An ontology-based scheme enabling the modeling of cooperation in business processes

Abstract

Nowadays enterprises face more and more ambitious projects which require the cooperative participation of different organizations. The modeling of one organization information is a crucial issue. There are several approaches for analyzing or representing how an organization is structured and operates. Much recent research points to ontologies as an appropriate technology for modeling enterprise systems. This paper presents a proposal for modeling cross-enterprise business processes from the perspective of cooperative systems. The proposal consists of a multi-level design scheme for the construction of cooperative system ontologies, and it is exemplified through a real case study. Benefits related to ontology integration are also presented. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.