IT Infrastructures in Manufacturing: Insights from Seven Case Studies
IT Infrastructures in Manufacturing: Insights from Seven Case Studies
IT Infrastructures in Manufacturing: Insights from Seven Case Studies
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Günther et al. <strong>IT</strong> <strong>Infrastructures</strong> <strong>in</strong> Manufactur<strong>in</strong>g<br />
Note that MIP deploys functionality on all four hardware tiers <strong>in</strong> a hierarchical structure. Software on each level processes<br />
data as it traverses the system hierarchy. With this architectural choice MIP achieves high performance and scalability. This<br />
is further supported by us<strong>in</strong>g event driven communication for report<strong>in</strong>g alerts and status changes. MIP’s demand for system<br />
reliability is not directly supported by architecture. The PDC poses a s<strong>in</strong>gle po<strong>in</strong>t of failure. However, redundant clusters for<br />
host<strong>in</strong>g the PDC overcome this problem.<br />
<strong>Case</strong> COO<br />
COO is a manufacturer of eng<strong>in</strong>e coolers with several plants worldwide. The <strong>IT</strong> solutions at COO's plants are not unified.<br />
COO aims to change this situation by employ<strong>in</strong>g a PDC system <strong>in</strong> each plant. The foremost required properties of the system<br />
are listed below:<br />
Openness/Adaptiveness<br />
Support for event driven communication<br />
Lightweight and simple<br />
Note that the current system design is denom<strong>in</strong>ated by the need for a light weight and simple solution. Today every plant of<br />
COO handles data acquisition differently. However, some similarities can be identified throughout the isolated solutions. We<br />
outl<strong>in</strong>e these similarities <strong>in</strong> Error! Reference source not found., which gives an overview of the <strong>IT</strong> system.<br />
COO does not employ a dedicated system for production data acquisition. Each plant captures, logs, and backs up data <strong>from</strong><br />
the device tier locally. However, the top management needs aggregated reports <strong>from</strong> the plant floor to support strategic<br />
decisions. Currently COO employs two solutions for report<strong>in</strong>g. Workers at some plants manually create and email reports to<br />
the headquarters. Other plants use a self implemented data base tool for enter<strong>in</strong>g reports <strong>in</strong> a central MS Access database.<br />
Employees at the headquarters use the mailed reports and the data <strong>from</strong> the MS Access database for creat<strong>in</strong>g MS PowerPo<strong>in</strong>t<br />
presentations for the top management.<br />
User<br />
<strong>in</strong>terface<br />
Mach<strong>in</strong>e<br />
term<strong>in</strong>al<br />
Legend:<br />
Device Tier Edge Tier Middle Tier<br />
Back-end Tier<br />
Production<br />
Protocol on<br />
Paper<br />
Mach<strong>in</strong>e<br />
PLC<br />
DB<br />
client<br />
1 PLC<br />
1<br />
n software n<br />
PC<br />
n<br />
email<br />
client<br />
Hardware Software<br />
Manual entry<br />
n<br />
Logg<strong>in</strong>g<br />
Program<br />
PC<br />
Proceed<strong>in</strong>gs of the Fifteenth Americas Conference on Information Systems, San Francisco, California August 6 th -9 th 2009 5<br />
1<br />
1<br />
Backup<br />
Program<br />
Local<br />
server<br />
1<br />
Database<br />
(MS Access)<br />
Central<br />
DB<br />
server<br />
1<br />
email<br />
client<br />
PC<br />
Power-<br />
Po<strong>in</strong>t<br />
SAP<br />
(ERP)<br />
SAP<br />
server<br />
Automatic data exchange Software runs on …<br />
Figure 4. Deployment diagram of the software and hardware at COO.
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