My PhD Blog

This text snippet is an introduction of my plan to invest in a research into the theories of DEMO and Lean Six Sigma. Both have my interests which is rooted in my interpretation of a career in business consultancy. My beliefs in a synergy of both disciplines has motivated me to study many related publications. This interest was mainly driven by one clear question: “How can I use both as an integrated methodology to improve my customers organizations ?”.

During studying, both showed very strong individual capabilities. Enterprise Engineering offers with DEMO a unique capability to express the essence of an organization. The DEMO language is formally grounded in an enterprise ontology. This ontology is grounded from the results of years of study in the language action perspective (LAP). Within LAP there was a particular interest in the interactions that led to action and agreements between human actors. A pattern named transaction was recognized which is up till today the dominant concept in the enterprise ontology from which the enterprise architecture is constructed..

Six Sigma on the other hand is built upon principles, methods and tools that have shown their value in the last decades. Six Sigma incorporates the most effective of them and integrated them in a full programme for business improvement. Lean thinking was only recently incorporated. The principles of lean increased Six Sigma’s value for business process improvement significantly. Lean Six Sigma has become a standard for business improvement which is practiced worldwide. A scientific grounding for Lean Six Sigma , was delivered in 2007 as result of a PhD research and publications of the UVA IBIS institute.

Overseeing leans principles, six sigma’s evidence based way of working and the capabilities of enterprise engineering a suspect of complementariness manifested when researching related papers. I could give this suspect a meaning when I started to position elements of LSS and EE in the framework of a methodology (Seligman, Wijers, & Sol, 1989). Based upon this framework I could represent my thoughts more graphically. See the first version in the next figure.

Figure 1 LSS and DEMO Synergy plotted on Seligman’s framework for methodologies

Overseeing this model, a merge of Lean Six Sigma and Enterprise Engineering seem to release a potential methodology for enterprise improvement that regards IT in its approach. (More information in section 2.2). Beside this knowledge Mulder delivers in Rapid Enterprise Design (RED) (Mulder, 2006) a legitimate reason to research in this direction. His advice which we quote below, was also based upon the framework of a methodology and therefore fits seamless in my thoughts about this research.

Quote: (Mulder, 2006, p. 132)

Research Question 2:

What improvements or additions are necessarily for Enterprise Engineering to achieve a complete methodology for organization design in conformity with the five way model?

……The results show the capability of DEMO to redesign business processes, the data systems and the ICT-infrastructure……

…. from the five way perspective DEMO cannot be considered as a integral methodology for enterprise design….. On one hand not integral because redefining business services and business function is not scientifically validated on the other hand the way of working and project approach is not incorporated in the methodology

The conclusion incorporates a firm capability statement for “the way of thinking” and “the way of modeling” for Enterprise Engineering. However, the research answers show also the need to facilitate in a better way the process to support management. In Seligman’s terms, Enterprise Engineering misses a “way of working”. Mulder recommends therefore to start a research on this point if we like to increase the value of Enterprise Engineering on this point.

Combining Mulder’s conclusion and overseeing “Figure 1 LSS and DEMO Synergy plotted on Seligman framework.”, I think a research with the emphasis on the way of communicating between both theories can deliver a contribution for the architecture as the LSS community. In this kind of communication I envision an added value for Lean Six Sigma improvement programmes in the way that DEMO fulfills the missing aspects that the information age requires. The added value for DEMO is that LSS provides a way of improving.