Design of a semiautomated system for capturing and processing shop floor information

This paper presents an overview of a United States Air Force Integrated Computer-Aided Manufacturing project devoted to the design of a shop floor information system. The key to effective automated and nonautomated manufacturing operations is the capture of raw, accurate, and timely shop floor data for effective process, monitoring control, and decision making. The reader is given a project overview to show how a shop floor information system might be planned, evaluated and designed with both software and hardware characteristics being considered. Further details of the design process may be found by obtaining a copy of the project's final report from the U.S. Air Force, U.S.A.F. Materials Laboratory, WPAFB, Dayton, Ohio 45435.     

Information technology,information systems and information management: definition and development

The growth and development of the information and communication technologies has led to a parallel profusion of different terminologies and literature. It is becoming increasingly difficult for managers and academics to find their way through the confusion and develop a common understanding of terminology. In an attempt at clarification, this paper looks at the main terms and definitions from a management perspective. Their overall use is assessed by an analysis of their usage in general management literature. It is clearly shown that although there are major overlaps and confusions, the term ‘information systems’ is the one in most widespread use. Finally we suggest a framework which may be helpful to those working in this field of research.     

Evaluation of the information flow in a hierarchical shop floor control framework

Shop floor controllers have been applied widely in the integration and control of the information flow in computer integrated manufacturing systems. Among the developed control frameworks, hierarchical control structure is the most popular and practical. One of the major arguments about this framework is that computers with strong computing power should be applied in the central controller, and computers with less computing power can be applied in the local controllers. However, very few experimental analyses support this argument. In this research, the information loading for each level of controller is used to examine this argument. A coloured stochastic Petri nets model was developed to describe the information flow in a hierarchical structure. The developed model was simulated and the information loading for each controller can be estimated on the basis of the traffic of the tokens in the net. The simulation results have confirmed the above argument. In addition, the required computation resources for certain functions in hierarchical frameworks were also estimated. These data can be used for replanning the functions performed in each level of the controllers in order to improve the total performance of a hierarchical shop floor controller system.     

New horizons at the core of information systems: decision support system advances

Here, we argue that decision support systems (DSSs) research is a core area of the information systems (IS) discipline, being one of six major expansions that have occurred in the IS field. Interestingly, DSS research is often blended with some other expansions experienced by the IS field: namely, organizational computing, electronic commerce/business, and pervasive computing. The DSS core of IS research continues to grow along ever-widening horizons. Diverse exemplars of such DSS advances are found in the papers of this special issue.     

Semantic-model support for geographic information systems

Natural resource management is an important issue that uses large amounts of spatial and temporal data. It is risky to predict the consequences of resource management decisions without accurately understanding the interaction of ecosystems over a large region. A geographical information system describes objects from the real world in terms of location-geographic positions, attributes that are unrelated to position, such as soil type, elevation, and demographics, spatial relationships-how objects are linked, and temporal information-the evolution of both spatial and nonspatial data over time. The authors collaborated on this project to develop a computer environment that enables ecological researchers to analyze and solve problems concerning real ecosystems. Their system brings together and makes accessible data from a variety of heterogeneous databases     

Determinants of knowledge management with information technology support impact on firm performance

The relationship between knowledge management (KM) and firm performance has been the subject of discussion in management literature. However, certain studies have found a significant link between KM and firm performance, whereas others have not. Thus, to better understand the effect of KM on firm performance, this study focuses on the performance effects of KM with information technology support (KMIT). The model of this paper includes three organizational factors: structure, culture, and incentive. Surveys collected from 119 high tech firms were analyzed to test the model. The results confirmed the effect of organizational factors on overall KMIT, which was found to be critical for improving firm performance. Our study has implications for academics and practitioners by providing a better understanding of the importance of KM in explaining firm performance.     

Database technology for decision support systems

Decision support systems form the core of business IT infrastructures because they let companies translate business information into tangible and lucrative results. Collecting, maintaining, and analyzing large amounts of data, however, involves expensive technical challenges that require organizational commitment. Many commercial tools are available for each of the three major data warehousing tasks: populating the data warehouse from independent operational databases, storing and managing the data, and analyzing the data to make intelligent business decisions. Data cleaning relates to heterogeneous data integration, a problem studied for many years. More work must be done to develop domain-independent tools that solve the data cleaning problems associated with data warehouse development. Most data mining research has focused on developing algorithms for building more accurate models or building models faster. However, data preparation and mining model deployment present several engaging problems that relate specifically to achieving better synergy between database systems and data mining technology     

The impact of information and communication technology on relation-based governance systems

This study offers a new perspective to the analysis of the interface between information and communication technology (ICT) and corporate governance and how the interface differs across countries with different political and economic environments. We first introduce a theoretical framework of relation-based and rule-based governance that distinguishes economies/firms based on whether they rely on public rules or personal relations to govern business. Economically more developed countries tend to be rule-based and less developed countries (LDCs) tend to be relation-based. Based on the theoretical framework, the paper analyzes the interface between ICT and corporate governance and the barriers to adopting ICT by relation-based LDCs. We argue that economic- and legal-system-specific governance effects are more fundamental than national cultural effects on ICT adoption, and that the barriers to adopting ICT are greater for the LDCs that rely on relation-based governance. We expect that in the long run ICT will make rule-based, developed countries more competitive, thus exerting pressures on relation-based LDCs and accelerating the transition of LDCs from relation-based to rule-based governance. Increasing ICT compatibility, in turn, will facilitate LDCs transition to rule-based governance. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Information support systems for problem solving

The occurrence in the literature of success stories dealing with (management) information systems is rare indeed. This paper addresses some of the possible factors that make it difficult to design and implement successful information (and decision support) systems. More specifically, we consider the role of problem formulation and specification, including goal setting, in the design of information systems.     

