Design of Industrial Information Systems by Thomas O. Boucher and Ali Yalcin

Most modern texts on information systems tend to treat the design of industrial information systems in one of two ways. The first type of book provides a superficial treatment of the subject. Such books provide elementary descriptions of such tasks as data modeling, providing simplified examples of entity relationship diagrams and simple query language examples. They often do not incorporate the complexities of the information system design process, or the very real complexities often encountered in modeling product data itself. The second type of book provides a much more formal treatment of the subject of information systems design. Good examples of this type of book include Fundamentals of Database Systems by Elmasri and Navathe (2006), and An Introduction to Database Systems by Date (2003). Although this second type thoroughly and formally describes the tools and underlying mathematics on which such tools are based, their treatment of information systems design is often limited to a narrow domain. For example, some such texts focus on the data modeling aspects of the systems design effort with complete discussions of such concepts and tools such as entity relationship diagrams, the relational model, the Structured Query Language (SQL) but fail to place appropriate emphasis on functional modeling workflow, modeling or the full information system design process. Other books in this category mistakenly delve deeply into the design of database management systems, a topic more appropriate for advanced graduate courses in computer science. Unfortunately, prior to the publication of Design of Industrial Information Systems, none of the books in either of the above categories provided robust examples of industrial data and applications, nor did they provide a comprehensive approach to the design of a complete information system from beginning to end. Design of Industrial Information Systems meticulously fulfills this needed coverage. Boucher and Yalcin’s excellent offering may serve as a text for a one semester course in information systems design or database design at the advanced undergraduate level or at the first-year graduate level. The target audience is industrial engineering or engineering management students. The book covers the breadth of tools used to design modern information systems, complete with thorough and ample examples, exercises and case studies (both in the book and in a web-based format) as applied to discrete manufacturing, process manufacturing and the service industry. Indeed, the major strength of Design of Industrial Information Systems is the wide practical breadth of technologies and tools it covers. For example, the authors describe, from start to finish, all of the tasks that must be carried out, and the tools that are most often used to design a modern industrial database system. These descriptions culminate in a detailed case study fully discussing the development of an information system to support a manufacturing process. In addition, the book covers both traditional tools used to design information systems (e.g., IDEF0, data flow diagrams, entity-relationship diagrams, IDEF1X), as well as more recently introduced cutting edge technologies (e.g., UML, ASP, XML) appropriate for modern web-enabled architectures. The breadth of topics forces some brevity in several key technology areas. For example, the authors provide only an introductory treatment of data modeling principles, SQL and normalization of data. Given the complexity of data that is used to represent manufactured products, a much more thorough discussion of these topics would better prepare the reader for modeling complex data types, and for designing a large, multi-user industrial information system that is robust and free of update anomalies. Fortunately, detailed information on these topics is available from a number of other sources that a course instructor could include in associated readings. Chapter 1 describes industrial information systems and provides a conceptual model for organization of a manufacturing or service information system. The authors distinguish among enterprise resource planning systems, manufacturing execution systems, and control systems, and describe each of the typical application modules that will comprise these types of information systems. In turn, this distinction provides the basis for a distributed architecture of information systems and its relationship to the physical organization of the industrial enterprise (factory floor, plant level, distribution to/from customers/suppliers), and includes discussion of the network architecture that will support the industrial information architecture.