Patent ID: 7295957

Claim:
A method for modeling, documenting and validating a production system, preferably a company, comprising the following steps: 1) providing one or more sensors in the production system, 2) defining data to be recorded by the sensors, 3) parameterizing the data to be recorded, 4) representing the parameterized data by software objects with parameters, 5) modeling products of the system by software objects that are product models, a product model comprising a representation of a product on at least two different layers of abstraction, 6) modeling of one business value chain occurring in the system, a business value chain being a sequence of events and actions, by at least two business value chains in the model, the two business value chains being on different layers of abstraction and corresponding to the layers of abstraction on which the model is represented, 7) linking the parameters of the software objects by relationships, 8) recording the parameterized data by means of the sensors, 9) updating states of product models according to events occurring in the at least two business value chains on the different layers of abstraction, 10) automatically analyzing the relationships and properties of the software objects, and 11) outputting the results of the automatic analysis in printed or in electronic form.