1. TAPES OVERVIEW. The TAPES approach is highly multifunctional and cross-disciplinary. It could be categorized as "Enterprise Engineering".

1.1. TAPES is a concept of how to manage all of the information/data of a generalized, networked enterprise, in one database environment. A TAPES is the underlying data structure (Activity Model and Data Model) and management process of that database environment. Multiple enterprises which have implemented a TAPES can then be consolidated, integrated, or coordinated by selectively or fully relating and/or merging their TAPES data.

1.2. It can be applied as a total enterprise management environment (Figures 1 through 4) by governments (city, county, state, national, multinational), businesses, local information services, for environmental monitoring or sustainable development planning and management, for econometric models in any of the above, and emergency or contingency planning and response, to name a few uses. A TAPES can be used as the repository for a comprehensive resource life cycle management, inventory management, and accounting system. It can serve as the single tool by which to manage the transition of an enterprise from one form to another or the formation of new enterprises from existing ones. It allows for dynamic organization and functional alignment of the enterprise, and for rapid restructuring of operational and administrative offices, positions, activities, and resources.

1.3. Some immediate near term applications could be:

National/International emergency planning for disasters, famines, refugees, or other natural calamities;

Econometric modeling and inventorying of a nation or region, to aid transition into quality/continuous-improvement market economies. A TAPES would display a full and dynamic picture of national/regional requirements, products, production, distribution, and consumption.

Implementation of the Defense Management Review Decision (DMRD) 918.

1.4. In the case of the U.S. Department of Defense, it creates a single data structure and management process which underlays and provides the basis for the integration and consolidation of efforts in:

DoD Corporate Information Management (CIM),

DoD Information Infrastructure,

DoD Standardization,

DoD Acquistion,

DoD Education and Training,

DoD Information Security,

Total Quality Management (TQM),

Functional Process Improvement (DoD Instruction 8020.1 and 8020.1-M) and IDEF Activity Modeling (IDEF0) and Data Modeling (IDEF1X),

Integrated Computer Aided Software Engineering (ICASE),

DoD X.500 Integrated Directory Services (Supplement or replace X.500 Directory Information Base -DIB and Directory Information Tree -DIT with TAPES catalog and/or use TAPES object codes as Distinguished Name -DN and Relative Distinguished Name -RDN for X.500 objects in DIB/DIT),

Life Cycle Management and Configuration Management of ALL enterprise resources,

Joint Computer Aided Acquisition and Logistics Support (JCALS),

various efforts to integrate and standardize Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Computer Aided Design (CAD) which use relational database technology to manage graphic objects, and

various efforts to create multimedia-based educational, tutoring, mentoring, and advisory tools.

1.5. The TAPES concept is able to integrate these initiatives because of the unitive and object-oriented perspective (single top-down view) taken in its conception, analysis, and design. This unitive perspective is arrived at by viewing the entire enterprise as a single system of interrelated processes, or more accurately, a subsystem within its environment. With this perspective, the size or complexity of the enterprise is not a factor in the basic and generalized enterprise model.

1.6. The following books can aid you in understanding more of what TAPES is about.

1.6.1. "The Grammatical Man" by Jeremy Campbell (order from disorder, patterns of information amidst the turbulence of activities in dynamic systems.)

1.6.2. "Future Shock", "The Third Wave", and most important, "Powershift" by Alvin Toffler. (knowledge is power, power is knowledge) (if knowledge is the ultimate resource, knowledge about knowledge is paramount, and control of knowledge counts most) (A TAPES allows you to see and create high level order within an enterprise by building:

patterns of events (process transactions) in time and space into signals amidst the noise of a dynamical system,

patterns of signals into data,

patterns of data into information,

patterns of information into knowledge,

patterns of knowledge into knowing,

patterns of knowing into understanding of the enterprise, its situations, and its external environment as a unitive whole. This is the basic intent of Executive Information Systems, management information systems, and Command and Control systems.)

(A TAPES opens up information flow within an enterprise by diminishing artificial or unnecessary barriers to communication, i.e., complexity, between and within enterprise processes/activities. In this sense, it allows the enterprise, and its individual members/cstomers to operate closer to their optimum process potential - yielding less loss to all. It allows the enterprise members to perceive themselves and operate as part of a single identity - it gives them a shared sense of identity.)

