Draw a data flow diagram showing the external agents for the scenario below:

Consider the following scenario describing the business process for a department store. You are advised to read it carefully.

A department store uses a database to manage information about the items it sells.

The store’s external market research consultant investigates the likely demand for new products. They provide a list of potential new products, the likely demand, and their supplier’s details to the store’s buying department. The buying department’s data entry clerk enters this data in a new products data store and allocates an appropriate buyer to manage the new product’s introduction. Allocation is carried out according to the product type and the expertise of the buyer. (i.e. the sporting equipment buyer deals with new sporting equipment products).

Managing the introduction of a new product involves contacting the suppliers and asking for a sample of the product and the product details (e.g. when they can supply the products and what the price will be etc.). When the supplier responds, the data is entered into the appropriate data store and the sample is assessed by the buyer. The buyer enters the assessment results and a recommendation to proceed (or not) in the new products data store.

The head buyer reviews the buyer’s recommendations stored in the new products data store each week and makes a decision about whether to place the order or not. To help in this decision, the stocked items data store is used to find the total value of recent stock purchases made for each department. If a department has a high level of sales then the order for that department is more likely to be placed.

If the order is to be placed, the head buyer updates the new products data store to show this and then uses the new product data to create and send an initial order to the supplier. This process also sends a message to the stock control department so that the supplier, product, and first delivery details can be added to the stocked items and order data stores.

The stock control department is responsible for managing the receipt of products from the supplier and issuing orders to replace sold products. To do this, each day the orders data store is reviewed to find which products have expected deliveries that day. A list is produced so that a stock controller can check the delivery when it arrives, update the stocked items records and organize the warehouse workers so that they store it in the correct location.

Each week the warehouse stock controller checks the stocked items data so that products that have low stock levels can be re-ordered. An order is generated by the system and sent to the supplier. The orders file is updated by adding this repeat order to show that the order has been placed and the expected delivery date.

Answer rating: 100% (QA)

The external entities are supplier and buyer The central p... View the full answer