Evolution management towards interoperable supply chains using performance measurement Severine Blanc * , Yves Ducq, Bruno Vallespir LAPS/GRAI, University Bordeaux 1, UMR 5131 CNRS, ENSEIRB, 351 cours de la Libe ´ration, 33405 Talence Cedex, France Available online 27 June 2007 Abstract Today, the enterprise must cooperate to survive in an increasingly competitive context. This co-operation is carried out by organisations in networks through the supply chain (SC). In order to do so, enterprises must be interoperable. In order to reach interoperability, the system must eradicate heterogeneity. This paper aims at presenting the problems of heterogeneity from two different points of view: semantic and organisational. In the first part, the paper exposes the problems of heterogeneity from the two points of view. This part insists on the weak alien problem resolution for the semantics. In the second part, the synchronisation and standardisation of practices of business processes are presented in order to solve a part of the problem of organisation heterogeneity. The third part presents the use of the performance measurement system to manage the evolution of the enterprises towards interoperability, i.e. the implementation and exploitation of the principles exposed previously. Then, the last part presents an application of the ECOGRAI method and implementation using a software tool in the frame of interoperability between manufacturing and maintenance companies. # 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Interoperability; Enterprise modelling; Performance measurement system; ECOGRAI method; PBview software tool 1. Introduction Today, enterprises must cooperate to survive in an increasingly competitive context. This co-operation is carried out using networked organisations, such as supply chains (SC). The condition that makes this possible, is that enterprises are interoperable. The general problem is interoperability in the context of supply chain. In order to work out the problem, it is necessary to define precisely what interoperability is. Based on [1], interoperability is defined as ‘‘the ability of two or more systems or components to exchange information and to use the information that has been exchanged’’ [2]. In some research works, non-interoperability is named ‘‘heterogene- ity’’. In fact, in order to reach interoperability, the system must eradicate heterogeneity. This notion of heterogeneity can be considered from three different points of view [3]:  Ontology [4] for understanding problems during the exchange of information between enterprises,  Enterprise modelling (EM) [5] for the organisation of each enterprise, synchronisation and harmonisation of practices, and  Architecture and platform for problems of data, material and software compatibility. The interest in using EM techniques is to represent completely the operation of the enterprise from several points of view: functional, decisional, information system, and business process. Based on this representation, it is possible to extract the interoperability points to improve to reach interoperability from which the target is deduced. The identification of heterogeneity points is based on the existing system situation (AS IS). The ‘‘TO-BE’’ represents the target to reach. Between both, the evolution of the system is managed as represented in Fig. 1. This model is composed of three different steps:  The semantic heterogeneity is the representation of the non- interoperability. It can be eradicated to allow for semantic interoperability, www.elsevier.com/locate/compind Computers in Industry 58 (2007) 720–732 * Corresponding author. Tel.: +33 5 4000 6530; fax: +33 5 4000 6644. E-mail address: firstname.name@laps.u-bordeaux1.fr (S. Blanc). 0166-3615/$ – see front matter # 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.compind.2007.05.011