An integrated business intelligence framework: Closing the gap between IT support for management and for production

Abstract

Information Technology (IT) support in the manufacturing sector has reached a watershed with digital components beginning to permeate all products and processes. The classical divide between “technical” IT and “business” IT begins to blend more and more. Data from design, manufacturing, product use, service, and support is made available across the complete product lifecycle and supply chain. This goes hand in hand with the diffusion of sensor and identification technology and the availability of relevant information streams on the customer side—leading to unprecedented amounts of data. The challenge is to purposefully apply emerging BI concepts for a comprehensive decision support that integrates product and shop floor design phases, the steering and design of operational industrial processes, as well as big and unstructured data sources. This chapter brings those pieces together in order to derive an integrated framework for management and decision support in the manufacturing sector.