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These are example papers from the Spring 2000 IEN880I class to give you an idea of papers I liked.

Holly Dixon - MANAGING CHANGE - Change is something companies must do if they are to survive and compete in today's business world. The three articles reviewed for this paper explain how change can be managed and implemented so the company's culture is not disrupted. The articles also stress it is important to make sure change can be sustained over a long period of time. When a change is taking place it needs to be implemented so it makes sense to the company's culture and environment. The authors suggest ways to help mange the change, but each company must adapt the ideas to their own culture, there is no one set formula for change. This paper provides an overview of how companies should manage change so a sustainable culture is created that can compete long term.

Swapnil Shah - IDEF Modeling - Paper one "IDEF*: a comprehensive modeling methodology for the development of manufacturing enterprise systems" [1] discusses IDEF* modeling methodology which is used to reduce the incompatibility between the models and help modeling maintenance. The paper also gives information on the structure and various components of the supporting software tool that is used. Paper two "A knowledge-based approach to the generation of IDEF0 models" [2] discusses IDEF0 modeling. It explains how IDEF0 modeling can be used for modeling manufacturing systems. Knowledge-based system approach is explained so as to automate the modeling processes in order to reduce the modeling time and maintain consistency. Paper three "Implementing IDEF Techniques as Simulation Modelling Specifications" [3] explains IDEF0 modeling and gives information on simulation and how IDEF can help in simulation processes. The paper also discusses a case study in brief to explain IDEF modeling and in its implementation in simulation.

Pankaj Raj Sinha - BPR and TQM - In today's era management are confronted with new methodologies to provide competitive solutions. Enterprise engineering focuses on the planning of the future enterprise, as well as the methods needed to transform the enterprise. The synchronized implementation of these methods facilitates in achieving the expected benefits. The paper focuses on two such methods, business process reengineering (BPR) and total quality management providing a critical review for each of the literature selected and proposing some additional insights. The goal here is to study various approaches, develop in-depth understanding of methodologies, and highlight the obvious pitfalls.

Ameya Warty - OBJECT -ORIENTED MODELING - The integration and coordination of business processes in an enterprise is crucial for company's efforts to achieve its strategic goal. This paper reviews three articles and introduces a modeling scheme, which supports process centered approach in modeling the organizational structure. Since I was not familiar with this modeling concept I started with a paper fairly simple to understand. My first paper entitled "Object Oriented modeling for enterprise-level Concurrent Engineering" provides a fundamental framework for shifting from structured type traditional methods to an object technology. My second paper entitled "A DSS approach to developing systems to support production planning and control in smaller companies" uses a hybrid relational database/ object oriented modeling approach along with 'bill of production' for each item to model dynamic environment. The third paper entitled "Implementation of an object oriented tool for the simulation of manufacturing systems and its application to study the effect of flexibility" describes an object oriented simulator tool used for modeling flexible manufacturing systems. This paper introduces a design paradigm in which a system is modeled, analyzed and implemented to define corporations overall need and facilitate effective decision-making.

Glenn Whiteside - BUSINESS PROCESS MODELING - The first article (Yu, Mylopoulos & Lesperance, 1996), reviews three process modeling methods, Strategic Dependency, Strategic Rationale, and Business Process and their associated tools. The second article (Kueng & Kawalek, 1997) makes several key points that process models are only a burden if they are misunderstood, implemented poorly, and contribute little to the overall improvement process. The third article (Ramanathan, 1996) reviews the main components of business processes, the objectives of a workflow project, the critical time aspects of project planning and completion, strategic core process improvements, development, integration, and productionizing of the process model, and continuous improvement as the process model matures.

This paper provides an overview of these articles and then discusses how specific key concepts from these articles could be incorporated into the student's current job.