1.6.3. "Dr. Deming, The Man Who Taught the Japanese About Quality", by Rafael Aguayo. (The importance of people in systems), (The connectiveness of all systems into an infinite system, no real boundaries), (Joy of Work, Pride of Workmanship)

1.6.4. "Beginning of the Quality Transformation, Parts I and II" by Peter R. Scholtes and Heero Hacquebord, Quality Progress, July and August 1988. (Guidelines to Quality Transformation)

1.7. In terms of Total Quality Management (TQM) or continuous improvement, a TAPES would serve as a single comprehensive tool to identify, catalog, inventory, standardize, and manage:

customers (Process Transactions and Unit Positions with associated Persons),

customer product quantities (requested, required, authorized, allocated, on-hand) and quality characteristics, customer satisfaction,

products (i.e., Configurations),

product quality characteristics,

product sampling data,

processes,

process quality characteristics,

process sampling data,

structure,

structure quality characteristics,

structure sampling data,

culture,

culture quality characteristics,

culture sampling data,

customer-relations/product delivery,

delivery quality characteristics, and

delivery sampling data.

1.8. With this information in place, process variation can be minimized, and a fully systematic and scientific transformation of an enterprise into a continuous improvement entity can be achieved.

1.9. Even though TAPES was prototyped in dBase IV, Vers 1.1, it should realistically be reengineered into a more robust relational/SQL environment operating over the enterprise's (inter)network. Note that the nature of the TAPES also makes it an appropriate tool in managing that (inter)network as well.

1.10. An optimum use of TAPES is to build all of the functionality of existing software units (e.g., reengineer an existing application) into a series of separate software units which correspond to the various tasks and transactions within a process, such as the stages of a generalized resource's life-cycle. The Catalog module of a TAPES would then serve as the single menu system or pick-list for all enterprise transactions. Using the TAPES in this way, the TAPES Catalog becomes a Table of Contents of the enterprises processes, with the Cross-Index displaying the relationships and flow of resources within and between these processes.

1.11. A TAPES contains a hierarchical catalog of all of the "objects" managed within a TAPES (Figures 5 and 6). This hierarchical decomposition of all of the Object Classes is comparable to the taxonomic actions of the IDEF0 Activity (Process) Modeling technique.

1.12. It will be relatively simple to build an IDEF0 Activity Model of a TAPES as a process. There are only seven entities (i.e., Object Classes), with only a limited number of relations between them. That would yield an activity model of a generalized enterprise as a single process, a single system.

1.13. The taxonomic actions applied in defining the TAPES "Process" Object Class (code .05.) (Figure 10) down to the Transaction Object level would compare with the current utilization of IDEF0 under DoD 8020.1. The IDEF0 methodology could also be used to model Locations, Organizations, Production Units (UIC authorization documents), and Functions (Programs, Projects, Task Forces) Figures 5 and 8 through 9), and the relations/associations between them, rather that just Processes/Activities. In this way the entire TAPES enterprise model would be contained in the new ICASE repository.

1.14. Each taxon under a Transaction Object (i.e., the Inputs and Outputs) would be associated with one or more Configuration Objects (code .06.) (Figure 11). Transaction methods (i.e., Mechanisms and Controls) would be associated with standardized Business Information Guidance Objects (code .06.2.2. - software units, manual procedures, forms, performance standards). With this capability, a TAPES could serve as the single interface to all transactional software units and on-line documentation and forms in the enterprise. It could serve as the single interface to the ICASE environment for documenting and continuosly improving those transactions. That same single interface could serve as the access point for configuration management of all resources, of which the Transaction Objects would be a subset. This would enable continuous improvement actions for processes, configurations/products, and staffing/structure.

1.15. The decomposition of individual transactions down to individual data element taxa (code .06.2.2.) would correspond with the Data Modeling actions of IDEF1X, and the modeling of enterprise:

Funds (code .06.1.),

Information (code .06.2.),

Personnel (.06.3.),

Materiel (.06.4.),

Facility (.06.5),

Standard Capability (.06.6.),

Service (.06.7.),

Time (.06.8.),

Space (.06.9.),

Energy (.06.10.), and

Person (.06.11.)

resources/products for each transaction (Figure 12). This would support a highly detailed method of Activity Costing. This could greatly improve the overall responsiveness, effectiveness and efficiency of DoD acquisition, resource/financial/manpower management, and information resource management.