CRITICAL THINKING EXERCISES

Exercise $1\mathrm{.}1$

PEC is a successful and modern blood donor center located in the northeastern region of the United States. Its management style has always stood out among other blood centers in$.$ the United States because of its modern and progressive views. The blood center is known for embracing changes in manufacturing with a positive approach by appropriately planning and allocating resources to ensure things are done the right way. However, in the last few years, both employees and customers have noticed a steady decline in control and quality: The number of manufacturing errors and product and service complaints reported by customers has drastically increased. PEC: has tripled in size in the last $3$ years, after the acquisition of several small blood banks in the state. Changes have occurred quickly to accommodare this growth, and thorough planning before the implementation of thess changes has not always been possible. Among many of its growing pains, PEC employee finally realized that rheir blood bank computer system was outdated and unable to handl the workload volume increase in the last few years.

Management at PEC. selected EJO, Inc., as the new software vendor. Although EJO experience, reputation, expertise, and client support were well known, its new bloc banking software was not. However, the cost of implementing this new sofrware fit w within the approved fiscal budget. With full management support, validation and traini efforts began early in the year with a proposed "live" date for September of that year. June, multiple "bugs" had been identified during system testing. EJO's technical supp