Concept and implementation of an integrated decision support system (IDSS) for capital-intensive farming

During the evolutionary process of developing software for management tasks, the need for integration became more and more obvious. This paper discusses how integrated information processing can be accomplished to support the managerial functions. Based on the concepts of control theory principal schemes of comparison possibilities and deviation analysis are shown. The philosophy behind the design of an integrated decision support system (IDSS), the on-farm implementation, and the integration problems of hardware and software are discussed. The applied IDSS consists of several planning and controlling models. These models and the linkages between them are described in detail.