Riordan Manufacturing MRP Evaluation Project Essay

In our quest to ever better ourselves the IT department, of Riordan Manufacturing, is submitting this Request for Proposal to integrate a more sophisticated, state-of-the art, information systems technology in our Human Resources department. Riordan Manufacturing has always strived to better ourselves by keeping up with technology in all of our operating systems and our manufacturing systems. Our goal is to remain at the forefront of the manufacturing community as we keep leading the way in all of our business systems and, at the same time, keeping the feel of a customer friendly company. We want to make

There are several stakeholders at Riordan Manufacturing to gather requirements from to provide a clear picture of the final project. The first stakeholder to gain input would come from the Chief Operations Officer, he was the requestor of the system upgrade, is responsible for the budget, which includes payroll. The Chief Legal Officer oversees the legal aspects of the human resources programs. The individual human resources managers within the individual facilities are the stakeholders who recruit and handle benefits for employees. Each facility has an accountant that oversees payroll and bonuses as well as the payroll specialist (Apollo, 2011).

Riordan Manufacturing is a large company with facilities in several locations around the world. Riordan Manufacturing is an international plastics manufacturer that currently employs 550 people and operates at around $46 million in sales("Riordan Manufacturing", 2013). As a result of its size, Riordan must have a system that is able to keep track of important information such as employee names and other confidential data. This information should be able to be accessed from other locations as well as the home office. There are other functions that a new and improved HR system could benefit such as inventory tracking or the shipping or reception of products. These

The initial cost of the project will be the sum of the development, project administration, implementation, and financing functions. Development cost include IT system design, process planning, and feasibility analysis. Hardware upgrades, software development, infrastructure improvements are included in the implementation costs. Administration expenditures cover other costs such as training, furniture, network infrastructure, utilities, and insurance. Kudler expects to use this system for a prolonged period of time; therefore, the cost of the life cycle will need to be calculated also. Furthermore, the benefits of worker productivity gain, expenditure decrease, and employee utilization gains will also be calculated in the economic feasibility analysis. Once the initial cost of the project is determined, feasibility can be determined on the economic level. According to article, “Implementation: The operational feasibility perspective”, operational feasibility will be achieved if the following steps are followed. Step 1, managers and employee negative perceptions of change must be addressed openly. Step 2, positive factors for change must be reinforced. Step 3, the highest stress should be dealt with first. Step 4, change must start at the top of the organization. Step 5, informal and formal lines of communication should be used. All managers and workers should be involved or represented in the design.

It has been decided that Riordan Manufacturing will implement an official customer management system. This system will be used by everyone in the organization. The main goal of the team is to help with the planning and implementation of the new system in order for a smooth transition.

Riordan manufacturing is a very large company with facilities in many locations around the World. With any company with this size Riordan must have a system in place that is able to keep track of significant amounts of information. Such as Employee names, time sheets and a variety of other important information. This system should be able to have a central location so that stores all of this information and can be accessed not only by the corporate office but at each location as well. There are many functions that a new and improved system should provide. Such as inventory control, tracking of shipments into and out of the warehouses, and the receiving of such items to our costumers. These requirements are essential to the growth of Riordan Manufacturing.

This determines the project’s outcome, usefulness, effectiveness, cost, and time it takes the project to be completed. This also determines the future outcome of the project and will be needed for an upgrade. The scope of the project will be determine and completed within six months. The resources constraints of completing the project will be determine by cost and time. The cost could be higher from the original cost for the completion of the project. The expected cost of the project will be $50,000. This will include paying the project team, cost of software, and hardware. The V.P. of operations of Riordan Manufacturing will approve any changes made to the project. The project team that will be working on this project will be the IT department within the company.

Subsequently Riordan Manufacturing proposes to have higher levels of inventory that allows them in effectively forecasting models for inventory control, production, planning, improving supply chain, and guaranteeing deliveries of Riordan products. Creating a new process design essentially caters for the new supply and demand of Riordan products. Using lean production can help Riordan Manufacturing minimize waste from raw material toward the finished product. Because of the elevated demand for the product, production needs increase (Chase, Jacobs, & Aquilano 2006).

It is observable that the standard procedure issue restricting company progress is a notably derelict network. The Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Materials Requirements Planning (MRP) servers are outdated and stand out from the rest of the systems set up. Integration of the servers will be executed to address the company’s customer relation, human resource, sales and order, finance and inventory issues. Integration will be the goal after upgrades are incorporated in the system’s infrastructure. Recurrent technological advancement compels innovation in apt acknowledgement of agile enterprise. It is essential for Riordan to transition appropriately to sustain a contemporary pace that equals the requirements of strong customer levels. The overall decision making process rudimentary to Riordan’s organizational headway entails agile enterprise in its management system. Primarily, Riordan must contend with its inventory system as manual implementation causes status delay which can halt production, sales, purchasing, and overall deference from the

Riordan Manufacturing 's current process is not very efficient. It calls for multiple suppliers to ship parts to Riordan 's raw material storage area at regular intervals. These intervals have been set up in advance using production history as a guideline. This process causes a huge inventory spike during slow production times thus requiring a large amount of storage space and upfront costs. There is not a standardized method for the individual assembly areas to communicate parts shortages back to the raw material storage area. Also, as indicated during our analysis, the network infrastructure and current systems at the plant are very outdated causing system slowdowns and reducing plant efficiency.

Riordan Manufacturing is in need of updating their decrepit HRIS system to stay profitable. This system will move from the legacy system, integrated with the financial system, into a new standalone system used to integrate all of the HR tools within the system presently.

Riordan Manufacturing COO Hugh McCauley is requesting the implementation of a modern, state-of-the-art information system to integrate all existing HR tools into a single application. To achieve the desired goal, a very detailed investigation needs to be performed, studying the actual processes that Riordan Manufacturing currently uses. Also, a series of stakeholders will provide the adequate feedback trough a series of face-to-face interviews and meticulous observation of their respective working environments. These tools will help create a system that will maximize time

• Review the intranet site for Riordan Manufacturing including Human Resources – Organizational Charts, Employee Files, etc., and Sales & Marketing –

“For companies today, MRP is a computerized information system. As such, it requires data to provide the information needed for decision making” (Vonderembse & White, 2013, Section 9.5, para 6). The goal of this paper is to read the Space Age Furniture Company case study and develop an MRP for Space Age Furniture Company using the information in the case including the production of sub-assemblies in lot sizes of 1,000 considering the lot size of 1,000 for sub-assemblies has produced a lumpy demand for part 3079; suggest ways for improvements over sub-assemblies in lot sizes of 1,000, analyze the trade-off between overtime costs and inventory costs, calculate a new MRP that improves the base MRP, compare and contrast the types of production processing—job shop, batch, repetitive, or continuous—and determine which the primary mode of operation is and why, describe ways that management can keep track of job status and location during production and recommend any changes that might be beneficial to the company and/or add value for the customer.

Upon the exploration of the external dependencies for this project, a timeline for implementation can be clearly outlined, before soliciting for applications. Both scenarios of employee versus a contractor should be requested for quote, as this information will play an important role in the decision making process.