Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 1998
As manufacturing systems become more sophisticated and complicated, effective managers know how they play a crucial role in managing an enterprise and managers know how to deal with their dynamics and uncertainty. In this article, a formalism based on the computer-integrated manufacturing open-system architecture (CIMOSA) reference model is presented to specify the business processes and enterprise activities at the knowledge level. The formalism uses an integration of multiple types of knowledge, including precise, muddy, and random symbolic and numerical knowledge to systematically represent enterprise behavior and functionality. To support the modelling process, a prototype is developed and an example for a maintenance activity is presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.