Capabilites required for an Information System
The General Electric is an American based multinational company with its headquarters in Boston, Massachusetts. The four sectors where the company primarily provides services in are building, moving, curing and powering. The purpose of this report is to provide an overview of the Industrial Internet project of General Electric that would provide an interconnection between the machines used for industrial purposes, the data collected over the course of daily operations and the Internet. The system must be adept at providing connectivity and support for the industrial and product related applications, which are used in the four service sectors of the company. The system must also be competent enough to provide monitoring of remote system operations and even survive working conditions that range from secure data environments to harsh operational conditions (MIT Sloan Management Review. 2018). The report contains elaborations on Conceptual Architecture, Component Model, Logical Architecture and Operation Model. These sections provide details about the possible structure on Industrial internet by providing various diagrams such as System Context Diagram, Architecture Overview Diagram, Logical Architecture View Diagram, Component Relationship Diagram, Component Relationship Diagram, Component Interaction Diagram and Logical Operational Model Diagram.
The following section provides details about the Industrial Internet project of General Electric and different diagrams that follow the patterns of Enterprise Information Architecture Reference Architecture (EIA RA) (Giachetti, 2016).
Conceptual Architecture can be defined as a form of architecture that forms the fundamental part of an organization. Conceptualism is utilized by the architecture where the ideas and the concepts are far rooted into the architecture of the organization. This particular design can be applied to obtain the overview of the scenario, which describes the arrangements of the project related to Industrial Internet (Buede and Miller 2016). The system context diagram and architecture overview diagram can best elaborate Conceptual Architecture.
System Context Diagram can be defined as a tool to methodologically assess and evaluate the shortcomings between different business operations. Events generated from different external systems are generated from the system context diagrams and affects every employee within an organization as well as external factors and systems. The organization’s objectives and standards are well established and better understood through this diagram, which helps in demonstrating the various segments of the organization. Different business operations of General Electric are thus depicted with the help of the following system context diagram.
Figure 1: System Context Diagram for GE
General Electric – An Introduction
(Source: Created by Author)
Data Warehouse
Every bit of information about an organization is stored in the data warehouse. The employees and the management of General Electrics can access the data contained in the warehouse for various business operations (Da Da Xu 2014).
The department of Human Resources is a vital part of any organization and helps in employee management and different other tasks that are critical to the business of an organization (Whetzel and Wheaton 2016). The different responsibilities of the HR department include recruiting suitable people keeping the organization’s best interests in mind. They are also responsible for the training of new employees and devising different learning and development activities for the existing employees to improve productivity.
Supply Chain
The management of the supply chain has the responsibility to maintain records of distributers and suppliers along with updating the stock details from time to time (Christopher 2016). The stock management is needed to serve the clients of the company and keep them happy as without information about the stock, the company might commit to something that they cannot deliver.
Products and Services
Different products and services are offered by general Electric and that information is managed by the products and services system. Any detail or information of a new product or service about to be launched into the market is maintained by this system (Goetsch and Davis 2014). This system also oversees various plans for supply of products and their distribution strategy.
Finance/Admin
The department of finance is responsible for generation, collection and management of revenue. This department also develops different plans that boosts the overall revenue growth and even provides market analysis to capture and target new as well as untapped sectors of the market.
Customer
The customer base of an organization is the most important aspect as without them the organization would cease to exist. The organization provides them with various products and services as a part of the business operations, which generates revenue.
The Architecture Overview Diagram presents the basic building blocks that are required to develop the Industrial Internet project General Electric. This diagram helps in describing the most fundamental and functional capabilities of the business operations of General Electric. The architecture overview diagram is highly customizable to suit the interests of each organization and their business. To achieve the desired goal, there is some need to define the needed capabilities for the project of General Electric
- Predix is a software developed by General Electric that serves as a tool for real-time sensing and acquisition of data from different operational scenarios (Digital 2018).
- Enhanced analysis of the complete data that would help in development in the project development process.
