MIS -1

1. What is MIS? Define the characteristics of MIS? What are the basic Functions of MIS? Give some Disadvantage of MIS?

A management information system (MIS) provides information which is needed to manage organizations efficiently and effectively.Management information systems involve three primary resources: people, technology, and information. Management information systems are distinct from other information systems in that they are used to analyze operational activities in the organization. Academically, the term is commonly used to refer to the group of information management methods tied to the automation or support of human decision making, e.g. decision support systems, expert systems, and executive information systems. Characterstics of MIS : Management information systems (MIS) is an organized approach to gathering information from company operations and making a strategic management decision. Developing quality characteristics for gathering information is essential to making solid management decisions. Related Searches: Business ManagementLeadership Qualities Relevance Information should be relevant to the strategic decision that company management is currently reviewing. Because companies may review several business opportunities at one time, avoiding information not relating to the decision is essential. Accurate MIS information should be accurate and avoid any inclusions of estimates or probable costs. Making decisions based on estimates can lead to cost overruns or lower profits from future operations. Timely Many management decisions are based on information from a certain time period, such as quarterly or annual periods. Information outside of the requested time frame may skew information and lead to an improperly informed decision. Exhaustive MIS information gathering should resemble an upside-down triangle. The early stages of information gathering should be exhaustive, including all types of company information. As management narrows its decision-making process, the information is refined to include only the most relevant pieces.

Cost-Effective The MIS needs to be a cost-effective and efficient system for gathering information. Most of these systems are developed internally, creating costs that cannot be passed to clients.

Basic functions of MIS : Basic functionsManagement operates through various functions, often classified as planning, organizing, staffing, leading/directing, controlling/monitoring and motivation. Planning: Deciding what needs to happen in the future (today, next week, next month, next year, over the next five years, etc.) and generating plans for action. Organizing: (Implementation)pattern of relationships among workers, making optimum use of the resources required to enable the successful carrying out of plans. Staffing: Job analysis, recruitment and hiring for appropriate jobs. Leading/directing: Determining what needs to be done in a situation and getting people to do it. Controlling/monitoring: Checking progress against plans. Motivation: Motivation is also a kind of basic function of management, because without motivation, employees cannot work effectively. If motivation does not take place in an organization, then employees may not contribute to the other functions (which are usually set by top-level management).

Disadvantages of management information system Unemployment - While information technology may have streamlined the business process it has also crated job redundancies, downsizing and outsourcing. This means that a lot of lower and middle level jobs have been done away with causing more people to become unemployed. Privacy - Though information technology may have made communication quicker, easier and more convenient, it has also bought along privacy issues. From cell phone signal interceptions to email hacking, people are now worried about their once private information becoming public knowledge. Lack of job security - Industry experts believe that the internet has made job security a big issue as since technology keeps on changing with each day. This means that one has to be in a constant learning mode, if he or she wishes for their job to be secure.

Dominant culture - While information technology may have made the world a global village, it has also contributed to one culture dominating another weaker one. For example it is now argued that US influences how most young teenagers all over the world now act, dress and behave. Languages too have become overshadowed, with English becoming the primary mode of communication for business and everything else.

2. Explain Knowledge based system? Explain DSS and OLAP with example?

Knowledge based systems are artificial intelligent tools working in a narrow domain to provide intelligent decisions with justification. Knowledge is acquired and represented using various knowledge representation techniques rules, frames and scripts. The basic advantages offered by such system are documentation of knowledge, intelligent decision support, self learning, reasoning and explanation. Knowledge-based systems[1] are systems based on the methods and techniques of Artificial Intelligence. Their core components are: knowledge base acquisition mechanisms inference mechanisms Knowledge Base Systems (KBS) goes beyond the decision support philosophy to indicate the expert system technology into the decision making framework. Expert Systems (ES) have been the tools and techniques perfected by artificial intelligence (AI) researchers to deduce decision influences based on codification of knowledge. The codification of knowledge use the principles of knowledge representation (part of the large theoretical ideas of knowledge engineering). Typically such codification uses rules like IF-THEN rules to represent logical implications. Decision Support System A decision support system (DSS) is a computer-based information system that supports business or organizational decision-making activities. DSSs serve the management, operations, and planning levels of an organization and help to make decisions, which may be rapidly changing and not easily specified in advance. DSSs include knowledge-based systems. A properly designed DSS is an interactive software-based system intended to help decision makers compile useful information from a combination of raw data, documents, personal knowledge, or business models to identify and solve problems and make decisions. Typical information that a decision support application might gather and present are: inventories of information assets (including legacy and relational data sources, cubes, data warehouses, and data marts), comparative sales figures between one period and the next,

projected revenue figures based on product sales assumptions.

