newly discovered/ derived data elements resulting from that data modeling. In addition to serving as a data dictionary for data modeling, the process improvement model could serve as a catalog for other resources besides data. Examples would be dictionaries/ directories for personnel, persons, funds, facilities, information technology, material, services, etc.

All of these dictionaries/ directories for each resource category would display the activities which utilize the resources (as inputs, controls, or mechanisms) or produce (output) the resources as products or by-products, the functions performing those activities, the units/ positions accomplishing those functions (with phone networking, and mailing information), the organizations responsible for the production of that resource, and the locations where the resources are utilized or produced. This can support Activity Based Costing. Finally, the process improvement model allows the planner to identify each resource as a composite resource, comprised of two or more component resources which the enterprise manages, or as a singular resource, which has no managed components.

As a result of performing task 1.4, a networked directory of activity customers is added to the functionality of the Process Improvement Model. This is referred to as a Supplier/ Customer or Resource Flow Model. It displays the same information as the Process Information Model, also identifies who are the customers of each product category, broken down by activity transaction, function, production unit/ position, organization, and location.

A useful network product derived from the Supplier/ Customer Model would a comprehensive directory of customers by locations, etc. This would be useful in assessing customer requirements, desired product quality characteristics, and satisfaction, and in performing to meet the customer's expectations. This information would enable more integrated efforts towards development of quality products, process improvement and optimizing, and structural alignment/ distribution and optimization. It would facilitate market research, strategic planning, and responsiveness to customer requirements.

As a result of performing task 1.5, a networked directory of supplier/ customer relationships is defined and added to the Supplier/ Customer Model. This is referred to as Workflow Model. It displays the same information as the Supplier/ Customer Model, and also refines the relationships between customers and suppliers.

A useful network product derived from the Workflow Model would be a capability to run simulations of functions and activities, and to automate a large number of the transactions (EDI). Those transactions and coordinations which can or should be automated will be identified in this phase.

Once this phase of building the baseline Dynamic Enterprise Model is reached, the application of information technology becomes more productive because the computer network can now conduct a significant number of routine modeled transactions without human intervention. This allows the people within the enterprise to focus more on improving and creating products, processes, and structure to meet customer requirements.

At this point in development of the baseline DEM, the network can inform the user of the status of the transactions under their responsibility and authority.

As a result of performing task 1.6, a shared-data generalized life cycle management system for all enterprise resource requirements, from initial conception, through resourcing and development, through operation and maintaining, to revalidation of the requirement is added to the functionality of the previous phases.

This phase then allows enterprise executives and functional decision makers to assess the enterprise as a whole for purposes of strategic, control, and operational planning and overall enterprise management. This phase completes the development of an enterprise management environment, the baseline DEM.

The matrix shown here would result from building the baseline DEM. It would serve as a model showing the composition and required distribution for any object of interest to the enterprise.

As a result of building the DEM baseline, any person within the organization could view direct and indirect functions, activities, resources and requirements associated with their position. The model would also control their network access to only those objects which authorities had associated with the person or position.

The cross-index then serves as the "Table of Contents" to the organization's automated and manual information systems and its resources. It would provide a single entry point into its shared software and data.

A logical view of the DEM would look something like this. It could be made as dynamic and as detailed as the enterprise required and could afford.

The entire DEM then serves as the start point for subsequent requests for resources, and as the system to capture the information generated at each stage of that requirements life cycle.

With the refined baseline model in place and being used as the core of corporate management, the organization can begin to optimize its products, processes, and structure to meet the quality characteristics which satisfy its customers.

This would be a time of realignment and reorganization. It would also be a time of great opportunity and benefit. The increasing member experience of interdependence within the enterprise and with the environment would strengthen the shared identity of the members. Their awareness would be continually reinforced by using the enterprise model.

The final phase of building would be able to continue to operate in the new environment, always focusing on shared identity of members, on customers, and on continuous quality improvement.

In summary, a generalized enterprise model has been presented, along with a vision of evolving enterprise capability and a notional plan of implementation. The transition of an existing organization to a customer focused continuous quality improvement organization is practical, feasible, and affordable, using the concepts presented here.

The productivity and human-potential increases and cost decreases to be gained from implementing this corporate management method warrants immediate action by those who see its implications.

It provides strategic, management, administrative, and operational benefits that can be experienced in a relatively short time.

PROLOGUE:

Why build a Dynamic Enterprise Model (DEM), using the Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) and General Enterprise Model (GEM) paradigms?

The DEM can reduce enterprise annual operating cost, manpower, and other resource requirements, and increase the productivity/ output/ responsiveness off all modeled components. Queries that are now answered in days/ weeks/ months or never, instead could be answered in seconds/ minutes/ hours.

The DEM organizes enterprise critical information, giving it a dynamic structure and order, decreases the workload required to prepare, maintain, and utilize that information. It is a Corporate Information Repository containing both shared data and shared software units.

The DEM starts at a Top-Level model (GEM), is built from the bottom up, and can be in stages to accommodate resource constraints and shifting priorities and criticality.

The DEM complies with, integrates, and can improve the efficiency of the CIM concepts of Functional Process Improvement, including Functional Economic Analysis, Activity Based Costing, Activity Modeling, Data Modeling, Data Administration, Information Infrastructure, and Business Reengineering, and adds the functionality of Configuration Management, Life Cycle Management, and Total Quality Management.

The DEM provides increasingly more useful products at each stage of its development, using existing enterprise network resources, current personnel, and existing information.

Stage 1 provides a shared-use networked "Structural Model" which combines the functionality of a Locator system (where), a subject-based coordination system (who/why, which functions, which positions), and a Telecommunications Directory (phone/fax/email numbers, incumbent's name).

Stage 2 provides the above, with an added directory of activities performed by each function/position. This displays the distribution of functions and activities across the enterprise to the position level, as well as the activities comprising each function, which is a useful start point for Activity Modeling.

Stage 3 provides all of the above, with an added directory of standard categories of resources such as information technology and data elements. This would provide an appropriate start point for both Data Modeling and Activity Based Costing. Considering "persons" as resources, it also provides the mechanism for creating an experience/ interest/ skills/ knowledge/ ability profile directory of all enterprise members and contractors.

Stage 4 adds a directory of enterprise customers to the above. These customers are identified as positions, activities, or resources that require input from some supplier position/ activity/ resource. This facilitates managing customer requirements and satisfying them.

Stage 5 adds redefinement to the customer directory by modeling the flow of work throughout the supplier/ customer chain for both internal and external customers and suppliers. This is a start point for Workflow Automation and Electronic Data Interchange.

Stage 6 adds a shared-data generalized life cycle management system for enterprise resource requirements, from initial conception, through resourcing and development, through operations and maintenance, to revalidation of the requirement.

The DEM will reduce the learning curve for incoming personnel in their job and work site.

The DEM will aid the standardization process and in decreasing process variation.

The DEM's data structure design is inherently stable in its normalization.

The DEM can be implemented using many forms of computers, networks, databases, and operating systems.

The DEM provides benefits analogous to common currency, language, history, and customers within a culture.