- Predictive and superior business analysis that would forecast the future market and develop various business plans accordingly.
- The management and the entire customer base of General Electric needs to understand the utilities and the importance of an Industrial Internet. This internet would significantly help General Electric to connect all of its operations under a single system for better information management, operation control and its management.
Industrial Internet Project of General Electric
Figure 2: Architecture Overview Diagram
(Source: Created by the Author)
The diagram presented above helps in giving an overview of the proposed design for the Industrial internet project.
The human resource department, the finance department and the data warehouse are the three major parts of the diagram.
- The human resource department organizes goals and objectives for the General electric project and helps the employees and the organization to get accustomed to the new technology. Different aspects of the project are evaluated and this department then deploys the required amount of work force.
- The finance department oversees the financial aspect of the project. This department does the financial planning and the capital investment required for the Industrial Internet project of General Electric (Ahmad and Brosio 2015). This department oversees all the maintenance cost and the cost development cost.
- The transaction of data and information is maintained by the data warehouse (Stein and Morrison 2014). Here, the data history is maintained along with ensuring superior data quality and addition of value to business operations.
Logical Architecture is defined as the source of technical functionality that is delivered as per the requirement of the business overview. The crucial parts of the operation and their inter connections of different departments of GE are evaluated with the help of this architecture.
This diagram helps in demonstrating the effectiveness of the value adding necessities. These necessities associated with different end users and their requirements that gives a suitable idea describing the overall operation procedures of General Electric and their Industrial Internet project. The EDW or the Enterprise Data Warehouse is used by the company and applied to the project for broadcasting and data input that constitutes of the business knowledge. The department of Enterprise Architecture (EA) helps in determining user requirements, creation along with evaluation of plans, defining the budget and different collection of data related to the Industrial Internet project of General Electric. Demonstrating and accomplishing the different goals as well as objectives of the workforce is the responsibility of Enterprise Architecture. The financial department has the responsibility to develop and implement financial strategies that would in turn help in help in identifying annual revenue in terms of profit and loss and the various other costs associated with production and operation. They analyse the major dangers and difficulties in the implemented and existing financial strategies as well as the ones that will be developed in the future. The products and services department organizes and develops various plans for the supply and distribution of the products and services offered by General Electric (Laudon and Laudon 2016). The following Logical Architecture View Diagram provides detailed information on General Electric and various operations and associations.
Figure 3: Logical Architecture Overview Diagram
(Source: Created by Author)
Component model fundamentally consists of the real components or parts, which will promote and deliver different business operations and various functionality as depicted in the logical model below. The model primarily consists of naming and implementation of different components along with its deploy and customization (Schwalbe, 2015). The related important modules, their implementation, the software required and the various entity that are vital to the project re shown in the diagram.
Conceptual Architecture
The Component Relationship Diagram elaborates the different relationships between the various components related to General Electric that would help in developing the project for Industrial internet. The different components depicted in the diagram can be used to understand the functionality and the system’s work process developed by the developer of the system (Whittle and Myrick 2016). The diagram is the aggregation of the logical view diagram and then architecture overview diagram that helps in providing the connection between the different components of the system. The diagram assists in developing the desired outcomes for the Industrial Internet project.
Figure 4: Component Relationship Diagram
(Source: Week 4 lecture slides)
Component Interaction Diagram represents the vital sections of any organization. It is shown as a pictorial representation, which can be utilized for different business purposes. The diagram is designed in such a way that it helps to depict in detail about the different objects and entities within General Electric, which would help to develop the project for Industrial Internet (Peppard and Ward 2016). The diagram shown below would help to visualize the interaction between the various components that has been discussed above.
Figure 5: Component Interaction Diagram
(Source: Week 4 lecture slides)
The subsequent phase to that of a component model is the operational model. The component model distributes the various components of the system upon different geographically located nodes. This model can be further subcategorized into different functional as well as non-functional models that help in producing a clear picture about the different nodes that are distributed geographically. The requirements of the client is considered as a top priority as the operational model serves as a conceptual model that helps ion conveying the incentive process.
