Mics Case Study 5

As part of our MIS 4163 class, we are going to work in a project that will prepare a system design for the application we select. Our team, the Purple Pirates, is a team composed of 5 people. We have selected to put together the design for a service order and invoicing application for an auto repair business. We have named our project ARS which stands for Auto Repair System.

Lastly, the just-in-time (JIT) approach is an operating philosophy that requires that all resources, including materials, personnel, and facilities, be acquired and used only as needed (Mazumder, 2007). The JIT approach works great for manufacturing companies because of their common classes of material that they use which are raw materials, work-in-process, and finished goods (Mazumber, 2007). According to JIT concept raw materials are received just in time to go into production, manufactured parts are completed just in time to be assembled into products, and products are completed just in time to be shipped to customers (Mazumber, 2007). The

Lack of overall direction with multiple CEO’s- Over time the CEO of tech depot didn’t know what to do. From so many changes to the company it causes the employees to get out for hand and we threating to quit. Francoli was going to change that introducing the OME to the different part of the company to see how it will do in the different departments and what they can change about it to make it more effective to tech depot.

Instead of owning individual regions, the team discussed the previous year results and the upcoming year’s decisions together. We still gravitated toward initial biases: Jason gravitated toward marketing decisions, Ingrid spent time on capacity and operations, and Michael worked on the finances. Michael also managed the industry forecasting, keeping in mind major changes by ASF would also affect the Industry numbers.

In my opinion, face to face interaction should be the most relevant change in the structure. Any employee would feel more inspired and passionate if they knew that they could connect to their supervisors on a personal level. Direct reports at any level within the organization should be personal interaction instead of just papers being passed around. Structured content as well as continuity are factors that increases the bond between workers and management. Another crucial principle is involving all levels in every decision being made, everyone from the chief executive to the first floor workers.

This way the IT department can understand what the higher level and lower level employees need for system stability and a better graphical interface. Another plan of action would include the method of Systems Development Life Cycle or SDLC. The phases of this method are planning, analysis, system design, implementation and operation. First we must plan on what exactly we are trying to accomplish. We know we need to upgrade the Riordan Manufacturing system. Next we must analyze the system and look for problematic errors. A project proposal can be essential to launching a system analysis (Farah, 2013). These are things to keep in mind: understand the business situation or problem, understand the significance to the problem in the organization, think of alternate solutions, the use of computer information systems for solutions, find people interested in the solving the problem (Farah, 2013). This plan is used to decrease redundancies, errors, and increase security. Finding all the weak spots in the company will help in the improvement of integrating an updated efficiently functioning system. Feasibility is important to account for when upgrading the system. Integrating a CRM will help to work with customers and understand their needs and wants to benefit the company and the relationship with their customers. Designing the system will involve knowing what kind of software is needed to store and

Unfortunately, one problem I noticed was the breakdown in communication between all levels of the team. The pattern of communication I noticed was closed and limited to only a small portion of the team as a whole. With such a large building, this is something that needs to be addressed immediately. Opening the lines of communication within the department will strengthen the relationship each member has with their leader. This builds trust and will improve

Bombardier Transportation had one main problem which is that there isn’t any specific and defined organizational structure. This situation was particularly a problem with Bombardier Transportation trying to merge with Adtranz. Establishing the corporate culture is the first step that needed to be taken

Following an analysis of the case, the company is currently experiencing internal communication problems and a lack of understanding of how a business that has a matrix structure should operate. By applying a few changes within the organisation will result in the company becoming even more successful.

The communication between the IT department and the HR department is a key factor. This will keep everyone in the loop to what is going on. That allows the necessary changes to be made in the early stages instead of the later stages. This communication will help save the company time and money.

Jon Fries (CEO), Fletcher Anderson (COO), Craig Schuster (CFO), and Catherine Sprauer (division controller) were the four central figures in this case. Identify the key responsibilities associated with the professional roles these individuals occupied. Briefly describe the

1. What parts of the supply chain are most closely involved with the situation in this case? What is the responsibility of each part in order to maintain a smooth flow of material?

1. Structural – the company needs to flatten out the management authority for better communication at all levels. The teams are lacking structure to implement TQM and understand of how it can affect quality.

One major problem was the resignation of one of the company’s top salesmen who had the most difficult territory (9963), effective at the end of the year. If he shifts one of the more experiences salesmen into that area, it would disrupt service in an additional territory, which was undesirable because it took several months for a salesman to build up a good rapport with customers. This decision would affect the

Other assumptions that we made for the case study were that we could only use the 7.5-hour workday and one line of production.  We also assumed that we were limited to the range of 8 to 12 people stated in the problem. Because we are making complex equipment, we assumed that we could not change the order of the operations themselves but that we could have a station do varying combinations of operations. The projections in the Excel spreadsheet also assume that the engineers’ specified times would be accurate once production begins.  Regarding the hardware testing operations, the activities are to be performed on three computers concurrently, so we divided the operation times by three to arrive at the true operation times.