Measurement of information flow for enterprise model building

In earlier work we proposed a method for the automatic determination of the structure of an enterprise for simulation purposes. The method is based on measuring the information flows in an enterprise through an information flow inventory. In this paper we present an evaluation of the experience gained in making such inventories as part of the ongoing consulting activities of the authors. The data collection for the information flow inventory poses some challenging measurement problems. Alternative solution approaches were tested and the results are discussed here. We formulate the problem of enterprise simulation and optimisation in a cybernetic and system theoretic framework so that the experience can be generalised and related to the body of knowledge about human technological systems.