Chapter 13 Running Case Assignment: Achieving Operational Excellence: Designing an Employee Training and Skills Tracking System and Database

Dirt Bikes promotes itself as a "learning company." It pays for employees to take training courses or college courses to help them advance in their careers. As employees move on, their job positions become vacant and Dirt Bikes must quickly fill them to maintain its pace of production. Dirt Bikes's human resources staff would like to find a way to quickly identify qualified employees who have the training to fill vacant positions. Once the company knows who these employees are, it has a better chance of filling open positions internally rather than paying to recruit outsiders. Dirt Bikes would like to track each employee's years of education and the title and date completed of training classes that each employee has attended.

• Dirt Bikes currently cannot identify such employees. Its existing employee database is limited to basic human resources data, such as employee name, identification number, birth date, address, telephone number, marital status, job position, and salary. Dirt Bikes's human resources staff keeps skills and training data in paper folders.
• Prepare the systems analysis report describing Dirt Bikes's problem and a system solution that can be implemented using PC database software. Then use the database software to develop a simple system solution. Your report should include the following:
  • Description of the problem and its organizational and business impact.
  • Proposed solution and solution objectives.
  • Information requirements to be addressed by the solution.
  • Management, organization, and technology issues to be addressed by the solution, including changes in business processes.
• On the basis of the requirements you have identified, design the solution using database software and populate it with at least 10 records per table. Consider whether you can use or modify the existing employee database in your design. Print out the design for each table in your new application. Use the system you have created to create queries and reports that would be of most interest to management, such as which employees have college education or which employees have training in project management or advanced computer-aided design [CAD] tools