## 3 The Structure of the Decision Support Platform
### The Database  
The database contains files with energy consumptions, costs from energy bills, equipment and installations associated with the technological flows from the SME, and economic indicators.  
The working modules (consumption and cost analysis module, profiling module, forecasting module, and production scheduling module) of the platform will upload the data sequences stored in the files with a matrix structure.  
If the SME has a smart meter with the data communication unit, then the energy consumption file includes fields associated with the calendar data (year, month, day from the month, and day from the week), representing the first four columns, and the energy consumptions (the following columns). The indices from 1 (January) to 12 (December) identify the months and from 1 (Monday) to 7 (Sunday) for the day from the week. Depending on the sampling step, \(m\), (a quarter-hour, half-hour, and hour), the number of columns associated with the energy consumption can be 96, 48, and 24. All these data are accessed by all working modules from the matrix \(DW\), having the size (\(N_{W}\times\{4+m\}\)), where \(N_{W}\) represents the number of records identified through days and \(m=\{24,48,96\}\). A sequence from the energy consumption file, where \(m=24\), is presented in Figure 5.  
Figure 5: A sequence from the energy consumption file (SME with the smart meter installed).  
The file has a different structure when the SME has a classic meter installed, containing only the calendar data and the daily energy consumption (which it reads at the end of working schedule the operating staff), such that the matrix \(DW\) has the size (\(N_{W}\times 5\)).  
The file energy costs include records associated with the calendar data (year and month) and the energy costs introduced in the database from the monthly bills. These costs are assigned to the monthly energy consumptions resulted from the aggregation of daily energy consumptions associated with the billed month. The same indices from 1 (January) to 12 (December) identify the months. All these data are accessed by the working modules from the matrix \(DC\), having the size (\(N_{C}\times 3\)), where \(N_{C}\) represents the number of records identified through months.  
The file with the technical characteristics comprises the fields regarding the name of equipment or installations, rated power, and the number of working times. The number of fields for the working times will result after analysis of all operating regimes corresponding to each equipment and installation based on some detailed measurements, using the sampling steps with as small as possible size (1 or 5 s) to identify the working times with high accuracy. After this step, this file can be completed, and the data are accessed from the matrix DE, having the size (\(N_{E}\times R\)), where \(N_{E}\) represents the number of records identified through equipment and installations associated with the activities of technological flows and \(R\) is the number of columns which can be different from one SME to another. The first two columns refer to equipment or installations and their rated power. The number of the next columns will result after the classification in categories of the working times associated with the operating regimes of equipment or installations.  
The file with the economic indicators comprises the fields regarding the turnover, production value, personnel costs, and total purchases with goods and services. All these data are accessed from the matrix \(DI\), having the size (\(N_{I}\times 4\)), where \(N_{I}\) represents the number of records identified through mouths. This file can be optional inside the platform.