All assignments must be submitted as a hardcopy with an assignment cover sheet attached. Prior to submission of your assignment you will be required to check for authenticity and originality using the "Turnitin" facility.

Submission of Late Assignments incur a penalty of 10% of total marks per day after the due date UNLESS a request in writing has been submitted by the due date together with relevant documentation including a medical certificate where appropriate.

Question

The Boston Manufacturing Company is a medium-size manufacturing company of machine tools. In the past couple of years, its net income has dropped enormously since both the cost of sales and operating costs have been rising faster than sales. The average time to fulfil an order is too lengthy that many promised delivery dates are being missed. These problems are due to a huge daily orders, clerks are too busy and making errors in processing sales orders. Other problems include rising inventory levels, increasing numbers of back orders and poor sales forecasts. The firm's owner has become so concerned by these problems that he has engaged YOU.

On studying the situation, YOU realised the fundamental problem is due to inadequate and out of date manual AIS. After discussion meeting with the higher-level of managers of the company, the owner decides that the AIS requires a substantial development
/improvement. Later, the owner has issued a statement which outline the following objectives:

1. To continue growth in sales by providing information on product demand, market trends, competitors' action and technological developments.
2. To develop and maintain high level of customer service that enabled shipments to be delivered as promised and in good condition.
3. To reduce and controlling cost in productivity of employees, inventory levels.

4. To adapt the information system to future changes encountered. Continue to provide managers at all levels with information that they need for making effective decisions.
5. To incorporate any new system when information they provided show benefits that exceed their costs.
The formal proposal is expected to cost a total of $271 000, consisting of supplies and equipment as well as salaries for the members of the project team. Added costs will be necessary when needed.

Benefits are estimated to be $164 000 for each year of operation.

Requirements

You are required to produce a 1 000 - 1 200 word project summary report that meets the objectives of the company.

Your submission is to include:

Project summary with the ‘suggested' outlined below:

a. Summary of the plan

b. Objectives of the redesigned information system

c. Assumptions and constraints.

d. Scheduled of personnel requirements

e. Scheduled of cost requirements

f. Scheduled of equipment requirements

g. Cost benefits studies

h. Discussion and findings

i. Recommendation

j. Bibliography

j. Appendix