Information System in an Organization

In order to describe and identify an information system it is necessary to define what an information system is. An information system is a database within a computer system that has the ability to gather and provide meaningful information. This information includes all departments of a business. In order to include all aspects of the business the information system used must have different applications for different departments. A manufacturing company would use an application that keeps track of the jobs, parts used, operations, and labor.
The company where I work uses a system called Epicor. Epicor allows us to several different things which we were unable to do before. If a customer were to call and request a quote for a certain type of machine they were interested in purchasing, Epicor, makes that request very easy for us to complete. With this system, we are able to take the specifications of any given machine and compile a list of materials and the quantities used down to the decimal allowing for accurate pricing. In addition to material tracking and pricing; Epicor also allows us to track and price our labor for each department. After we have the materials and labor we can also do a time study to figure out exactly how long it will take to fill their order and give them an accurate ship date.
Some smaller, day-to-day operations Epicor helps us with is the ability to create in house job, create and make our own new parts, and create a bill of material for the parts. Instead of us having to send specifications off to another manufacturing company for parts such as legstands or any of our precision made parts, we can now cut them in house on our laser. However, without having the ability to assign part numbers and create jobs for they part, the laser operator would be unable to clock into a job. Epicor creates a job number and has a bar code scanner at the job of each job created. The operator can either scan into the job through Epicor or