1996 Electronics Industry Environmental Roadmap - Civil and ...

Information and Knowledge Systems
common reference set to support communication among the various participants who are
engaged in environmental decision making.
Assessment of Commercially Available Information Management Tools: The project
should then focus on identifying and assessing commercially available information
management tools to support the objectives of the data warehouse or Web site. This
would include capability of the tools to handle the volume of data that might reasonably
be required, adaptability of the tools into integrated frameworks, compatibility of the
tools with other technology computer-aided design tools that may be in use, and other key
items. Tools to be considered should include browsing tools, data migration/consistency
tools, graphical user interfaces (GUIs), data mining tools, agent-based tools, and others.
3.6 Conclusion
Ultimately, the issues associated with effective data for decision-making may well prove to be
less those of developing data than locating data that already exist and establishing a coherent
framework in which that data can be verified and made accessible to a wide variety of users with
valid reasons for access. The information management tools available today, while not entirely
satisfactory, could provide a significant starting point for building a new process.
Such a process would not stop at simply making data accessible for many users. There exists a
requisite next step of automating the process of analyzing, composing, and presenting pertinent
information to each user, tailored specifically to each user’s individual needs. It is not enough to
generate, find, retrieve, and make information available. This information must be further preprocessed
and presented within a framework that will not only conduct an information search,
but will also present the retrieved data to suit the contextual needs that motivated the search in
the first place.
Once the electronics industry environmental information infrastructure has been established, the
information can prove useful for the wide variety of other information technology-based
applications that quality, efficiency, and productivity efforts demand. Data can be extracted to
support design for environment and computer-aided design efforts; industry-wide benchmarks
can provide data to support process control and monitoring; market data can assist manufacturers
direct and manage end-of-life products by targeting companies that will accept, remanufacture,
recycle, or dispose of used equipment. Table 3-2 lists the needs for information and knowledge
systems identified during this roadmapping exercise.
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