Integration of control and information systems by open autonomous decentralized system architecture

Abstract

Under severe economic situations, the computer systems of companies have to produce new products or to supply new services flexibly to meet the change of market needs as well as customers' demands. To realize a flexible computer system, the system should be able to expand and modify its software as well as hardware rapidly and easily. Moreover the companies have been tackling business process re-engineering (BPR) to share various kinds of information among different departments, for quick response to the consumers' demands and cost reduction. An open autonomous decentralised system (ADS) architecture that is a new control and information system architecture, is proposed to fulfill the flexibility requirements of the system. It is also desirable to construct a huge and widespread system to utilize the most suitable hardware and software with the best system architecture from multi-vendors in the up-to-date software and hardware environment. Open ADS is one of the solutions for it. This paper introduces the architecture of a practical system integrating control and information.