Logical Operational Model Diagram provides a demonstration of the various operational and business activities of General Electric that is of importance for the development of the Industrial Internet project. The business methods and procedures are explained by the multiple activities of operational origin that are connected to the expected result with respect to the information gathered with the help of the Logical Operational diagram. The diagram shows the elaborated view of the operational activities that achieves the required sales targets from the General Electric’s point of sales (Galliers and Leidner 2014). The business process can be made more effective and productive with the assistance from a good amount of investment in the Enterprise Data Warehouse.
System Context Diagram
Three departments that play a major role on the business operations of the General Electric and support the operational activities of organization are as follows:
- The department of finance concentrates on the financial aspects of the project. Their functional role includes preparing budget pans for the project, develop cost effective plans that would be effective without compromising quality.
- The department that manages the chain of supply focusses on developing plans to cope with demands from the client and provides with the project’s status updates.
- The back office is a support department of General electric that helps in the documentation process of vital information and concentrates on the promotion of various developed business strategies.
Figure 6: Logical Operational Model Diagram of General Electric
(Source: Created by the Author)
Figure 7: Logical Operational Model Diagram
(Source: Week 5 lecture slides)
The Logical Operational Model Diagram shown above provides diversified view of the project application. Demonstration of various parts of the application are provided by the operational activities. The various applications within each zone are connected through Local Area Network and each of these zones are interconnected using Wide Area Network.
Figure 8: Continuous Availability Pattern
(Source: Week 5 lecture slides)
Conclusion
Thus, it can be concluded that the investment by General Electric to develop their Industrial internet would be fruitful, as free flow of information has always helped businesses to grow. The various diagrams provided in the report would definitely the organization help to transcend and adapt to the new technology.
Reference List
Ahmad, E. and Brosio, G. eds., 2015. Handbook of Multilevel Finance. Edward Elgar Publishing.
Buede, D.M. and Miller, W.D., 2016. The engineering design of systems: models and methods. John Wiley & Sons.
Chang, J.F., 2016. Business process management systems: strategy and implementation. CRC Press.
Christopher, M., 2016. Logistics & supply chain management. Pearson UK.
Da Xu, L., 2014. Enterprise integration and information architecture. CRC Press.
Digital, G. 2018. Predix | Cloud-Based Platform for the Industrial Internet. [online] GE Digital. Available at: https://www.ge.com/digital/predix [Accessed 7 Jan. 2018].
Galliers, R.D. and Leidner, D.E. eds., 2014. Strategic information management: challenges and strategies in managing information systems. Routledge.
Giachetti, R.E., 2016. Design of enterprise systems: Theory, architecture, and methods. CRC Press.
Goetsch, D.L. and Davis, S.B., 2014. Quality management for organizational excellence. Upper Saddle River, NJ: pearson.
Laudon, K.C. and Laudon, J.P., 2016. Management information system. Pearson Education India.
MIT Sloan Management Review. 2018. GE’s Big Bet on Data and Analytics. [online] Available at: https://sloanreview.mit.edu/case-study/ge-big-bet-on-data-and-analytics/ [Accessed 7 Jan. 2018].
Peppard, J. and Ward, J., 2016. The strategic management of information systems: Building a digital strategy. John Wiley & Sons.
Schwalbe, K., 2015. Information technology project management. Cengage Learning.
Stein, B. and Morrison, A., 2014. The enterprise data lake: Better integration and deeper analytics. PwC Technology Forecast: Rethinking integration, 1, pp.1-9.
Whetzel, D.L. and Wheaton, G.R. eds., 2016. Applied measurement: industrial psychology in human resources management. Routledge.
Whittle, R. and Myrick, C.B., 2016. Enterprise business architecture: The formal link between strategy and results. CRC Press.
Order an Essay Now & Get These Features For Free:
Turnitin Report
Formatting
Title Page
Citation
Outline
