COMPUTER-ANWENDUNGENUND INFORMATIONS-
TECHNOLOGIE
Class-based IT concept for a trading firm (1997-1998)
The Task:
A large German trading firm in the foods sector (co-operative organisation, annual turnover of EUR 30 billion) is planning the introduction of a new merchandise information system. The objective, on the one hand, is to gain a competitive edge and, on the other hand, a crossover into modern software technologies. The existing solutions are heterogeneous and reflect almost 20 years development in software and hardware.
The solution:
Based on the technological status in 1997, architectural requirements were drawn up to bring the company in line with modern technologies (around 20 concerns with approx. 7000 branches spread across Germany (Europe), heterogeneous hard- and software, business processes developed over the years, old, company-critical systems etc.). Based on a transparent network as infrastructure, the software was designed as object-oriented open system of distributed objects with corresponding communication mechanisms (CORBA). Standard products such as, for example, bookkeeping and old systems were treated as encapsulated objects. For the company-critical sector or the operative merchandise information system, a completely new business model of an "intelligent article" was developed and implemented. This has led to a considerable reduction in the complexity of the merchandise management processes. An additional result of this model is that the individual goods can be traced in detail and activity-based costing has been simplified. The system has been modelled completely in UML and implemented with the 4-GL development environment FORTÉ within the framework of an iterative, incremental approach.
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e-mail: Vertrieb@caitec.de