Proceedings of the 6th WSEAS International Conference on Robotics, Control and Manufacturing Technology, Hangzhou, China, April 16-18,

2006 (pp119-124)

Development of An Information System Integration Framework for the Manufacturing Business

LI KUANG and JAMES GAO School of Industrial and Manufacturing Science Cranfield University Cranfield, Bedford, MK43 0AL, UK http://www.cranfield.ac.uk
Abstract: Information systems play a critical role in today's manufacturing business, and the need for enterprise-wide integrated information system has grown rapidly, as isolated information systems represent inadequate business solutions. Although there are different integration approaches reported in the published literature, in todays industrial practice, most of the information system integration projects are still done on a trial-and-error basis owing to the lack of practical and feasible integration methodologies. In previous paper, a manufacturing information systems integration framework has been developed. This paper reports the development of the computer application for the integration framework, and a case study has been used to illustrate how to apply the framework in the real-world environment. Key-Words: Implementation; Information technology; Information systems integration; Manufacturing strategy.

1 Introduction
Information systems play a critical role in today's manufacturing business, and the need for enterprise-wide integrated information system has grown rapidly, as isolated information systems represent inadequate business solutions. In order to successfully and profitably operate in rapidly changing markets, we need to integrate different information systems such as enterprise resource planning system (ERP), supply chain management (SCM), and customer relationship management (CRM) in a company (Chang, 2000). The development of information technology and information systems provides competitive advantages to manufacturing organisations in the global business environment. The traditional methods of developing information systems, primarily centred around requirements of functional unit, mainly departments, has led to a variety of discrete islands of automation (Reynolds, 1997). Integrating manufacturing information systems is a logical step towards increasing value of information systems and providing a competitive advantage to manufacturing companies (Coronado Mondragon, 2002; Lin and Nagalingam, 2000). This paper reports the development of a corporate strategy driven framework to integrate manufacturing information systems, and gives the details of the development of the computer application for the integration framework. A case study has been used to

illustrate how to apply the framework in the real-world environment.

2 Investigation of the Industrial Requirements

Although manufacturing companies have benefited from integrated information systems, some disappointing results from the heavy investment in the large information systems are an obvious signal to the companies to suggest there lacks a sound framework to align business strategy, information flow, and the design of integrated information systems. An investigation has been conducted to find out what are the industrial requirements for the design of an integration framework, which is the first step of answering the initial research questions as raised by in the previous stage of this research. The investigation has been conducted in two stages: 1) collecting background information and 2) interview survey. Because of the complexity of the research domain a variety of data sources as background information have been collected and used in this research to allow for a richer insight of the research context. Interview survey is the main part of this investigation. Interview survey data was collected by means of a survey of 14 UK and European based manufacturing organisations from differing industrial sectors and differing sizes. The main data collection method used took the form of a detailed face-to-face interview with experienced

Proceedings of the 6th WSEAS International Conference on Robotics, Control and Manufacturing Technology, Hangzhou, China, April 16-18, 2006 (pp119-124)

practitioners. Following design requirements are confirmed in this survey: 1. The investigation found that there is a need to develop a generic integration methodology to assist manufacturing companies to integrate their information systems. 2. The proposed integration methodology should be a comprehensive and structured framework to assist manufacturing companies to integrate their information systems. 3. From interviewees point of the view, the proposed integration methodology should offer users with step-by-step guidelines for integration their information systems. 4. It helps users in a more structured way to link business strategy to the process of integrating manufacturing information systems and its evaluation. 5. The proposed integration methodology should offer users with technique to identify bottlenecks in the integration process, and to help to solve the related issues. 6. Project management is another issue raised in the survey. 7. The computerised application of the proposed framework is the preferred.

3 The Integration Framework

In the integration framework, integration is not treated as a combination of discrete techniques developed for a specific application, but as a new development
2. Function Integration Stage A list of software components Decomposing and mapping analysis Integration plan

process of information systems for a specific business purpose. The framework focuses on data created in the business functions and the integration of information flow across the business functions, hence the main information functions were the basis of the description of the present business functions and the respective integration of these functions. With the aim of providing a methodology to integrate the manufacturing information systems, the integration framework has been divided into five stages with fifteen steps to give a step-by-step procedure for the analysis and implementation. The stages should be followed sequentially, as each stage requires the information and analysis input from stage that precedes it, as shown in Figure 1. The first stage is the integration requirement stage. This stage focuses on identifying manufacturing strategy, investigation of information systems and manufacturing environments, and captures the key integration requirements. The second stage is function integration stage. Once manufacturing strategy and key integration requirements have been identified, it is required to develop the information system integration plan based on the requirements derived from manufacturing strategy. The Decomposing-and-Mapping method, which is originally from Suhs engineering axiomatic design approach (Suh, 1990), has been utilised here in a novel setting to design an integrated manufacturing information system. An integration plan will be produced against each key integration requirements at the end of this stage.
4. Optimisation Stage Data approach optimisation Project optimisation

