From 18th to 20th September, 1978, about forty scientists and
practitioners from Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Great Britain,
the United States and the Federal Republic of Germany joined in an
international symposium entitled "Design and Implementation of
Computer-based Information Systems" . This symposium was initiated by
the invitation of the BIFOA (Betriebswirtschaft- liches Institut fur
Organisation und Automation an der Universitiit zu Koln) as a part of
the institute's research project IMPLAN (Development of Tools for the
IMPLemen- tation of Computer-based PLANning Systems). This book includes
the opening address, the papers presented at the symposium -revised by
the authors after presentation-the chairmen's summaries of the various
working group sessions, and an edited version of the concluding""Blue-
print for Research on Implementation". Xl Acknowledgements The symposium
was made possible by a federal grant from the Bundesminister fur
Forschung und Technologie (BMIT), Bonn, reptesented by the
Gesellschaftfur Mathe- matik und Datenverarbeitung (GMD), St. Augustin,
who sponsored the whole IMPLAN research project and the symposium. We
are extremely appreciative of their valuable cooperation and support; in
this respect our special thanks go to Mrs. Katharina Gregor and Dr. J
urgen Marock of the G MD. Our sincere thanks and appreciation are due to
the authors for the many hours of work, for their contributions and for
preparing and revising them after the symposium. We appreciate the
valuable help of the chairmen for conducting the working sessions and
preparing summaries of the sessions.
