Scenario
Please read this scenario prior to answering the Question You are serving as the Lead Enterprise
Architect at a major supplier in the automotive industry. The company is headquartered in
Cleveland, Ohio with manufacturing plants across the United States, Brazil, Germany, Japan and
South Korea . Each of these plants has been operating its own planning and production scheduling
systems, as well as custom developed applications that drive the automated production equipment
at each plant. The company is implementing lean manufacturing principles to minimize waste and
improve the efficiency of all of its production operations. During a recent exercise held for internal
quality improvement, it was determined that a significant reduction in process waste could be
achieved by replacing the current planning and scheduling systems with a common Enterprise
Resource Planning (ERP) system located in the Cleveland data center. This central system would
provide support to each of the plants replacing the functionality in the existing systems. It would
also eliminate the need for full data centers at each of the plant facilities. A reduced number of IT
staff could support the remaining applications. In some cases, a third-party contractor could provide
those staff. The Enterprise Architecture department has been operating for several years and has
mature, well-developed architecture governance and development processes that are strongly
based on TOGAF 9. At a recent meeting, the Architecture Board approved a Request for Architecture
Work sponsored by the Chief Engineer of Global Manufacturing Operations. The request covered the
initial architectural investigations and the development of a comprehensive architecture to plan the
transformation. The Common ERP Deployment architecture project team has now been formed, and
the project team has been asked to develop an Architecture Vision that will achieve the desired
outcomes and benefits. Some of the plant managers have expressed concern about the security and
reliability of diving their planning and production scheduling from a remote centralized system. The
Chief Engineer wants to know how these concerns can be addressed. Refer to the Scenario During
the initial meeting of the Common ERP Deployment architecture project team, a number of
alternative recommendations for how to proceed are put forward by members of the team. You
have been asked to select the most appropriate recommendation to ensure that the team evaluates
different approaches to the problem and clarifies the requirements for the architecture. Based on
TOGAF 9, which of the following is the best answer?

A.
The team should develop Baseline and Target Architectures for each of the manufacturing plants,
ensuring that the views corresponding to selected viewpoints address key concerns of the
stakeholders. A consolidated gap analysis between the architectures will then be used to validate
the approach, and determine the capability increments needed to achieve the target state.

B.
The team should exercise due diligence and carefully research vendor literature and conduct a
series of briefings with vendors that are on the current approved supplier list. Based on the findings
from the research, the team should define a preliminary Architecture Vision. The team should then
use that model to build consensus among the key stakeholders.

C.
The team should use stakeholder analysis to understand who has concerns about the initiative.
The team should then hold a series of interviews at each of the manufacturing plants using the
business scenario technique. This will then enable them to identify and document the key highlevel
stakeholder requirements for the architecture.

D.
The team should conduct a pilot project that will enable vendors on the short list to demonstrate
potential solutions that will address the concerns of the stakeholders. Based on the findings of that
pilot project, a complete set of retirements will be developed that will drive the evolution of the
architecture.