ICEIMT GERAM 21 August, 1997 1 A somewhat shorter version of this article appeared as Bernus,P., Nemes.L., The Contribution of the Generalised Enterprise Reference Architecture to Consensus in the Area of Enterprise Integration, Proc ICEIMT97, K.Kosanke, J.Nell (Eds) Springer Verlag, Berlin, pp. 175-189 The Contribution of the Generalised Enterprise Reference Architecture to Consensus in the Area of Enterprise Integration Peter Bernus 1 , Laszlo Nemes 2 1 School of Computing and Information Technology, Griffith University Nathan (Brisbane) QLD 4111, Australia <bernus@cit.gu.edu.au> 2 Division of Manufacturing Science and Technology, CSIRO, Locked Bag No 9., Preston, VIC., 3072, Australia <lnm@dmt.csiro.au> Abstract An overview of the brief history and structure of the generalised enterprise refer- ence architecture and methodology (GERAM) is given together with the discus- sion of its role to systematise the activities of the disciplines that contribute to en- terprise integration, and its use as a shopping list of capabilities, or components that individual enterprises need for small and large scale programmes of change. Keywords Generalised enterprise reference architecture and methodology, GERAM, enter- prise integration, CIMOSA, PERA, GRAI-GIM 1 Introduction Enterprise Integration (EI) as an interdisciplinary field of study, or discipline, col- lects and organises knowledge necessary to better implement change processes in the enterprise - whether they are processes to improve, or perhaps completely overhaul, a given enterprise, or change processes that create an entirely new one. With such a wide scope, it is not likely that a single approach to enterprise in- tegration will suffice, therefore EI must necessarily include a way of systematising the contributions of disciplines and schools of thought to the area. Even the list of contributing disciplines is long; below is an attempt to give a relatively complete enumeration: • management science, • information technology, • computer science,