Overviews :

Following the successful use of Ingrid in a planning role, I tried something that I had been thinking about for some years but could not try till now and that was to see what Ingrid would make of an "Entity Diagram". An Entity Diagram is used in computer software design to show the relationships of different aspects of a system. What I did was to rate the same modules in the above problem by the degree to which they related to each other.

The grading scale went from 1 (meaning no relationship) to 5 (meaning total dependency) with 3 being some small degree of interaction. The following is the grid4.txt and the resulting "picture".

Grid4.txt Input Data

Grid4.txt Plot of Component 1 & 2

It should be noted that if the name of the elements is the same word as the name of the constructs then only the position of the elements is shown in the picture.

From this picture I was pleased to see that I could obtain an OverView that showed the workings of an Automotive Distributorship. You can see in the west the day to day servicing needs of the business, in the lower left are what I would refer to as the sharp end of the business and over to the right are all the accounting functions.
 

Contact j.Maxwell LEGG

mailto: income@ihug.co.nz