1995

Seilonen, Ilkka

Data management is an important part of the information processing needed in production management. The increasing need to enhance co-operation between functional and organisational groups of production management requires improved sharing of information in management activities. The integration of data management establishes one opportunity for this in conjunction with business process rationalisation. It also creates a need to develop methods for data management systematisation and management of distributed data banks. The report discusses the integration of data management in production management from several aspects of systems engineering. These include data management requirements, various design decisions in data management, and the engineering process of data management development. Design considerations here include interrelated designs of data storage, data administration schemes and data models. The novel approaches to these questions underlining integration are discussed and contrasted with current solutions. The main problems in design of integrated data management and some essential approaches to solving them are explained and assessed. The meaning of data management architecture, federation of data management subsystems and development of generic information services is considered a significant issue in the field of data administration design. In the area of data modelling, important topics should be model integration alternatives and high level conceptual modelling in conjunction with object-oriented design and implementation techniques. Engineering approaches that support these issues are also of primary concern.