 When we rewrote the VCAPS
system at Ford we wanted to choose a system metaphor but found that it was difficult. We had data from a variety
of sources that had no commonality it seemed.
A breakthrough was when
we discovered that all the data could be uniformly represented as if it were a bill of material. So we chose bill
of material as our system metaphor. In the old system it was often very difficult to find the right data. In the
new system it was obvious where it would be.
From top to bottom our new
model has the same metaphor. After we had gotten down |
the road with this new metaphor we measured that this uniformity was going to save us 95% in database size. Also,
we now had one and only one way of accessing data no mater where it came from or what it represented.
This uniformity also simplified
our algorithms and reduced processing time. We went from processing times averaging about 15 minutes to coming
back immediately. 
eXPerience Software |
