INFS Practice Flashcards

Vocabulary-style flashcards covering INFS concepts including IT/IST, Business Processes, BPM stages, process metrics, improvement strategies, the CIA triad, and data storage.

IT

Consists of Hardware, software, and data.

IST

Consists of Hardware, Software, Data, People and procedures.

Business process

A structured network of activities supported by resources, facilities and information that interact to achieve some business function.

BPM Stage 1

Create a model of the current system.

BPM Stage 2

Create system components using the five elements of IS.

BPM Stage 3

Implement new business processes.

BPM Stage 4

Create policy and procedures to assess process effectiveness on an ongoing basis.

Output rate

Amount of products/ services produced by a business process per unit of time.

Throughput rate (aka flow rate)

Rate at which units flow through a specific activity in the process.

Process capacity

Maximum output rate of a business process per unit of time.

Capacity utilization

The percentage of process capacity that is actually used, calculated as $\frac{\text{output rate}}{\text{process capacity}}$.

Lead time

Average time required for a process to unfold from start to end.

Activity time

Average time required for a specific activity in the process.

Activity resource requirements

Average unit of resources required for a specific activity in the process.

Zero-based start

Every outcome is eliminated and to be re-incorporated, justifications must be made.

Evaluated Receipt Settlement

Payment without an invoice where the business counts the quantity of goods received and pays based on an agreed upon unit price.

Horizontal harmonization

Standardizing the documents or products along the same business process, such as structuring quotes, orders and invoices in the same way.

Vertical harmonization

Standardizing and integrating processes that take place in parallel for economies of scale, such as integrating online and offline channels.

Lean Management

Identifying all non-value adding activities and eliminating them.

Pull principle

The rationale that processes following this principle should never have a bottleneck.

Bottleneck

A single activity that limits the process capacity; improving its throughput rate can increase overall process capacity.

Simultaneous Engineering

Also known as parallel routing of activities; the attempt to perform sequential activities in parallel.

Job enlargement

Integrating 2 related activities of the same difficulty level, such as sorting and distributing mail.

Job enrichment

Incorporate more challenging activities into a role, such as combining production and quality control.

Confidentiality

Protecting sensitive information from unauthorised access.

Integrity

Ensuring data accuracy, consistency, and reliability, and guaranteeing it has not been modified by unauthorised parties.

Availability

Ensuring authorized users have reliable and timely access to data and resources.

Operational Databases

Databases used by various Information Systems across the organisation on a daily basis.

Data Warehouse

A large storage container which collects data regularly from operational databases, contains historical data that doesn't change, and is used for BI.

Data Cleansing

The process of cleaning up data when moving it from operational databases to a Data Warehouse.