All modules depend on classes that are only deployed in the core module (coefficient-x.x.ear). The core ear must deploy before the module .ear's. Unfortunatly the J2EE spec does not provide a 'depends' mechanism like JBoss services do. The quick fix is to make sure the coefficient.ear has the oldest timestamp. It that does not work, copy the coefficient-x.x.ear into the deploy directory first and all the modules/themes second. NOTE: if you redeploy the core .ear using hot-deploy and do not re-deploy the modules you will see an exception that is also due to this issue. In this case you have confused the JBoss classloader and need to restart JBoss before everything behaves.