Best practice to manage Information Technology System in Factory and Manufacturing Environment
Information technology related equipment should be properly management (e.g. re-used or disposed) once they reach they reach the end of their life-cycle, as otherwise piles of hardware unnecessarily take up office or storage space. The IT equipment management procedure addresses this issue by providing a guideline in the disposal and/or re-use of IT hardware. Read More
In order to achieve its objectives, the IT department of the company requires to be well organized as well as staffed with disciplined and skilled members. These professionals should be matched to appropriate positions in the organizational structure in order to ensure both organizational efficiency and personal development. The IT’ Roles and Responsibility Procedure provides an overview of the IT organization and its members, as well as their corresponding roles and the teams to which they belong. Read More
The objective of this plan is to provide a guideline to the organization to continue managing the business through MFGPro and to minimize the disturbance to manufacturing operations in the event that the MFGPro system is totally unavailable and cannot be recovered within 48 hours.
The service provided during the disaster recovery is of survival nature, may not extend to every user, and may require end-users to re-enter the backlog transactions at the commencement of the disaster recovery and at re-starting of the normal operation.
The recovery option will be varied in nature depending on the cause of the outage. This may require set-up of LAN server, secondary processing center, etc. Read More
The purchasing of IT related hardware and software must be strictly regulated in order to ensure that company standard-compliant hardware and software are purchased and installed (non-company standard hardware and software require additional approval), and (2) expenditures for hardware and software do not exceed the allocated budget. Company Hardware and Software Purchasing Procedure addresses this issue by providing a guideline to users, IT staff, and Purchasing staff in purchasing IT related hardware and software according to corporate standards. Read More
Ensuring the continuity of systems that are responsible for hosting the company’s business applications is regarded as of vital importance to our sustained competitiveness. Not only should these systems be protected against the obvious external threats, such as viruses and hackers, they should also be secured against potential, and possibly more dangerous internal “threats”. The rule is that employees should never have more privileges than is necessary for their functions. This issue can be addressed by proper configuration of the systems. Configuration of systems, however, only provides a basic security level. Adapting to the dynamic IT environment requires continuous updating through service packs, hotfixes, and security patches. Figure 1. illustrates this concept. Read More
Many large enterprises employ numerous servers to support their needs. These servers, hosting a business’ most critical applications, are often physically stored at one single location within the enterprise. This concept, commonly referred to as a server farm, provides the benefits of centralized control and management. Nevertheless, this approach has its inherent weaknesses as a collection of servers are more vulnerable to physical damage than distributed servers. This issue, however, can be properly addressed by appropriate security measures. The Company IT’s Server Room Security Procedure addresses the issue and provides policy guidelines necessary to sustain server operations. Read More
Information systems generate large amounts of data that require storage and protection. In the case of single systems (e.g. a single desktop computer), this data is commonly stored on internal storage devices, often a harddrive. Larger and more complex systems, however, require dedicated storage provided by file servers. By centralizing the point of storage, file servers enhance the management, control, and backup of corporate data. The company’s File Server Procedure provides a guideline to IT staff on managing these file servers. Moreover, it offers employees and departments a clarification of file server policy and procedures. Read More
Company, like many other companies nowadays, depend to a great extent on information technology in conducting its daily operations. Users are expected to interact with increasingly complex information systems and applications, requiring not only more intensive training, but also more efficient and effective support from dedicated staff should problems arise. Company’s IT Helpdesk Procedure provides transparency in the processing of these IT related problems. From a user perspective, IT ensures that users will receive effective and professional support from IT staff. From the IT helpdesk perspective, this procedure provides a solid guideline for a professional approach to solving problems of users. Read More
Visitors to the Company carrying IT equipment pose a serious threat to the security of our IT systems. Commonly, the equipment in question are laptops, and we will use the term laptops instead. Without proper control, a visitor with a laptop can connect to the network and infect the system with viruses or malicious programs (e.g. Trojans), either on purpose or unintentionally. The Visitor IT Security Procedure is designed with the purpose of preventing and covering such cases, should they occur. Read More
The development of Internet technology has originated a surge of new application solutions to improve business practices in corporations. This technology has allowed companies to be more competitive on a global scale and changed the way people do business.However, as businesses worldwide place increasing reliance on interconnected systems and electronic data, the risks of fraud, inappropriate disclosure of sensitive data, and disruption of critical operations and services increase. The same factors that benefit business operations also make it possible for individuals and organizations to inexpensively interfere with or eavesdrop on these operations from remote locations for purposes of fraud or sabotage, or other mischievous or malicious purposes.
Evidently, security and privacy protection are key issues for companies nowadays. Maintaining security and privacy requires corporate planning, training, implementing controls properly, monitoring the effectiveness of controls and taking necessary corrective action. Read More