OPTIMISATION IN MIS

Optimisation in MIS

Optimisation in MIS

Introduction

This paper is based on the topic of optimisation in management information system. The main objective was to ensure an optimal environment of IS tools to end users and management in term of front office, engineering software's, data management, documentation, infrastructure and organisation. The ultimate goal remains to vastly improve the costs of the Information System, the technical knowledge of engineers, the field experience sharing and finally the quality and efficiency of Operations.

This paper describes the strategy, information technology, technical applications and process used to address the optimisation of an efficient and adapted Information System for an organisation.

By definition, the term IS is not an alternative name for IT (Anthony, 2005). The use of the word system indicates that the users are a part of the information system. At a more abstract level, an IS can be imagined, designed, or proposed without any technological reference. The IS is a part of a larger social system composed of individuals and groups. In their social lives, individuals, groups, or business units experience information needs whose satisfaction would enable them to solve organisational problems. These organisational problems may be located at the level of the task, process, organisation, or industry (Bocij, Chaffy, 2005). Information needs pertaining to a problem can be formalised into a requirements analysis. In this sense, an IS is an answer to information requirements for a particular problem; the IS, combined with new procedures, processes, competencies, and resources will lead to new capabilities that will solve the identified problem with the help of information technology (Chen, 2004).

In order for a problem to be solved, an IS must be developed or adapted in accordance with the requirements analysis. Approaches and methods for developing an IS have changed with the appearance of new IT capabilities. Each IS development project requires the explicit and formal expression of a stated problem (Christodoulos, 2008). That formalisation expressed through various approaches and formal languages leads to design and implementation phases.

Discussion

Optimization forms part of a larger repertoire of techniques in the field of operations research or management science that includes probability theory, queuing theory, games theory, decision analysis, and simulation. Operations research (in the United States) or operational research (in the United Kingdom) is an interdisciplinary branch of applied mathematics that deals with optimization of the performance of a system.

A typical situation requiring the application of optimization involves the manager of a business call center who faces a problem such as the following. A client service group has 50 call center staff members. On an average, each executive handles 800 calls per work session. For each staff member added to the group, the call-handling capacity per executive drops by 10 calls. The manager wonders how many staff members should be added to the existing group so that the total call-handling capacity of the group is maximized. The solution to this problem requires the technique of optimization. (The solution is to add 15 staff members to have a call-handling capacity of 42,250 ...