Businesses around the world face many challenges when trying to compete and gain a competitive advantage over their competitors. Members of the management team of these companies must make quick and precise decisions that will often impact the company and all of its employees, possibly for years to come. One of the worst situations any of these decision makers find themselves in is when they know that all the information they need is available; but they are unable to retrieve this information in an accurate and useful way. In no area is this more true than in the manufacturing industry, where one wrong decision could cost the company millions of dollars, especially when it comes to contract proposals and the bidding process. A tool that can facilitate this decision-making process when the required information is distributed across the enterprise is called a data warehouse. A data warehouse is a separate database specifically designed to facilitate the decision-making process. This new database can fulfill this function by being subject-oriented, integrated, variable over time and not updatable. (Menninger, 1994) These four concepts are vitally important for a data warehouse to provide the business intelligence it is charged to provide. In the example of a manufacturing company bidding or offering a contract, the subjects would be customers, suppliers, employees and spare parts. All information found in the Data Warehouse would be oriented around these key topics. Data, as mentioned earlier, would also be collected from many different sources and integrated together to form a valid set of information. The third item that would be important, focuses on the item in the middle of the paper......ALE%7CA12731486&v=2.1&u=melb26933&it=r&p=CDB&sw=wMenninger, Dave. "And now, an overview of the data warehouse..." Data Based Advisor November 1994: 126+. Computer database. Internet. November 30, 2011. Document URLhttp://go.galegroup.com.portal.lib.fit.edu/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA16241333&v=2.1&u=melb26933&it=r&p=CDB&sw=wRosen, Cal. “The basics of warehousing schema wars are missing.” Informatique Canada April 20, 1998: 34. Computer database. Internet. November 30, 2011. Document URL http://go.galegroup.com.portal.lib.fit.edu/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA20502639&v=2.1&u=melb26933&it=r&p=CDB&sw=wWhite, Colin. "Why a data warehouse? A recent survey shows how some companies manage information processing." Database Programming and Design, September 1993: 27+. Computer database. Internet. November 30, 2011. Document URL http://go.galegroup.com.portal.lib.fit.edu/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA14191355&v=2.1&u=melb26933&it=r&p=CDB&sw=w