Casse Study:

Individual Blinds is a small, static, profit-making organization. The owner wants to grow the company in the medium term. In the short term she wants to reduce costs and increase profits.

1 What are the roles and responsibilities of the end users?

(a) Mrs Anderson is the owner-manager; she runs the company and schedules the work, visits clients, helps them select their blinds, and measures their windows.

(b) Joanna Anderson is responsible for the company finances.

(c) The senior designer is responsible for producing the estimates for the clients, designing the blinds, ordering the raw materials.

(d) The fitter delivers the blinds to the client's home and fits them to the windows.

2 What decisions do the end users take?

(a) Mrs Anderson has the final decision on all matters; she has to decide which jobs the company should take, who to employ, which suppliers to use and how to schedule the work.

(b) Joanna takes all the financial decisions for the company.

(c) The senior designer decides on the final designs, the materials and the prices to charge.

(d) The fitter decides on the fitting date.

3 What information do the end users need to make these decisions?

(a) Mrs Anderson needs to know client details and preferences, availabilities of raw materials, suppliers' delivery times and costs, machinists' workloads, their skills and availability.

(b) Joanna needs to know what purchases have been made from which supplier, the hours worked by the staff, the selling prices and the clients' details for invoicing.

(c) The senior designer needs to know the clients' details and preferences, availabil- ities of raw materials and labour, costs of materials and labour, work schedules.

(d) The fitter needs to know the clients' details, availability of the company car, order completion dates.

4 What would be the most useful format for this information?

(a) The most useful format for all the users would be simple on-screen reports avail- able on their desk PC, home PC or laptop computer.

5 When and how often is this information needed?

(a) Client information needs to be available at all times.

(b) The availability of raw materials, suppliers' delivery times and costs needs to be available when the senior designer makes her estimates.

(c) Machinists' workloads can be scheduled weekly.

(d) Purchases made need to be available monthly.

(e) Staff costs need to be available monthly, by the fifteenth working day in the month to ensure salaries are paid at the end of the month.

(f) The availability of the company car needs to be known daily, by 5 p.m. each evening for the following day.