ELEMENTS OF A MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEM

Basic element of a management

Discussion of the problem begins by looking at the basic element or ingredients of a management information system, the term management information system is a well-conceived one it that if one understsnds the three words or part that compraise it, one can obtain a basic understanding of the whole, this point may seem obvious, but it is not true certain other technical terms or the so-called buzz words that from the argot of a new industry.

Figur 1.1 organization chart

LEVEL OF MANAGEMENT

The first term to define is management. Figur 1.1 presents the organization chart of a manufacturing company. Company organization charts generally have considerably more detail than the one shown in the figure. However, this chart has enough detail to illustrate the distinction between the different levels of management. there are several ways to describe the various management levels. although lines of demacration not absolute, one can distinguish certain layers of management within the organization.

TOP MANAGEMENT

The executive committee, consisting of the president and the heads of the major departements of the company, constitutes what is usually referred to as top management (the cross-hatched boxes). if the company has diversified manufacturing operations, a higher-level corporate executive committee will consist of the vice-president/general manager of each manufacturing divition and the vice president of the staff departements that operate at the corporate level. for purposes of discussion, it will be assumed that there is a single divition and that top management is the executive committee of that division.

When serving in this capacity, the members of the committee determine the short-and long-range objectives of the company, the physical, monetary and personnel resources to realize these objectives, and the policies and strategies that best utilize the resources. This activity can be called strategic planning. Although the final decision are the province of the executive committee, a good deal of the study of market conditions, the analisis of competition and business opportunities, and the development of alternate product plans and strtegies is accomplished by staff groups, either at the devision or the departmental level. in the organizational ilustration used here, the staff work would be accomplished in the research and planning department.

In their capasity as department heads, the members of the executive committee have the responsibility of implementing and controlling the decision made. This activity deffers materially from their strategic planning role. the major challenge of top managementis to wear these two hats effectively. The department heads direct function that can be clasified as either line or staff. the line department are concerned with those functions related to producing and delivering a product to a consumer phisically. the basic line departments illustrated in figure 1.1 are marketing and production, although both line and staff subfunctions are found within the departments.

On other hand,departments that perform a supporting service not directly concerned with the physical flow of goods are considerd staff departements. The staff departmens listed in the figure are engineering, research and planning, services and administration, and the treasurer and controller's department. depending on the nature of a particular business, line and staff departments have relative degrees of importance. Similarly, areas within the line and staff departments have relative degrees of importance. for example, in a company with a more stable  product line. it is possible that only certain department heads will be members of the executive committee. for instance, the engineering department of a food processor or bicycle manufacturermay not have the same importance as say, the production department, so the vice-president in charge of engineering would not attent regular meetings of the executive committee. This would not be true in the case of a computer manufacturer or a supplier to the national space program, the activities of both requiring high technical and engineering content.

MIDDLE MANAGEMENT

The managers reporting to the department heads are considered middle management ( unshaded boxes in figure 1.1 ). Middle management, therefore, includes such people as the director ofsales, the director of design engineering, the director of purchasing, and the director of personnel. As with department heads, members of middle management have relative degrees of significance-degrees often reflected in the titles of people reporting to the same vice-president. for example, the head purchasing man has a director's title and the head quality control man has a manager's title, yet both report to the vic-president in charge of production.

Although elements of planning and control exist at all ratings of management control is the predominant element in the middle  manager's job. top management has established the overall goals and objectives of the company. it is middle management's job to acquire and control the necessary resources in order to implement these objectives, a prime measurement of a middle manager's job is how efficiently he accomplishes his objectives-that is, how optimally he processes the various inputs with which he work into the requered output. it is recognized that optimal is a relative term in that one rarely knows if the particular process utilized is optimal; optimal usually refers to some predetermined yardstick, such as a production standard within a standard cost system.

OPERATING MANAGEMENT

The managers or supervisors who report to middle management constitute thr operating level of management. Examples of the operating management levels listed are a managers  of customer service and pricing, who report to the director of sales administration,  and the managers of production planning. There is less planning in the operating level than in either middle or top management. If middle management is concerned with the overall aggregate of functions and activities. examples of such activities are buving 25 barrels of flour or producing a lot of 50 rear wheel assemblies. these are specific task that is preformed within the context of a set of fairly well precribed rules and produceres.

There are problems in attemting to distinguish three layers of management. one problem is that it is difficult to stick to only three levels when most companies have an organizational hierarchy consisting of six or more levels; that is some managers are six levels or more removed from the company president. Like that, in maintaining this three level category, some managers are in the same category as the managers to whom they report, Though only three ratings are shown in figure 1.1, it is quite probable that there are managers who report to the operational level managers, example, the assistant managers of inventory control may have head buyers who supervise other buyers. On this issue, both the head bayer and the assistant manager of inventory control are considered operating management. 

It is possible to distinguish addisional sublevels within each of the three levels; thus there could be a high level, middle level and lower level of operating management, this further breakdown may have some usefulness because in many instances where computer experts have pointed to the impact of computers on management, they have been referring to operating management, and even lower ratings of operating management rather than to management.

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