A taxonomy for supporting the development of computer-based production planning and control systems

The development of a decision support system to aid the manufacturing decisions of smaller companies is discussed. The influence on the system design of the difficulties experienced by smaller enterprises in specifying their system requirements is considered. a dataflow feedback loop, which is the basic system element, is described. A taxonomy is defined which is based on the dataflow loop and which comprises sets of canonical function classes and canonical data classes. The roles of the canonical data classes in the initial development of data models and in other aspects of the design, development and implementation of the production planning and control systems are discussed.