A configuration-based flexible reporting method for enterprise information systems

Reports are significant and critical deliverables provided to end users by enterprise information systems, such as PLM and ERP. They provide structured and concise information for end users to effectively capture the status of resources, track the progress of jobs and analyse the profitability of products, etc. Reports are also key documents that help managers make decisions, perform planning activities and communicate with partners. At present, enterprise information systems are usually developed with fundamental reporting capabilities and require further design and development to provide customized reporting functions to individual customers at an implementation stage. The customization of reporting functions to a particular company is time-consuming and it is difficult to reuse the results for other companies. This paper proposes a configuration-based flexible reporting method. In this method, a complete reporting system consists of two parts: report configurations and computer programs. Reporting configurations contain instructions that instruct computer programs to generate reports. As computer programs work according to instructions in configurations rather than any hard-coded report generation logics and configurations can be represented in a neural format, report generation logics are loosely coupled with computer programs. As a result, such a reporting system can generate reports for different companies by providing different sets of configurations. Therefore, the proposed method enables to achieve a highly flexible reporting solution that can be easily tailored for different companies through reconfiguration with little redesign and redevelopment. In addition, the method also offers end users opportunities to reconfigure reporting functions according to their needs at a production stage. A prototype system has been developed to verify and demonstrate the method.