AN INFORMATION SUPPORT SYSTEM FOR ENTERPRISE INTEGRATION

Many manufacturing organizations have embraced the philosophy of Simul taneous Engineering (SE) as a way of working in the highly volatile an d competitive business world of today. This has occurred because SE me thodologies are known to have improved quality, reduced time-to-market , provided greater customer satisfaction, minimized waste, and increas ed product reliability. Similarly, Business Process Re-engineering (BP R) has been conducted by numerous business enterprises in recent years . The objective of BPR is to bring about major breakthroughs in perfor mance in order to create a sustained competitive advantage. This is at tained by ensuring maximum customer satisfaction and eliminating nonva lue-added business activities. Often the issues surrounding the implem entation of information systems to support SE within a company are con sidered independently of any ongoing BPR activities. This paper will d iscuss how a computer-based information system previously developed to support the Design for Manufacture (DFM) aspect of SE can be extended to support other business functions with the ultimate aim of achievin g total Enterprise Integration (EI). A methodology that combines a Com puter-Aided Engineering (CAE) framework and an information system arch itecture, to guide this extension through a BPR initiative, will be in troduced. A case study, showing how the information system was extende d to provide increased competitiveness of product tenders, is included to illustrate the proposed methodology.