IFAO: Spatial decision support services for facility network transformation

Abstract

Facility Network Transformation (FNT) is a strategic approach involving assessing and optimizing the industrial facility networks such as new site selection, demand forecasting, performance evaluation in banking, retailing, etc. In practice, FNT requirements are often diverse, dynamic and industry specific, it's often difficult to implement a generic FNT service fully integrated with legacy systems. The heterogeneity of spatial information further calls for a loosely coupled architecture. An innovative spatial decision support system, iFAO (Intelligent Facility Network Analytics and Optimization), is therefore developed based on Service Oriented Architecture for FNT problems. In this paper, key FNT service patterns are identified and modeled to develop an industrial independent solution, and an SOA-based framework for iFAO is proposed correspondingly. Implementation of iFAO services is presented with a Model-Driven approach. With a real case in banking, it's illustrated how the SOA based iFAO services are integrated to solve the real industrial problems, especially for quick decisions on business strategy in the competitive and ever-changing marketplaces. © 2008 IEEE.