Design of user interfaces for job shop environment

User-computer interface development has gone through rapid development in r ecent years. These developments, however have not yet been fully implemente d in management information system (MIS) design for job shop manufacturing situations. Most of the commercially available MISs are operationally infle xible and do not support management in report generation and decision makin g, particularly in job shops. This paper describes a framework in developin g system-user interfaces for job shop manufacturing situations to highlight how a generic information system can be made more useful to managerial dec ision making. Object-oriented programming technology has been used to provi de flexible access to information stored by a generic MIS. Twenty interfaci ng programs have been developed. For illustration, only three of those inte rface programs relating to generation of strategic level management reports are discussed here.