Question

Brainstorm ideas for a new information system that could be implemented by your school or university to benefit the student community in some way. Create a one- to two-page document requesting the IS department of your school or university to initiate systems investigation for this project. Be sure to cover all the information that is typically contained in a system request form as described in the text.

Answer 1

My current employer can implement Oracle based Enterprise Resource Planning to cover the information management along its 8 factories , 22 warehouses and 15 branches all over India . They can cover all functional areas of Procurement , Inventory , Finance and Accounts , Warehouse , Engineering , Production Planning , Human Resource and Sales . All these functions can be integrated with information interphase . There are tremendous benefits of this information system . The biggest advantage is inventory management as this information system has the potential to reduce inventory holding costs tremendously . The information system provide real time access of the inventory of any item at any place to every person in the organization at any time which is very esential for multifacility organizations . As a result we can keep items especially maintenace and insurance items at only one place instead of keeping them at eight places . So we can reduce the inventory of maintenace spares by eight times which can be major boost to the working capital which is generally locked in dead and non moving inventories . Simillarly on finished goods we can have an integrated view of the inventories of finished goods and work in progress so that we can take into account the availability of finished goods and WIP inventories correctly while doing the production planning . This again has the potential to reduce the working capital requirement as generally the inventories in an integrated manner are not taken into account and even if they are taken into account they are mannualy taken which may not be correct. On procurement side we can look into the live status of our pending orders on account of which we can reduce duplicate ordering and can again reduce inventories. Through MRP and Advanced Supply Chain Planning we can in one go release orders to suppliers . On Finance and Accounts side we can get an integrated picture of receivables and payables so we can see where we are and can make balanced decisions . On production side we can have a live update of the production plan completed so far and what needs to be completed . They can also see what they can accomplish and what they cannot on account of non availability of raw materials . So proper production planning can be done . Through distribution requirement planning we can set priorities for our production department as to what is needed when for dispatch so that the plan gets modified and the requirement is also met . Engineering department can view the sub assembly preparedness of each unit in an integrated fashion and it may not be necessary for keeping sub assemblies at all units as equipments are same at all places . So for one engineering department do not have to do job duplication and again inventories can be reduced tremendously . Engineering can also schedule their maintenance activities through the system as they can get an alert on the basis of manufacturing as to when the maintenance of which equipement has become due . Simillarly sales can make out the inventories of finished goods in an integrated manner and if any thing is short at some place it can be arranged from a neighbouring warehouse at the earliest if it is available . They can also do fast analysis as to which areas or geographic locations are performing better and which are not so that instead of moving finished goods to better performing areas inventories can be dispatched from non performing areas so that the inventories do not become tale and later written off as each product is dated and has a shelf life . Human resource can maintain their skill inventories of employees and in case a requirement from any facility they can first lookin with in if they have additional inventories of skill at some location and instead of hiring from inside we can meet the inventory from within.

So all in all it is an excellent system which has the potential of integrating all the elements of the organization , making it more compact and delivering tremendous savings which can help the bottomline grow tremendously.