Online analytical processing In computing, online analytical processing, or OLAP, is an approach to swiftly answer multi-dimensional analytical (MDA) queries.[1] OLAP is part of the broader category of business intelligence, which also encompasses relational reporting and data mining.[2] Typical applications of OLAP include business reporting for sales, marketing, management reporting, business process management (BPM),[3] budgeting and forecasting, financial reporting and similar areas, with new applications coming up, such as agriculture.[4] The term OLAP was created as a slight modification of the traditional database term OLTP (Online Transaction Processing).[5] OLAP tools enable users to interactively analyze multidimensional data from multiple perspectives. OLAP consists of three basic analytical operations: consolidation, drill-down, and slicing and dicing.[6] Consolidation involves the aggregation of data that can be accumulated and computed in one or more dimensions. For example, all sales offices are rolled up to the sales department or sales division to anticipate sales trends. In contrast, the drill-down is a technique that allows users to navigate through the details. For instance, users can access to the sales by individual products that make up a regions sales. Slicing and dicing is a feature whereby users can take out (slicing) a specific set of data of the cube and view (dicing) the slices from different viewpoints. Databases configured for OLAP use a multidimensional data model, allowing for complex analytical and ad-hoc queries with a rapid execution time. [7] They borrow aspects of navigational databases, hierarchical databases and relational databases. The core of any OLAP system is an OLAP cube (also called a 'multidimensional cube' or a hypercube). It consists of numeric facts called measures which are categorized by dimensions. The cube metadata is typically created from a star schema or snowflake schema of tables in a relational database. Measures are derived from the records in the fact table and dimensions are derived from the dimension tables. Each measure can be thought of as having a set of labels, or meta-data associated with it. A dimension is what describes these labels; it provides information about the measure.

A simple example would be a cube that contains a store's sales as a measure, and Date/Time as a dimension. Each Sale has a Date/Time label that describes more about that sale.
3. What are Value Chain Analysis & describe its significance in MIS? Explain what is meant by BPR? What is its significance? How Data warehousing & Data Mining is useful in terms of MIS?

A value chain is a chain of activities for a firm operating in a specific industry. The business unit is the appropriate level for construction of a value chain, not the divisional level or corporate level. Products pass through all activities of the chain in order, and at each activity the product gains some value. The chain of activities gives the products more added value than the sum of the independent activities' values. It is important not to mix the concept of the value chain with the costs occurring throughout the activities. A diamond cutter, as a profession, can be used to illustrate the difference of cost and the value chain. The cutting activity may have a low cost, but the activity adds much of the value to the end product, since a rough diamond is significantly less valuable than a cut diamond. Typically, the described value chain and the documentation of processes, assessment and auditing of adherence to the process routines are at the core of the quality certification of the business, e.g. ISO 9001. Requirements of value chain Coordination and collaboration; Investment in information technology; Changes in organizational processes; Committed leadership; Flexible jobs and adaptable, capable employees; A supportive organizational culture and attitudes; Flintstone Example: Without the dinosaur, Fred couldn't complete his daily tasks quickly. This was because the dinosaurs had more strength than poor Freddy, therefore, making the process more efficient, which added value to the final result.

Significance The value chain framework quickly made its way to the forefront of management thought as a powerful analysis tool for strategic planning. The simpler concept of value streams, a cross-functional process which was developed over the next decade, had some success in the early 1990s.The value-chain concept has been extended beyond individual firms. It can apply to whole supply chains and distribution networks. The delivery of a mix of products and services to the end customer will mobilize different economic factors, each managing its own value chain. The industry wide synchronized interactions of those local value chains create an extended value chain, sometimes global in extent. Porter terms this larger interconnected system of value chains the "value system." A value system includes the value chains of a firm's supplier (and their suppliers all the way

