I.T. Opportunity Statement Discussion

IT Opportunity Statement

This document describes the MIS Department's understanding of the client organization's business need and expectations. You are to review the scenario and develop a response as to your understanding of the problem. This is critical as it will ensure clear understanding of expectations. Once developed and confirmed by client (your professor serves as client), work will commence by you and your MIS department. You will proceed to the next step which is the next week's topic.

Develop and provide the Business Opportunity Response to the client by answering the following questions:

What is the problem to be solved (specific and measurable)?

What are the specific client requirements (due date, cost implications, resource availability, etc.)?

What are the solution's features and functions (provide an introductory paragraph followed by a number list)?

What are the constraints/limitations?

Scenario

SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT: The following is an actual case summarizing supply chain management problems associated with a Sinclair Community College project. BACKGROUND Tom Singer has been a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Sinclair Community College for over twenty years. Tom and his staff wanted to provide their students with a hands-on project that would highlight the major steps associated with a manufacturing and assembly process and one that would have the potential to be used by other disciplines such as mathematics, electronics, physics etc. Tom was able to secure a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) providing him with much needed resources to implement his project. The basis of his project related to the processes necessary to design and build, from scratch, electric guitars. The project would include all the steps necessary including: cutting the bodies and fret boards from wood blanks, sanding and drilling the bodies, wiring the electronics, cutting and pressing the fret wires, preparing the finish, stringing and tuning the instruments, and several other steps required to produce a playable instrument. But the project didnt stop at simply providing this project for Sinclair students. NSF wanted to see this process replicated at colleges and high schools throughout the U.S. To do this, Tom and his staff created the website www.guitarbuilding.org where faculty from other institutions can order the kits of parts that allow them to offer their students classes in guitar building. However, for this to occur, Tom and his staff had to create a true supply chain system of both suppliers and customers. SUPPLY CHAIN SYSTEM PLAYERS A summary of the various system players follows: Parts vendors: There are many parts to an electric guitar such as strings, bridges, nuts, electronic amplification and sound parts, pickups etc. The Sinclair staff has procured parts from several vendors including international suppliers. These vendors need to be paid when parts are ordered. Fret board vendor: The wooden fret boards require precise cutting and are supplied by an outside vendor. These vendors need to be paid when parts are ordered. Body wood vendor: The bodies of the guitars (see below) are manufactured from blanks of woods supplied by a local vendor. The vendor requires payment when the blanks are delivered. Guitar body manufacturing: The guitar bodies are cut from blanks of wood that are glued and prepared by Toms staff. However, sales for the kits have increased to a level where a second West Coast provider is being considered which would cut the costs of shipping to the West Coast (from Sinclair campus) by providing a more localized supplier. Kit customers: Customers throughout the United States (and potentially internationally) can order the kits which would be shipped from the Sinclair campus. THE NEED 2 Since much of the current SCM system is manually based, Tom and his staff would like an electronic supply chain management system that can help automate his current SCM system. There are several functions they would like including the following: The ability to be automatically notified when a customer purchases kits from the internet and secure proper payment for the orders If the kits are being ordered from a location where there is a remote body supplier (such as the West Coast) the system should automatically send an order notice to the supplier so body manufacturing can be initiated. The supplier would send the completed bodies directly to the customer so the supplier would need to have shipping information sent with the manufacturing order. Ideally, payment for the shipping would be billed back to the Sinclair Campus, not to the body supplier. The system should provide a method for Toms team to be notified when the supplier has shipped the order to the customer so payment can be made to the supplier. Additionally, the other non-body parts would then need to be shipped, to the customer, from the Sinclair campus. Therefore, the end customer would be receiving two shipments (much like Amazon.com does) one from the body manufacturer and one from the Sinclair campus. The system must account for these multiple ship locations. All other vendor parts orders initiated by Sinclair (such as the wood blanks, fret boards and amplification parts) need to be tracked and all associated data needs to be saved. This would include any invoicing, purchase orders or other critical tracking data. Since ordering of parts can take long periods of time (especially if from international suppliers) it is important for the system to have some level of forecasting abilities. In other words, the system should not only track parts orders, vendor shipments and kit sales, but it should provide some level of analysis and reporting that would allow Toms team the ability to make educated supply orders in advance of kit sales. Related to the forecasting, Toms team does keep a number of parts and kits on-hand as inventory to help lessen the order time for customers. Therefore, the system should provide a level of inventory tracking to help the team better serve the customer. Occasionally, defective kits or parts are returned so the system should have the ability to process and refund returns. CONSTRAINTS Sinclair Community College is a non-profit organization so cost is always an issue. The average guitar kit sells for about $175 which doesnt leave room for much profit. The NSF grant has helped Toms team develop the processes and current systems but that funding is only temporary and will soon no longer 3 be available. Therefore, whatever solution is proposed must be low cost and provide a level of efficiency that will offset some of the current manual-based costs. Ideally, an open-source system (one where there is little or no cost) would be the preferred route. The college does have licensing for most Microsoft applications so a system comprised of off the shelf traditional software (such as Windows, Office etc.) could be an option.