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Baxter Manufacturing Company Case Study

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Abstract Baxter Manufacturing Company (BMC) is a family founded company. Started by Walter R. Baxter in 1978, the 140,000-square foot manufacturing facility is headquartered in the Midwest in the United States. Walter Baxter’s children work for BMC, Kyle Baxter is the President and his sister Sue Barkly is Vice President of customer relations. BMC is recognized as a world class supplier of tools, dies and deep-drawn stamping; serving customers such as: General Motors, Ford, Whirlpool, and General Electric. Baxter holds a strong market position and has maintained a 20% growth each of the nineteen years in business. In the 1980s business trends move to a Just-In-Time (JIT) system, this would streamline traditional business proving …show more content…

The strategy also calls for implementing a pilot system using a parallel strategy because it’s less risky and to also implement the pilot strategy a module at a time. Developing proposal for an in-house program using the IS department Collins, although new to BMC, has had twenty years of prior experience as a lead systems analyst of a larger manufacturing firm. He and four other programming staff members have successfully maintained the computer system at BMC. They have developed a minicomputer system that accepts the EDI orders without have to re-key orders. Due to their success, this has enlightened BMC managers’ to the possibility of the IS department developing a more extensive use of the computer. Collins proposes that Baxter should allow the IS staff to develop and build a manufacturing system that will be custom made to BMC’s needs. Within the case Collins clearly identifies key advantages of developing software in-house (refer to exhibit 1). With the custom application development taking place in-house, will allow the software to be developed and tailored around Baxter’s specific business needs. In-house development will allow business managers and end-users who will use the application on a day-to-day basis to play key roles in the development process (Brown 2009 p.375). Buy developing the software Baxter will need to develop a baseline for understanding what is

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