Information systems support for healthcare quality: Part II

In the second and final part of his series of quality management, healthcare information systems consultant Peter Spitzer, M.D., describes how I/S can support quality healthcare services by improving the care-delivery process and by providing the data needed for quality support, monitoring and management.     

Model for establishing theoretical targets at the shop floor level in specialty chemicals manufacturing organizations

The work in this paper introduces a model that focuses on three issues at the shop floor of specialty chemicals manufacturing. The three issues are cycle time of the process, production yield, and economic production capacity. This is in order to define theoretical performance targets that enable the process to operate with the highest possible output and minimum waste in terms of time, material, and resource. The basis for the proposed model is that the theoretical targets would be referenced alongside the actual process and results of will be compared to define performance gaps and identify improvement opportunities. Results from work in this paper will support benchmarking process, performance measurement, and also, the applicability of lean manufacturing on the shop floor of specialty chemical plants. This work has also demonstrated the proposed model as new effective tool to measure and benchmark performance of process plants.     

The impact of information technology on information asymmetry

While much research has been undertaken on the impact and consequences of information systems on direct users of the systems and on their organizations, comparatively little recent work has addressed the impact on users of the information. For instance, accounting is the most widespread quantitative information system in use and one which has been profoundly affected by information technology (IT). Yet, existing studies of the impact of IT on accounting focus only on accountants themselves and internal financial reporting and they ignore external users of accounting information. As a first step toward a broader perspective, this paper empirically examines the effect of IT use on the information asymmetry (IA) between managers and external users by contrasting the role of IT in internal and external reporting. The paper suggests that IA has been aggravated, and IT use has played a role in this exacerbation. The implication is that the effect of IT use in accounting is not confined to accountants and individual organizations but extends to external stakeholders.     

The use of group support systems in focus groups: Information technology meets qualitative research

This paper explores focus groups supported by group support systems (GSS) with anonymous interaction capability in two configurations: same time/same place and same time/different place. After reviewing the literature, we compare and contrast these anonymity-featured GSS-supported focus groups with traditional focus groups and discuss their benefits and limitations. We suggest directions for future research concerning GSS-supported focus groups with respect to technological implications (typing skills and connection speeds), national culture (high and low context; power distance), and lying behavior (adaptation of model of Hancock, J. T., Thom-Santelli, J., & Ritchie, T. (2004). Deception and design: The impact of communication technology on lying behavior. Proceedings of the 2004 conference on human factors in computing systems (pp. 129–134), whereby lying is a function of three design factors: synchronicity, recordability, and distributedness).     

Information systems support for healthcare quality: a comprehensive framework

Although management concepts for delivering quality products and services have been employed extensively in other industries, their inroads into healthcare have been comparatively slight. In the first of a two-part series, healthcare information systems consultant Peter Spitzer, M.D., sets forth a framework for defining high-quality healthcare delivery, and he tells how information systems can be put to work to achieve this goal.     

Evaluating business information systems: reflections on an empirical study

Abstract. A leading vendor of information technology (IT) systems commissioned the authors to investigate how its clients made their decision to acquire new systems, what benefits they expected to gain, and the kind of evaluation procedures used both before taking the decision to go ahead and subsequently when the systems were in operation. The 16 organizations participating in the study had all purchased major systems and were willing to talk frankly about their experiences. The results of the research have been extensively reported elsewhere. The purpose of this paper is to draw out the implications for IT management. The paper opens with a summary of the findings of the original research. The main part of the paper consists of six case studies from which the management issues are drawn out.     

Treasury management information systems and the contribution of information technology

Treasury management is a relatively new function in large corporations. It is a data-dependent activity requiring information systems support. Thus, many It-based products are available to treasurers. An exploratory study has revealed that corporate treasurers are concerned with five core activities in which they exploit a rich set of information sources. They appear to rely on personal and informal information processes as much as use more formal systems and It products. Paradoxically, most computer systems have focussed on external data collection where treasurers generally have developed their own effective intelligence networks. Conversely, internal data collection, which appears to be problematic in most corporations, so far has benefitted little from It. Treasurers' usage of It has been mainly confined to small, local or personal systems. These have been developed or acquired with scant involvement of in-house Mis departments. Better understanding of treasury managers' work and preferences therefore is a prerequisite for successful treasury Mis.     

Development of a simulation-based decision support system for controlling stochastic flexible job shop manufacturing systems

This paper describes a simulation-based decision support system (DSS) to production control of a stochastic flexible job shop (SFJS) manufacturing system. The controller design approach is built around the theory of supervisory control based on discrete-event simulation with an event–condition–action (ECA) real-time rule-based system. The proposed controller constitutes the framework of an adaptive controller supporting the co-ordination and co-operation relations by integrating a real-time simulator and a rule-based DSS. For implementing SFJS controller, the proposed DSS receives online results from simulator and identifies opportunities for incremental improvement of performance criteria within real-time simulation data exchange (SDX). A bilateral method for multi-performance criteria optimization combines a gradient based method and the DSS to control dynamic state variables of SFJS concurrently. The model is validated by some benchmark test problems.