3. Data Integration Stage Data map Data flow assessment

Physical Manufacturing Systems 1. Integration Requirements Stage Identify manufacturing strategy Information systems investigation Manufacturing processes investigation Identify key integration requirements
Manufacturing strategy

Changes in information systems

Manufacturing Enterprise
Human Resources and Organisation
Impacts on manufacturing systems and organisation

Manufacturing environment

Information Systems

5. Implementation Stage Risk management Specification Human resource Project management

Figure 1. The Proposed Framework for Information System Integration

Proceedings of the 6th WSEAS International Conference on Robotics, Control and Manufacturing Technology, Hangzhou, China, April 16-18, 2006 (pp119-124)

The third stage of this framework aims to design an integrated manufacturing information system by using the data analysis techniques. It is required to validate the integration plan with the consideration of data flows in the information systems at this stage. The tasks are to investigate the information flows in the integration plan, and identify any information flow bottleneck at the integration plan. Based upon the data structure and information flows of the manufacturing information systems, the specification for the integrated system can be created. The Data Flow Diagram (DFD) and Logical Data Model (LDM) are the main tools to analyse the information within the system. The fourth stage is integration optimisation stage. In this research, variant tools are used to optimise the resource allocation in achieving the strategic goals of the integrating manufacturing information systems. One of the difficulties during the integration process is how to balance the different contributions of individual software components and the investment. The goal programming techniques are utilised to propose the best solution according to the set criteria. Whilst appreciating this difference, the proposed method considered all software components and their inter-dependencies to propose an optimal solution relative to the business objectives. The fifth stage, integration implementation stage, consists of planning and performing the actual implementation of the integration project, including risk management, specification, human resource management, and the project management.

Module, Optimisation Module, and Implementation Module are shown in Figure 2.

MANUFACTURING
INFORMATION SYSTEMS

M ANUFACTURING
STRATEGY

The Integration Requirement Module

CAMISI Database

The Function Integration Module

ERP Environment

The Data Integration Module

ERP Database

The Optimization Module

MS Database

The Implementation Module

INTEGRATED MANUFACTURING
INFORMATION SYSTEMS

Figure 2. The Structure of the Prototype System The application system displays the modules in the tree-structure of Window environment is shown in Figure 3. User interface is Graphical User Interface, as shown in Figure 4. The followings are some of the core characteristics of the computer application system: The computer application system is a novel and generic system that can be used for other applications; There are five modules in the system; It provides the capacity and capability to generate comprehensive integration planning for the integration process; The computer application system automatically extracts the information about software structure and database structure of the ERP system, this provides an efficient and logical way of investigating the enterprise information system;

4 Development and Evaluation of the Computer Application

This section reports the development of the computer application for the integration framework and the evaluation of the framework.

4.1 Computer application development

The framework discussed in the previous section has been developed within an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. The main part of the computer application was developed based upon a Baan ERP environment which is installed on the Unix server. Some parts of the prototype system were located in a Microsoft Window server, and can be accessed through the main interface. The prototype system is located in a Local Area Network (LAN). Users can access the prototype through the LAN. The five modules of the prototype system, i.e., Integration Requirements Module, Function Integration Design Module, Data Integration

Proceedings of the 6th WSEAS International Conference on Robotics, Control and Manufacturing Technology, Hangzhou, China, April 16-18, 2006 (pp119-124)

Figure 3. Screenshot of the Application System

Figure 4. Graphical User Interface of the Computer Application The computer application system uses decomposing-and-mapping approach to assure the strategic requirements are properly satisfied in the integrated information system;

Proceedings of the 6th WSEAS International Conference on Robotics, Control and Manufacturing Technology, Hangzhou, China, April 16-18, 2006 (pp119-124)

The computer application system uses data analysis techniques to enable the systems to be integrated in a proper manner; The system contained an optimisation mechanism to assure the best possible plan is selected; The system has been implemented on Unix server-based network system. The network is based on open network architecture, and contained Unix server, Microsoft Window file server, and web server. The network can be accessed through the internet. The main part of the prototype is at the UNIX server. However, this can be ported to other platforms if necessary. Some of the documents are in Microsoft server, which can be accessed through the main user interface; It used Baan ERP, one of leading ERP package, as programming development environment; and The user interface adopts a Microsoft Windows style environment, providing mouse control, cut and paste facilities.

