An object‐oriented approach to plant configuration management information systems analysis
| Published date | 01 June 1999 |
| Pages | 159-167 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/02635579910249585 |
| Date | 01 June 1999 |
| Author | Shouhong Wang |
| Subject Matter | Economics,Information & knowledge management,Management science & operations |
An object-oriented approach to plant configuration
management information systems analysis
Shouhong Wang
University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, North Dartmouth, Massachusetts, USA
Introduction
The development and integration of plant
databases to improve access to technical and
business information have become an essen-
tial part of modern production enterprises.
Technological enterprises, such as nuclear
power plants, refineries, iron and steel mills,
have a need to access data on production
plant equipment as well as on relevant
business processes for their operations. From
the engineering perspective, integrated data-
bases are required to maintain information
on equipment for maintenance records, on
parts inventory for ordering replacement
parts, and on the status or configuration of
the various devices for maintenance isola-
tions, production optimization, and equip-
ment changeovers. From the business process
perspective, work hours, budget expendi-
tures, materials or spare parts' usage, and
product output are elementary information
for the evaluation of the firm's performance.
To provide for effective information retrieval
and reporting in all these very diverse func-
tional areas, the information system for plant
configuration management must be analyzed
and designed in an integrative way to
accommodate the complex relationships be-
tween those information elements.
In recent years, the object-oriented ap-
proach has received attention from the com-
puter and information systems communities.
The adoption rate of object-oriented methods
in the information industry is dramatically
increasing. Organizations that embraced the
approach have experienced significant cost
savings in the systems development area (Pei
and Cutone, 1995). There are software firms
producing integrated data base application
software for production-based enterprises
using object-oriented programming metho-
dology (e.g. Intergraph, 1997). However, little
research into the solution of the object-
oriented approach to the development of
configuration management systems at the
systems analysis level can be found.
This paper describes an object-oriented
method for plant configuration management
systems analysis, and presents an object-
oriented analysis (OOA) framework to facil-
itate the integration of information manage-
ment for plant maintenance, engineering
design changes, and business process.
Object-oriented systems analysis
The object-oriented approach (Martin, 1993;
Rumbaugh et al., 1991; Wang, 1994) has
become popular in recent years; however, it
is still in a period of development. Using the
object-oriented approach, analysts model the
system being investigated by identifying a set
of objects in conjunction with the attributes
and methods (i.e. internal operations and
messages) that manipulate the object data or
request services from other objects. Objects
are grouped into classes, which have
common properties. Classes are organized
into hierarchies in which the subclasses
inherit properties, including data definitions
and methods. The terms ``object'' and ``class''
are often interchangeable in systems analy-
sis as few cases involve objects with specific
actualized values. The dynamic relationships
between object classes are built into the
descriptions of the classes through the defi-
nition of message sending. All of the char-
acteristics of object-oriented methods make
the approach more effective than the tradi-
tional data flow diagram method in informa-
tion systems development (see, e.g. Korson
and McGregor, 1990). More important, the
model represented in the paradigm can be
implemented by a computer-based informa-
tion system using object-oriented program-
ming without the requirement of a creative
system logical design phase (Fichman and
Kemerer, 1992).
A serious criticism of current development
work is the piecemeal fashion of object-
oriented systems development. It is com-
monly accepted in the object-oriented field
that the identification of object classes
[ 159 ]
Industrial Management &
Data Systems
99/4 [1999] 159±164
#MCB University Press
[ISSN 0263-5577]
Keywords
Information systems,
Maintenance,
Object-oriented computing, Plant,
Process management
Abstract
Plant configuration management
systems address all phases of the
plant's life cycle, from engineering
design, re-design, maintenance, to
operations. However, as yet little
research has been reported on
plant configuration management
information systems analysis.
During the past decade, the ob-
ject-oriented approach has re-
ceived much attention in
information systems development.
This paper describes an object
structure for plant configuration
management systems analysis.
Three major aspects of configura-
tion management (maintenance,
re-design change, and business
process) and fundamental types of
objects engaged in configuration
management are described. The
association between these ob-
jects is then built through identi-
fying the messages between the
objects. Practical application of
this framework shows that it is
useful for the analysis and design
of a plant configuration manage-
ment information system.
The author wishes to thank
Mr Georges Comeau for his
work on parts of this study
in the nuclear power plant
configuration management
system project.
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