TABLE OF CONTENTS How can you get a handle on the requirements? There are a number of issues associated with this topic:
Who generates the requirement specification?
How long will it take?
How are the requirements discovered?
How are the requirements documented?
Answering this list in detail can be another book in itself. However, we will try to give some short answers that still have some meat.
A vendor of scheduling systems, or a consultant tightly aligned with a vendor, is not always the best choice to do the specifications for you. You might be lucky, but you might be inviting problems and a possible vested interest. A team made up solely of people from the information technology department may also be problem, as they may not know the real problem. Neither should the system be solely defined by management or by corporate gurus. A team should be used. It should have people from production control, like you, management, and information technology. If sufficient technical or specialized knowledge does not exist within the plant, corporate expertise or an outside consultant might be needed. The key is to have:
Someone who knows what really happens in production control, e.g., the planner or scheduler
Someone who knows what should happen in production control, e.g., someone who knows best practice, what is feasible, and what is reasonable
A management representative, e.g., production control manager
Someone with a systems approach and experience with software requirements analysis, e.g., a...
