افزودن پشتیبانی تصمیم گیری با اجزای نرم افزار استاندارد قابل استفاده مجدد به سیستم جریان کار

Industrial information systems like Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems are increasingly comprehensive and integrated. Nevertheless, satisfying all the user requirements regarding information processing or decision support within a unique tool seems still to be unrealistic. As a consequence, being able to quickly provide the users with additional pieces of software for supporting specific decisions remains more than ever a topic of interest. Specific developments take time, are costly, have usually low reliability and are often poorly integrated with the main information system. In order to address these drawbacks, we suggest a structure and the first elements of a toolbox aimed at allowing an easier development of additional pieces of information/decision support system (DSS) by reuse of standard software components. This toolbox allows the implementation of workflow and groupware facilities and the communication between modules is achieved through a database which provides the integration with the main information system. The first decision support modules developed include an expert system generator, a neural network simulator, a simplex module and a Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) module. Examples of applications developed using this toolbox are described, and a development methodology is suggested.

Industrial information systems are nowadays mainly implemented through Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems where a comprehensive view addresses all the functions of the company. ERP systems are often considered as providing answers for all the users’ needs, and their implementation usually leads to the prohibition of any internal developments, considered as hard to maintain and communicate with the main information system. Nevertheless, it is recognised that these systems are not panaceas. The arrival of supply chain management tools like the Advanced Planning Systems (APS) requires ERP systems to be considered as integration frameworks, on which different dedicated systems could be plugged-in according to the users’ needs [1]. Large companies can afford the development of efficient additional systems which can be connected to the ERPs. The integration of banking applications developed on MS-Word™ and MS-Excel™ with a main information system developed on UNIX through a set of CORBA Business Objects is, for instance, reported in [2]. Nevertheless, such developments are time and money consuming, and trying to decrease the development effort may lead to a software, difficult to maintain and to evolve. These drawbacks are intrinsic characteristics of unique developments and are particularly important for SMEs, in which the required resources (time, money and skilled developers) are often critical. The reuse of standard software components (like the CORBA Business Objects) may help to decrease the effort while preserving the quality of the obtained software. This idea, first introduced by Alexander [3] in architecture with the concept of design patterns has been extensively used in computer science [4]. The object paradigm, through the concept of encapsulation, has brought the idea of reuse from theory to practice. Architectures like object management architecture (OMA) [5] or open system architecture for CIM (CIMOSA) [6] have been suggested to facilitate the integration of reusable components. Reuse-centred development experiments have, for instance, been performed in areas such as the design of production activity control systems [7], [8] and [9] or in more general business activities [10]. We suggest in this article the reuse of standard components as a means for developing an additional information system providing decision support facilities. Our aim is to better satisfy specific user requirements while saving time, money and skill required to develop the system. The challenges and requirements of such a system is developed in Section 2, while some market solutions with their drawbacks are described in Section 3. The system architecture and the first modules which have been developed are suggested in Section 4, and a methodology to develop an application using this environment is described in Section 5. Examples of applications developed with the suggested toolbox are presented in Section 6.

The implementation of standard decisional processes promoted by ERP systems has emphasised the need for smaller additional DSSs, integrated with the main information system provided by the ERP. The reuse of standard software modules combining decision support, data processing and workflow facilities may help to easily design such highly customisable applications, rapidly and at lower costs. Our first developments and tests have shown the feasibility of a toolbox allowing such reuse. Our on-going research has now three main objectives: validation of the already existing modules on new cases, development of new versions of the existing modules and of new modules, and improvement of the methodology for an application development. The toolbox that we intend to obtain will have its full interest for SMEs whose strength often lies in specific decisional processes that are usually poorly supported by standard systems.