# Donald H. Liles

Donald H. (Don) Liles (b. February 14, 1947) is an American engineer, Emeritus Professor of Industrial Engineering at the University of Texas at Arlington, known for his contributions in the field of enterprise engineering.

## Quotes

* An enterprise architecture can be thought of as a "blueprint" or "picture" which assists in the design of an enterprise. The enterprise architecture must define three things. First, what are the activities that an enterprise performs? Second, how should these activities be performed? And finally, how should the enterprise be constructed? Consequently, the architecture being developed will identify the essential processes performed by a virtual company, how the virtual company and the agile enterprises involved in the virtual company will perform these processes, and include a methodology for the rapid reconfiguration of the virtual enterprise.
** William Barnett, Adrien Presley, Mary Johnson, and Donald H. Liles (1994) "An architecture for the virtual enterprise." Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, 1994.' Humans, Information and Technology'., 1994 IEEE International Conference on. Vol. 1. IEEE, 1994
* The presence of an enterprise reference architecture aids an enterprise in its ability to understand its structure and processes. Similar to a computer architecture, the enterprise architecture is comprised of several views. The enterprise architecture should provide activity, organizational, business rule (information), resource, and process views of an organization.
** Joseph Sarkis, Adrien Presley and Donald H. Liles (1995) "The management of technology within an enterprise engineering framework." in: Computers & industrial engineering.

### The Enterprise Engineering Discipline (1996)

Donald H. Liles, Mary E. Johnson and Laura Meade (1996) "Enterprise engineering: a discipline?." Proceedings of the Fifth Annual Industrial Engineering Research Conference.
* Enterprise Engineering is defined as that body of knowledge, principles, and practices having to do with the analysis, design, implementation and operation of an enterprise. In a continually changing and unpredictable competitive environment, the Enterprise Engineer addresses a fundamental question: “how to design and improve all elements associated with the total enterprise through the use of engineering and analysis methods and tools to more effectively achieve its goals and objectives”...
** p. 1
* A discipline has six basic characteristics:
       (1) a focus of study,
       (2) a world view or paradigm,
       (3) a set of reference disciplines used to establish the discipline,
       (4) principles and practices associated with the discipline,
       (5) an active research or theory development agenda, and
       (6) the deployment of education and promotion of professionalism
   * p. 1
* Reference disciplines are existing bodies of knowledge that help establish the new discipline, that are a foundation of support for future work, and that are logical linkages to previous works. Throughout history, new disciplines have emerged from the need to solve new problems that are not fully addressed by existing disciplines. Emerging disciplines build upon the knowledge, subject matter, methods, tools, and theories of existing reference disciplines.
** p. 2

### Enterprise modeling within an enterprise engineering framework (1996)

Donald H. Liles and Adrien R. Presley (1996). "Enterprise modeling within an enterprise engineering framework." Proceedings of the 28th conference on Winter simulation. IEEE Computer Society. p. 993-999
* There are several world view assumptions present in enterprise engineering. The first assumption is that the enterprise can be viewed as a complex system. This is necessary because systems in organizations are systems of organized complexity. Complexity is the result of the multiplicity and intricacy of man’s interaction with other components of the system. Secondly, the enterprise is to be viewed as a system of processes. These processes are engineered both individually and holistically. The final assumption is the use of engineering rigor in transforming the enterprise. The enterprise engineering paradigm views the enterprise as a complex system of processes that can be engineered to accomplish specific organizational objectives. In the Enterprise Engineering paradigm, the enterprise is viewed as a complex system of processes that can be engineered to accomplish specific organizational objectives.
** p. 993
* An enterprise must be viewed from several perspectives if it is to be fully described and understood (Barnett 1994; ESPIRIT Consortium AMICE 1991). Previous work in the development of architectures by the Automation & Robotics Research Institute (Presley et al. 1993) describes a five view approach. The Business Rule (or Information) View defines the entities managed by the enterprise and the rules governing their relationships and interactions. The Activity View defines the functions performed by the enterprise (what is done) while the Business Process View defines a time sequenced set of processes (how it is done). The resources and capabilities managed by the enterprise are defined in a Resource View. Finally, the Organization View is used to define how the enterprise organizes itself and the set of constraints and rules governing how it manages itself and its processes.
** p. 994

## External links

* Dr. Don Liles at uta.edu