Case study

Individual Blinds is a small company making exclusive roller blinds for clients in a county town. Mrs Anderson is the owner-manager. As a small company it has limited resources: Mrs Anderson visits potential clients in their home, using the company car, to discuss their design needs. She helps them select the fabric and measures their windows. When she returns to the office she gives this information to the senior designer, who uses it to provide estimates of costs and delivery times. The customer is then sent a written estimate. If the customer decides to accept the estimate, Mrs Anderson orders the material. Delivery of the material can take up to two weeks. There are two machinists making blinds and their work schedule is such that they can usually start making a set of blinds within a couple of days of the fabric arriving. Once the blinds have been completed a fitter delivers and installs the blinds in the client's house. If the company car is available he will use that, otherwise he will use his own car and claim mileage. Joanna Anderson, the owner's daughter, is responsible for all the company finances. She invoices the clients, pays the wages, settles the accounts, etc.

Mrs Anderson realizes that the future of the business depends on ensuring that the company can move towards greater efficiency and effectiveness. She hopes to expand the business in the next two years. At present the client base is small, costs are increasing and profits are falling, and the time between Mrs Anderson's first visit to the client and the blinds being fitted in the client's home is too long. As many windows are now a standard size it might be possible to classify the jobs into fabric types and standard sizes and know, on average, how long the various kinds of jobs take. Mrs Anderson wonders whether a computerized information system would benefit the company.

The first step is to prepare an initiation statement for a possible information system for Individual Blinds based on the project initiation questions. Some possible answers are given below:

1 What are the objectives to be achieved by this particular system?

(a) To reduce costs and increase profits.
(b) Reduce turnaround times.
(c) Where possible to standardize the jobs.

2 What are the outputs needed from the system?

(a) Job costs.
(b) Delivery times.
(c) Availability of human resources.
(d) Availability of other resources.
(e) Invoices.
(f) Sales records.
(g) Purchase orders.

3 Who are the potential users of the system?

(a) Mrs Anderson.
(b) Joanna Anderson.
(c) The senior designer.
(d) The fitter.

4 What do the potential users consider the problems to be?

(a) Time.
(b) Costs.
(c) Resources.

5 What do they want from the system?

(a) Efficient use of all resources.
(b) Client details.
(c) Fabric costs and fabric delivery times.
(d) Job details.
(e) Job costs.