Data Warehouse Design Solutions

5

PRODUCTION

In Chapters 1 through 4, we looked at the interaction between customers and companies. In the three chapters that make up this section, we begin to look more closely at the products that companies sell. This chapter examines the production of finished goods. The term production has a specific meaning in the information systems community when used in conjunction with words like system or application. A production system or production application is one that has been implemented and is operational. In this chapter, the term production refers to producing a product. In that context, the term production data warehouse does not mean a generic data warehouse that is operational. Rather, it means a data warehouse specifically designed to support a production process, like manufacturing. It covers the production of items for sale to customers, whether they are individual consumers, companies, or governments. In this chapter, we will examine examples of discrete, continuous process, and hybrid manufacturing.

Improved production has been the catalyst for much of humankind's economic advance over the centuries. The first major improvements in production occurred in agriculture, where better methods of growing liberated our ancestors from subsistence activities. The Industrial Revolution, born of improved production, transformed the western world in the nineteenth century and continues to transform economies in the twentieth century. As the Industrial Age begins to peak, the Information ...