Patent ID: 7219069

Claim:
A method for modeling the performance of a facility, in relation to resource utilization of such facility, comprising the steps of: creating an attributes catalog wherein said attributes catalog comprises selected of user-defined attributes and system-defined attributes; reclassifying, by a system level process not accessible to a user, a user-defined attribute as a system-defined attribute whenever a predetermined percentage of users have added such user-defined attribute to the attributes catalog; assigning attributes to a template selected of user-defined or system-defined templates: assigning a predefined template to a facility to be modeled, said predefined template including default facility attribute data; obtaining resource utilization data for such facility; wherein selected of said facility attribute data and said resource utilization data is defined relative to instances, said instances established by points in time when such data is either created or updated, whereby defining said data relative to instances establishes how such data changes over time; normalizing such resource utilization data for selected of said instances based on said predefined template; and providing the normalized resource utilization data in the form of a report.