back), the firm itself, the firm distribution channels, and the firm's buyers (and presumably extended to the buyers of their products, and so on). Capturing the value generated along the chain is the new approach taken by many management strategists. For example, a manufacturer might require its parts suppliers to be located nearby its assembly plant to minimize the cost of transportation. By exploiting the upstream and downstream information flowing along the value chain, the firms may try to bypass the intermediaries creating new business models, or in other ways create improvements in its value system. Value chain analysis has also been successfully used in large Petrochemical Plant Maintenance Organizations to show how Work Selection, Work Planning, Work Scheduling and finally Work Execution can (when considered as elements of chains) help drive Lean approaches to Maintenance. The Maintenance Value Chain approach is particularly successful when used as a tool for helping Change Management as it is seen as more user friendly than other business process tools. Value chain approach could also offer a meaningful alternative to valuate private or public companies when there is a lack of publically known data from direct competition, where the subject company is compared with, for example, a known downstream industry to have a good feel of its value by building useful correlations with its downstream companies. Value chain analysis has also been employed in the development sector as a means of identifying poverty reduction strategies by upgrading along the value chain. Although commonly associated with export-oriented trade, development practitioners have begun to highlight the importance of developing national and intra-regional chains in addition to international ones. Business process re-engineering is the analysis and design of workflows and processes within an organization. According to Davenport (1990) a business process is a set of logically related tasks performed to achieve a defined business outcome. Re-engineering is the basis for many recent developments in management. The cross-functional team, for example, has become popular because of the desire to re-engineer separate functional tasks into complete cross-functional processes.[citation needed] Also, many recent management information systems developments aim to integrate a wide number of business functions. Enterprise resource planning, supply chain management, knowledge management systems, groupware and collaborative systems, Human Resource Management Systems and customer relationship management. Business process re-engineering is also known as business process redesign, business transformation, or business process change management. Significance of BPR

Customers (know what they want and are willing to pay for it) Competition (Continuous increase will result in changes to price, quality, selective service, and delivery) Change (continues to occur in people&culture, organizational structures, policies&procedures, and technology) Techniques lag behind technology (Technologically capable, but not functionally operational) Problem of the stovepipe (lack of communication between vertical functional areas) Fragmented piecemeal systems (focus on vertical functions, with the existence of redundancies of effort and actions Integration across departmental and organizational boundaries (information and operations are needed).

Data warehouse

A data warehouse is the main repository of an organization's historical data, its corporate memory. It contains the raw material for management's decision support system. The critical factor leading to the use of a data warehouse is that a data analyst can perform complex queries and analysis, such as data mining, on the information without slowing down the operational systems.

Data mining

The development of computational algorithms for the identification or extraction of structure from data. This is done in order to help reduce, model, understand, or analyze the data. Tasks supported by data mining include prediction, segmentation, dependency modeling, summarization, and change and deviation detection. Database systems have brought digital data capture and storage to the mainstream of data processing, leading to the creation of large data warehouses.

4. Explain DFD & Data Dictionary? Explain in detail how the information requirement is determined for an organization?

A data flow diagram (DFD) is a graphical representation of the "flow" of data through an information system, modelling its process aspects. Often they are a preliminary step used to create an overview of the system which can later be elaborated. DFDs can also be used for the visualization of data processing (structured design).

A DFD shows what kinds of data will be input to and output from the system, where the data will come from and go to, and where the data will be stored. It does not show information about the timing of processes, or information about whether processes will operate in sequence or in parallel (which is shown on a flowchart).

5. What is ERP? Explain its existence before and its future after? What are the advantages & Disadvantages of ERP? What is Artificial Intelligence? How is it different from Neural Networks?

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems integrate internal and external management information across an entire organization, embracing finance/accounting, manufacturing, sales and service, customer relationship management, etc. ERP systems automate this activity with an integrated software application. Their purpose is to facilitate the flow of information between all business functions inside the boundaries of the organization and manage the connections to outside stakeholders.

ERP systems can run on a variety of hardware and network configurations, typically employing a database as a repository for information.

Characteristics ERP(Enterprise Resource Planning ) systems typically include the following characteristics:

An integrated system that operates in real time (or next to real time), without relying on periodic updates.[citation needed] A common database, which supports all applications. A consistent look and feel throughout each module. Installation of the system without elaborate application/data integration by the Information Technology (IT) department.[3] Finance/Accounting General ledger, payables, cash management, fixed assets, receivables, budgeting, consolidation Human resources payroll, training, benefits, 401K, recruiting, diversity management

Manufacturing Engineering, bill of materials, work orders, scheduling, capacity, workflow management, quality control, cost management, manufacturing process, manufacturing projects, manufacturing flow, activity based costing, product lifecycle management Supply chain management Order to cash, inventory, order entry, purchasing, product configurator, supply chain planning, supplier scheduling, inspection of goods, claim processing, commissions Project management Costing, billing, time and expense, performance units, activity management Customer relationship management Sales and marketing, commissions, service, customer contact, call center support Data services Various "selfservice" interfaces for customers, suppliers and/or employees Access control Management of user privileges for various processes.

