Challenges and current developments for Sensing, Smart and Sustainable Enterprise Systems

As technology advances and thus Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) evolve, a new enterprise model must be devised to face future digital enterprise needs. This paper discusses issues and emerging trends that must be addressed if a true sensing and smart enterprise is to be achieved to meet sustainability requirements. Methods are required to capture enterprise reality and to provide a seamless interoperable digital enterprise model. The paper summarises several challenges to be addressed by future research in enterprise modelling. Challenges are discussed from the Enterprise, Information, Computational, Engineering and Technological points of view, according to the ODP-RM (Open Distributed Processing-Reference Model). To some extent, progress on some challenges has already been made and solutions are expected to materialise in the near future. Other challenges have only recently been identified and potential solutions cannot yet be predicted. The paper offers a discussion of these challenges for the future enterprise along with the required enterprise model; it also introduces the concept of the Sensing, Smart and Sustainable (S boolean AND 3) Enterprise System. The position paper expresses opinions derived from the existing general research priorities and directions identified by the International Federation for Automatic Control-Technical Committee on Enterprise Integration and Networking (IFAC-TC 5.3). (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.