Information coding levels in an industrial enterprise and prerequisites for its interaction with the suppliers and contractors

Enterprise competitiveness is determined by its efficient approach to information management. The purpose of the article is to propose an information coding system for an industrial enterprise with regard to its hierarchical organizational levels defining the nature and the efficiency of the interaction with the in-house units and outside agents. A.A. Bogdanov’s theory of the general organizational science is the methodological basis of the study. With this in mind, the author interprets the information as signals of the social organizational body which are identified and decoded by this body and by other social units, and this helps them change their activity accordingly. The novelty of the study is supported by author’s theoretical and methodological approach to the economic information of an industrial enterprise. The information used in an industrial enterprise reveals four information coding levels: design and engineering, economic, distribution, and physical ones. The article demonstrates that the information is aggregated and encoded into more abstract, symbolic forms on its way from the physical to design and engineering levels. The article states that the design and engineering level in a typical industrial enterprise focuses on the rights, while the physical level concentrates on the duties, this results in information asymmetry and unjustified managerial decisions. To reduce this asymmetry, the author suggests redistributing the rights and duties between the design and engineering and physical levels, which could be the main substantial transformation in the enterprise’s hierarchical structure to prevent an intrinsic tendency of the economic and distribution levels to dependency. This could provide the manufacturers of a ready-to-use tangible product with some rights of the highest level, which could enable them to be well informed and evaluate the environment and to adjust the product manufacturing process to the current market needs in an efficient manner. This is supposed to increase the enterprise sensitivity to the information, to make the manufacturing processes more adjustable, and to contribute into implementation of the lean manufacturing methods. The proposed hypotheses derive the model of an efficient information circulation in an industrial enterprise. The article looks at a long-term cooperation of an industrial enterprise with other organizational bodies (including suppliers and contractors), which could be of interest to promote the labour specialization in this enterprise and to benefit from the positive effect of this measure. The article characterizes the role of the information in exchange and sale of two organizational bodies, as well as their merger. The results of the study could be applied in the management practices of an industrial enterprise, as well as in the inter-disciplinary scientific research. The study is promising as regards the streamlining of the official and non-official information flows in an industrial enterprise when the information layer structure overlaps the organizational structure of an enterprise.