Moonlight Distributors is a 10-year-old transportation firm that specializes in pickup and delivery from a wide range of businesses. There is a corporate office in Chicago, IL and three regional offices in Pittsburgh, PA, Omaha, NE, and San Francisco, CA.

Diane, the CEO, has been seeing sales and profits slip for the past three years. Tony from billing says that the problem lies in getting accurate and timely information from the regional offices. Because of all the paper work involved, the three regional managers complain that they can't get the information to Tony any faster.

Every shipment, about 10,000 per month per region, requires a pickup document with the shipper information, a description of the goods to be shipped, where these goods are going, and who is paying the freight. Once the pick up is made and brought back to the terminal, the goods need to be checked against the manifest and then set up for delivery. Once the drivers come back off the delivery route, they fill out delivery documentation including when the goods were signed for.

You are the IT Director for Moonlight, and have been mandated by Diane to create a system that would reduce the overhead at the regional terminals. You suggest putting in a distributed computer system, having computers at each of the regional offices and corporate headquarters. You created a conceptual design for the shipping information system and will eventually link it to the Billing, Finance, and Marketing Systems.

Some of the information that is needed is - status of every pick up and delivery, weekly reports for On-Time-Delivery, a monthly report on new customers, profitability, market share gains and losses, the number of new customers, the volume and charges, and how many problems occurred that cut into profits (such as late delivery, damage delivery, and refused shipments).

Assignment

Your supervisor requested a short memo identifying each of the five W's and the H (Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How) and how each could influence the design of the logical database model. Compose an 600-word e-mail to your supervisor.

Question:

I need help idenfiting the five W's and the H (Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How) of the database.