History

Origin of "ERP"In 1990 Gartner Group first employed the acronym ERP as an extension of material requirements planning (MRP), later manufacturing resource planning and computer-integrated manufacturing. Without supplanting these terms, ERP came to represent a larger whole, reflecting the evolution of application integration beyond manufacturing. Not all ERP packages were developed from a manufacturing core. Vendors variously began with accounting, maintenance and human resources. By the mid1990s ERP systems addressed all core functions of an enterprise. Beyond corporations, governments and non profit organizations also began to employ ERP systems.

ExpansionERP systems experienced rapid growth in the 1990s because of the year 2000 problem and introduction of the Euro disrupted legacy systems. Many companies took this opportunity to replace such systems with ERP. This rapid growth in sales was followed by a slump in 1999 after these issues had been addressed. ERP systems initially focused on automating back office functions that did not directly affect customers and the general public. Front office functions such as customer relationship management (CRM) dealt directly with customers, or e business systems such as ecommerce, egovernment, etelecom, and e finance, or supplier relationship management (SRM) became integrated later, when the Internet simplified communicating with external parties. "ERP II" was coined in the early 2000s. It describes webbased software that allows both employees and partners (such as suppliers and customers) realtime access to the systems. "Enterprise application suite" is an alternate name for such systems. Advantages: The fundamental advantage of ERP is that integrating the myriad processes by which businesses operate saves time and expense. Decisions can be made more quickly and with fewer errors. Data becomes visible across the organization. Tasks that benefit from this integration include:
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Sales forecasting, which allows inventory optimization Order tracking, from acceptance through fulfillment Revenue tracking, from invoice through cash receipt Matching purchase orders (what was ordered), inventory receipts (what arrived), and costing (what the vendor invoiced) They eliminate the need to synchronize changes between multiple systemsconsolidation of finance, marketing and sales, human resource, and manufacturing applications They enable standard product naming/coding. They provide a comprehensive enterprise view (no "islands of information"). They make realtime information available to management anywhere, any time to make proper decisions. They protect sensitive data by consolidating multiple security systems into a single structure.

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Disadvantages:
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Customization is problematic. Reengineering business processes to fit the ERP system may damage competitiveness and/or divert focus from other critical activities

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ERP can cost more than less integrated and/or less comprehensive solutions. High switching costs increase vendor negotiating power vis a vis support, maintenance and upgrade expenses. Overcoming resistance to sharing sensitive information between departments can divert management attention. Integration of truly independent businesses can create unnecessary dependencies. Extensive training requirements take resources from daily operations.

The limitations of ERP have been recognized sparking new trends in ERP application development, the four significant developments being made in ERP are, creating a more flexible ERP, Web-Enable ERP, Interenterprise ERP and eBusiness Suites, each of which will potential address the fallbacks of the current ERP.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its chances of success. John McCarthy, who coined the term in 1956, defines it as "the science and engineering of making intelligent machines." However, An Artificial neural network (ANN), usually called neural network (NN), is a mathematical model or computational model that is inspired by the structure and/or functional aspects of biological neural networks. A neural network consists of an interconnected group of artificial neurons, and it processes information using a connectionist approach to computation. In most cases an ANN is an adaptive system that changes its structure based on external or internal information that flows through the network during the learning phase. Modern neural networks are non-linear statistical data modeling tools. They are usually used to model complex relationships between inputs and outputs or to find patterns in data.

Q6. Difference between Closed decision making system and Open decision making system A. Closed decision making system:

If the manager operates in a known environment then it is a closed decision making system. The conditions of the closed decision making system are: (a) The manager has a known set of decision alternatives and knows their outcomes fully in terms of value, if implemented. (b) The manager has a model, a method or a rule whereby the decision alternatives can be generated, tested, and ranked. (c) The manager can choose one of them, based on some goal or objective.

A few examples are:

a product mix problem, an examination system to declare pass or fail, or an acceptance of the fixed deposits.

B. Open decision making system: If the manager operates in an environment not known to him, then the decision making system is termed as an open decision making system. The conditions of this system are: (a) The manager does not know all the decision alternatives. (b) The outcome of the decision is also not known fully. The knowledge of the outcome may be a probabilistic one.

