Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/147615 
Authors: 
Year of Publication: 
2001
Series/Report no.: 
Manuskripte aus den Instituten für Betriebswirtschaftslehre der Universität Kiel No. 537a
Publisher: 
Universität Kiel, Institut für Betriebswirtschaftslehre, Kiel
Abstract: 
On a very abstract level, an information system consists of a set of system elements which communicate with each other. Communication is an unproductive operation, so the time needed to communicate data should be kept as short as possible and, to put it in monetary terms, the opportunity costs for communication should be kept small. Now, communicating data is more than just transmitting it, but it consists in large parts of converting data structures that are used by one system element into data structures that are used by another system element. Such conversion can be avoided, if the system elements use a common standard of data structures. Since establishing a standard at a system element incurs standardization costs, a decision maker has to check, if the cost savings gained by standardized communication outweigh the costs for installing the standard. In a recent paper, it is claimed that this so-called standardization problem is an NP-hard optimization problem. We will demonstrate that this is not true, but in fact the standardization problem can be solved in polynomial time by solving a minimum cut problem.
Subjects: 
Standardization
Enterprise Resource Planning
Client/Server-Architecture
Information System
Network Flow
Minimum Cut
Document Type: 
Working Paper
Document Version: 
Digitized Version

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