4.2 Evaluation of the computer application

An application has been carried out and tested in an UK rail transportation company. The company intends to offer customers a complete range of attractive, modular rolling stock, support services, signalling and total rail systems. Its mission is to be in a position to be the single source providing fast, efficient and reliable solutions for rail transport needs. An integration project in the sales and marketing department of the company has been used to demonstrate how to use the framework and prototype system. The sales and marketing department of the company plays a pivotal role in the business. Integrating the parts tendering process in the information systems is the main goal of this project. The parts tendering is the most difficult job in the sales and marketing department. There are five people employed in the department to handle this process, including the customer enquiries, purchasing and scheduling of the production order. And even that, occasionally there were mistakes in the order scheduling and parts purchasing due to the human error. The management hoped that an integrated information system would improve the quality of the parts, reduce human error, and reduce the costs. This eventually leads to high quality products and services. After identifying the integration requirement, the first step is to investigate the information systems. A list of all software components were extracted from the Baan ERP system by running the software. The next step is to use decomposing-and-mapping to analyse the system, and to generate an integration plan. In this case study,

the project team was using the tool of the prototype system to capture information, which they considered to be an important reference aid for their decision making. In the decomposing-and-mapping analysis, the integration requirement of Parts Tendering is defined as at level 1. It decomposed into level 2. The functions are mapped with corresponding software components in the manufacturing information systems. New software components are needed from the initial analysis. In the Data Integration Stage, the project team aimed at identifying any information flow bottleneck at the integration plan. The design of the data model and their relationships are extracted from the system after running the application. The proposed integration process involved not only software, but also networking, new computer hardware, training to the staff, and even some changes on the business procedure. From the data integration analysis, three integration bottlenecks were identified. They are Enter Customer Sales Enquiry process, Tendering Decision process, and Process Production Order process. The detail analysis also shows the causes of the integration bottleneck. For example, it suggests that the problems for bottleneck of Tendering Decision are i) it is a new created Baan session, and has some new tables; ii) it needs to process high volume data; iii) the programming for the new session would be very complicated; and iv) it has networking issue. Once it went through the data integration stage, it is time to determine how to optimise the resource to achieve the best result for the integration project. The proposed budget of 150,000 for the project could not be satisfied fully by the top management of the company. The project team needed to consider the gained benefits and reduced costs, then make a decision on the financial resources allocation for each sub-projects based on optimized investment return. Software application, which contain a series of Microsoft word documents developed under the Implementation Module, are used to help the project management and implementation of integration. On successful implementing the integrated information system, the staff on controlling Parts Tendering had been reduced from 5 to 3. The company also found error made during the process has been reduced significantly. Customer order delivery on-time has been improved to new high level.

5 Conclusion
This research project proposed, implemented and tested a novel framework for enterprise information system integration. In the previous paper, it proposed a

Proceedings of the 6th WSEAS International Conference on Robotics, Control and Manufacturing Technology, Hangzhou, China, April 16-18, 2006 (pp119-124)

integration framework to provide practical guidelines, which includes the five stages and fifteen steps within the framework, to give users a comprehensive solution. This paper reports the development of the computer application for the integration framework, and a case study has been used to illustrate how to apply the framework in the real-world environment. The use of example application of the prototype software suggests that the proposed framework is valid and can bring real benefits to business. References: [1]Chang, H. H., (2000), The Implementation and Integration of Information Systems for Production Management in Manufacturing: an Empirical Study, Int. Journal of computer Integrated Manufacturing, Vol. 13, pp. 369 387. [2]Coronado Mondragon, A. E., 2002. Determining information systems contribution to manufacturing agility for SME's in dynamic business environments, PhD Thesis, Brunel University, UK. [3]Lin G. C. I., and Nagalingam, S. V., 2000. CIM justification and optimisation, Taylor & Francis, London, UK. [4]Reynolds, K. A., 1997. A process to aid information systems integration, PhD Thesis, Cranfield University, Cranfield, UK. [5]Suh, N.P., 1990. The principles of design. Oxford University Press, New York, USA.