(c) No method, rule or model is available to study and finalize one decision among the set of decision alternatives. (d) It is difficult to decide an objective or a goal and, therefore, the manager resorts to that decision, where his aspirations or desires are met best. Deciding on the possible product diversification lines, the pricing of a new product, and the plant location, are some decision making situations which fall in the category of the open decision making systems. What IF Analysis :
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What-if analysis is a brainstorming approach that uses broad, loosely structured questioning to: 1. Postulate potential upsets that may result in accidents or system performance problems 2. Ensure that appropriate safeguards against those problems are in place. A systematic, but loosely structured, assessment: o team of experts brainstorming o generate a comprehensive review o ensure that appropriate safeguards are in place Typically performed by one or more teams with diverse backgrounds and experience Applicable to any activity or system Used as a high-level or detailed risk assessment technique Generates qualitative descriptions of potential problems o in the form of questions and responses o lists of recommendations for preventing problems The quality of the evaluation depends on: o quality of the documentation o training of the review team leader o experience of the review teams

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Most common uses

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Generally applicable for almost every type of risk assessment application o especially those dominated by relatively simple failure scenarios Occasionally used alone, but most often used to supplement other, more structured techniques o especially checklist analysis

Problem analysis can be defined as dissecting and thoroughly studying the problem with the objective to understand how the problem emerged and how it grew to its current proportions. Analyzing problems is useful when dealing with many medical and technical problems. The assumption behind problem analysis is that there is a clear cause and a clear solution. And indeed it can be useful in many situations to find out what caused a problem and how the problem developed. Because if you would succeed in finding this out you could take away the cause and eliminate it or take it away and thereby solve the problem. A simple technical example illustrates the use of problem analysis. For instance, if your bicycle gets a flat tire, it is surely helpful to check if there is a piece of glass on the inside of your tire. Repairing the tire without removing the glass is probably unwise because the same piece of glass could keep on causing the tire to go flat until it is removed. Here is also an example from medical practice, illustrating the use of problem analysis. A football player has a painful knee, which has been making it impossible for him to play for some time. It seems wise to analyze the problem by checking for instance if the kneecap or the meniscus is fractured or if cruciate ligaments are damaged. If these issues are neglected while there is actual damage this will most likely keep on causing pain and probably create further damage. These two examples illustrate that problem analysis may be very useful. The approach relying on problem analysis is often called the medical model and can be described as: 1. Problem analysis: detailedly analyzing the problem symptoms and causes 2. Diagnosis: determining in what kind of known category the problem fits 3. Prescription: determining what treatment can be chosen from what is known about this type of problem from scientific knowledge or theories 4. Treatment: applying a prescribed intervention 5. Evaluation: check whether the problem and the symptoms have already diminished or disappeared.

A Problem definition is usually set up at the end of the problem analysis phase. Starting Point The starting point of a problem definition is the information gathered in the problem analysis stage. The different aspects surrounding the design problem have been analysed and should be taken into account in the problem definition.

Expected Outcome A structured description of the design problem, with the goal of creating an explicit statement on the problem and possibly the direction of idea generation. Also, a problem definition clearly written down provides a shared understanding of the problem and its relevant aspects.

Possible Procedure Answering the following questions will help to create a problem definition:

What is the problem? Who has the problem? What are the goals? What are the side-effects to be avoided? Which actions are admissible? Tips and Concerns When analysing problems there is always a tension between the current situation and the desired situation. By explicitly mentioning these different situations you are able to discuss the relevance of it with other people involved in your project. Make a hierarchy of problems; start with a big one and by thinking of causes and effects, divide this problem into smaller ones. Use post-its to make a problem tree. A problem can also be reformulated in an opportunity or driver. Doing this will help you to become active and inspired.

However the Decision analysis, comes third when the problem has been found & analyzed. To remove the problem the management has to do Decision analysis.

Decision analysis (DA) is the discipline comprising the philosophy, theory, methodology, and professional practice necessary to address important decisions in a formal manner. Decision analysis includes many procedures, methods, and tools for identifying, clearly representing, and formally assessing important aspects of a decision, for prescribing a recommended course of action by applying the maximum expected utility action axiom to a well-formed representation of the decision, and for translating the formal representation of a decision and its corresponding recommendation into insight for the decision maker and other stakeholders.