16-20 of May 2011, Antwerp, Belgium

Modern enterprises face a strong economical pressure to increase competitiveness, to operate on a global market, and to engage in alliances of several kinds. But the vast majority of strategic initiatives in enterprises fail, meaning that enterprises are unable to gain success from their strategy. Abundant research indicates that the key reason for strategic failures is the lack of coherence and consistency among the various components of an enterprise. At the same time, the need to operate as a unified and integrated whole is becoming increasingly important. These challenges are dominantly addressed from a functional or managerial perspective, as advocated by management and organization science. Such knowledge is necessary and sufficient for managing an enterprise, but it is inadequate for bringing about changes. To do that, one needs to take a constructional or engineering perspective. Both organizations and software systems are complex and prone to entropy. This means that in the course of time, the costs of bringing about similar changes increase in a way that is known as combinatorial explosion. Regarding (automated) information systems, this has been demonstrated; regarding organizations, it is still a conjecture. Entropy can be reduced and managed effectively through modular design based on atomic elements. The people in an enterprise are collectively responsible for the operation (including management) of the enterprise. In addition, they are collectively responsible for the evolution of the enterprise (adapting to needs for change). These responsibilities can only be borne if one has appropriate knowledge of the enterprise. 

The EEWC 2011 is the 1st Working Conference resulting from a series of successful CIAO! Workshops over the years.  These workshops were aimed at addressing the challenges that modern and complex enterprises are facing in a rapidly changing world.  The participants of the workshops shared a belief that dealing with these challenges requires rigorous and scientific solutions, focusing on the design and engineering enterprises. 

This conviction has led to the idea of organizing an international conference on the topic of Enterprise Engineering, in order to bring together all stakeholders interested in making Enterprise Engineering a reality.  This means that not only scientists are invited, but also that an Industry Track is an important part of the conference.  Next, it also means that the conference is aimed at active participation, discussion and exchange of ideas in order to stimulate future cooperation among the participants.  This makes EEWC a ‘working’ conference.  And also, in order to support collaboration, each year, the organizing chair of the EEWC conference organizes one day in the program as an in-depth tutorial or seminar on its own research for conference participants, with the aim of facilitating collaboration in the future.

In the conference program, the CIAO! Doctoral Consortium is a very important part.  The CIAO! Doctoral Consortium, aimed at CIAO! members and invited members only (see Organization), has an exceptionally wide range of academics providing valuable feedback to doctoral students, thereby ensuring future Enterprise Engineering research of high quality.  The results of such a doctoral study can also be witnessed during the EEWC, as one doctoral student will graduate on Wednesday 18 May 2011, with a public defense ceremony which can be attended by EEWC participants.

All this means that the conference has a packed agenda for both academics and practitioners, contributing to the further development of Enterprise Engineering as a mature discipline.