2017 (The Université de Lorraine joins)In Fall 2017, the existing collaboration with the group of Professor Hervé Panetto at the Université de Lorraine, resulted in them joining the EE-Network as well. The aim is to also further strengthen the collaboration at the Grande Region (Saarland, Lorraine, Luxembourg and the Eastern part of the Walloon region) level.
2014 (EE-Network as a research training network)
The growth of the EE-Team between 2012 and 2013, both in terms of the number of involved hosts, as well as the size of the team at the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology, resulted in the conclusion that running a tightly integrated research programme involving all researchers of the team was not feasible. Instead, a more open model was needed, focusing on a shared fascination, bottom up initiated collaboration between researchers, and in particular joint training of PhD Candidates and Research Fellows, and the associated quality management. The latter effectively signifies a transition of the EE-Team to research training network; the EE-Network.
2012 – 2013 (EE-Team growth)
In 2012, the EE-Team continued to attract additional PhD Candidates rooted in practice. In an applied field of science such as enterprise engineering, this special class of PhD Candidates also proved to provide amply synergy with the traditional PhD Candidates. Where traditional PhD Candidates bring along up-to-date theoretical backgrounds, PhD Candidates working in practice bring along ample empirical insights and access to real-world case studies.
In the second half of 2012, Dr. Stijn Hoppenbrouwers moved from iCIS to the HAN University of Applied Sciences to take up a Lectorship in Information Systems. Dr. Hoppenbrouwers also continued his involved in research activities at iCIS as an assistant professor for one day a week. As a result, it was also decided to evolve Stijn’s group at HAN as a third pillar of the enterprise engineering team, focusing on collaborative enterprise modelling, in particular in the context of information system development.
2012 saw a good ending in terms of the awarding of an FNR grant Rational Architecture research project, between the EE-Team and the University of Luxembourg. This project will also provide a good opportunity to strengthen the ties between the EE-Team and the University of Luxembourg.
In 2013, both the University of Luxembourg and the Utrecht University of Applied Sciences joined the EE-Team.
2010 – 2011 (EE-Team formation)
In 2010 Prof. Proper was offered the possibility to establish his research group in Luxembourg by way of a PEARL grant ASINE (Architecture-based Service Innovation in Networked Enterprises) from the FNR. The SSI department of the Public Research Centre Henri Tudor was selected as the host of this research group, leading to a specialisation of enterprise engineering towards services-oriented enterprises.
From the start out, it was also to intention to continue Prof. Proper’s chair at the Radboud University, with the aim of developing an integrated research program on (services-oriented) enterprise engineering across the two hosts (Tudor and iCIS), where the Luxembourg hosted part was to become the larger two nodes in the network.
The ASINE PEARL grant was used to establish the initial core of the Luxembourg based research group. This initial core was then to establish a steady flow of additional funded research projects, to provide continuity to the group. The first of such projects was the Netherlands based Agile Service Development (ASD) project, in which both the Tudor and iCIS based groups participated. In 2011, the existing collaboration with the University of St. Gallen resulted in an FNR/SNF joint research project on Architectural Coordination of Enterprise Transformations (ACET).
By now the Tudor hosted part of the (services-oriented) enterprise engineering research program was firmly established. To more explicitly position this program, and the groups involved in it, it was decided to explicitly position the EE-Team as the overarching umbrella.
2007 – 2010 (TEE research programme)During its strategic reorientation in 2006-2007, iCIS decided to reorganize itself into three main sections that would more explicitly reflect its core research foci: Intelligent Systems, Model-based Systems Development and Digital Security. As part of this reorientation, the enterprise engineering theme was positioned within the Model-based Systems Development theme as the Tools for Enterprise Engineering (TEE) programme, led by Prof. Proper. At the start of 2007, the TEE programme identified three key drivers for its research:
- Return on Modelling Effort
- Quality of Modelling
- The Act of Modelling
During this time, the Tools for Enterprise Engineering theme could grow further by way of its involvement in two NUFFIC funded projects with a.o. the Makerere University. These two projects, aimed at the establishment of academic research and education capacity at public Universities in Uganda, provided support for four PhD projects concerned with different aspects of collaborative enterprise (architecture) modelling.
Meanwhile, the topic of enterprise engineering was positioned more internationally by co-organiaing and co-establishing the PRET working conference series, as well as Springer‘s Enterprise Engineering series.
The application-oriented nature of the enterprise engineering theme also attracted four practitioners to engage in PhD studies. In other words, conduct PhD studies in the context of the TEE programme, while also working as a consultant in practice.
2003 – 2006 (Business Informatics curriculum)
The initial research efforts in the enterprise engineering domain resulted in two cornerstone research projects. The first project, PRONIR (Profile based Retrieval Of Networked Information Resources), was a collaboration between the University of Tilburg and IRIS. The NWO funded PRONIR project built on IRIS’s information retrieval expertise, and was concerned with the development of reference architectures/models for Information Markets. The second research project was the ArchiMate project (2003 – 2006). This project produced the ArchiMate architecture modelling approach, that is now an Open Group standard. This project involved a broad consortium of academic and industrial research partners.
Next to a strong enterprise engineering influence on Business Informatics curriculum at the Radboud University, the initial research activities also resulted in an executive master on Enterprise Architecture (“Architectuur in de Digitale Wereld” in Dutch) which was co-developed with Capgemini and ABK, the management school of the Radboud University.
By 2006, the theme of enterprise engineering had matured enough to become an established theme within IRIS.
2001 – 2002 (Start in Business Informatics)
The history of the EE-Network is rooted in the Information Retrieval and Information Systems (IRIS) group at the Institute for Computing and Information Sciences (iCIS) of the Radboud University. It started with the development of iCIS’s Business Informatics (Informatiekunde in Dutch) curriculum. The development of this curriculum was spearheaded by the IRIS department, in particular by Dr. Stijn J.B.A. Hoppenbrouwers and Prof. Henderik A. Proper. This resulted in a Business Informatics curriculum with a strong focus on, what we would now refer to as, enterprise engineering.
From a research point of view, the development of the Business Informatics curriculum was firmly based on a model-enabled perspective on the design of enterprises (as socio-technical systems).