Question

Scenario:

UAENATIVE is a SME company based in Ajman, UAE, with a shop front retailing a range of native products (including a range of pearl jewelry, traditional wooden furniture, art, pottery, cosmetic and perfumery). They are a small family-owned business with capitalization of AED20M, annual sales of AED3M, increasing at three percent per annum, and net profits of eight percent of total sales. The younger members of the management team are university educated, with the others industry experienced. However, in an ever- changing industry, their future business is uncertain.

Their main business is the wholesale sale of UAE native cultural products to International commercial retailers; however, they do supply to UAE domestic and commercial retailers (currently 50 percent of sales and 50 percent of profits).

While UAENATIVE manufacture majority of its own products, but their main suppliers for the raw material are based in Al-Ain and RAK. Supplier relations are all paper-based transactions, while long-term contracts are managed using email and facsimile transmission of orders.

The UAENATIVE management team is keen to expand the retail sales, which are potentially very profitable for the company and to improve relations with suppliers. To do this one member of the management team (who recently graduated from the Ajman University) has suggested the company create new supply chain management system.

You have been called in as an IT consultant. UAENATIVE wants to know how IT could be used to develop a supplier management system to improve the company’s operations. The company is keen to leave as much open as possible – you have been told that it is a ‘clean sheet’ strategy but cannot consume more than half the profits of next year’s business. The Chief Executive, Mr. A2Z, needs: Part1) System Planning, Part 2) System Analysis.

PART 1) : Analyzing the Business Case and Managing System Projects – 10 marks

Hints: Perform SWOT analysis, assess request feasibility from operational, economic, technical, and schedule perspectives, create WBS, and perform critical path analysis

PART 2): Requirement Engineering and Data and Process Modeling – 10 marks

Hint: Documentation of techniques that will be used for gathering system requirements, data flow diagrams and object modeling using UML

Answer 1

Answer :

Part 1

Swot analysis is a combination of Strength,weakness,opportunity and threat.

            After studying the Case study the strength of given case study is:

• Strength:50 percent of profit and 50% of sales to international commercial retailers.
• Weakness:Relation with suppliers is not efficient
• Opportunity:Hire new IT consultant in company
• Threat:Is effective supply change management developed?.

Feasibility analysis:

                

• Operational: The process of operating and deploying the project.

• Economic: To check the budget ,inflow and outflow of cash.

• Technical:To ensure the software and hardware meets the requirement.

• Schedule perspectives:To schedule the meeting with suppliers, manufacturers and other team members.All the work and task schedule and timeline are set in this type of meeting with help of perspectives of members of the team.

WBS stands for work breakdown structure.UAE initiative company is divide into further parts:

1. Initiation
2. Planning
3. Execution and Control
4. Closing

According to the provided case study management is required for supplier management, transactions and retailers. The SME company plans the requirements like a budget plan for implementing the execution and control.

Steps to create critical path:

• Enlisting all the activities that are required in the plan.
• Create the activities by using symbols such as circle and arrow diagram.
• This chart is created as per every week and tasks involved in that week.

2)

The requirement gathering techniques are as follows:

• BrainStorming
• Interview

Requirement analysis is used to analyze ,understand and map the business workflow and make required changes to the workflow as per requirement.There are various requirement analysis techniques such as Data flow diagram,UML and BPMN.

UML(Unified Modeling Language):

To capture business modelling and process,UML consist of various objects such as

Object,State diagram,Activity and class.It is used for documentation,visualization and specification of system.The diagram represents the object diagram of the company whereas the company is further divided into multiple departments that is second level is called object. T,d1,d2,d3 are variables in the diagram.RAK and AIan,International Commercial Retailer and UAE represent the attribute values

DFD stands for data flow diagram.It comprises various components such as process,store ,flow and terminator.As per case study, DFD level 0 and DFD level 1 to be created.

• Level 0 DFD represent the system as whole process and show the relationship with external entities showing incoming and outgoing arrows.In the diagram,Supplier and Customer are the external entities of SME company.Supplier supply the raw material to the SME company named UAInitative and further Company delivers products to the customers.
• Level 1 DFD is divided into multiple processes.There are four processes : Manufacturer,Enquiry,Operation and Retailers.Each process has its own functionality.Suppliers supply the raw items to the manufacturer. Retailers sell the products to the customer.Operations handle the activities to produce the goods as shown in figure.

Explanation :

Part1.

Swot analysis is necessary to find out the strength ,weakness,of companies.Paper based to be done with suppliers for short term contracts whereas for long term transactions.

Strength:

Wide range of native products

Annual sales of AED3M is increasing at three percent per annum, and net profits of eight percent of total sales.

Weakness:

Time consuming because of paper based transaction

Company operation is still yet to be improved.

Opportunity

Need to expand retailer sales

Threat

Unable to consume more than half of next year's business

Feasibility analysis:

It is used to ensure a project is operation and technically feasible as well as economically feasible.

Operation: In this phase SME company evaluates the cost and benefit of activities. ,

The budget management and planning is performed in economic feasibility.

Technical feasibility: hardware and software requirements for the company are being evaluated.

Scheduling the tasks like supplier meetings, manufacturer selection are done in the Schedule perspectives.

Snip of Work break structure is shown below:

Critical path analysis:

The figure illustrate the week 1 path of the newly joined employee in company

Part 2)

The documentation of requirement gathering technique is as follows

Brainstorming:

It is an important technique of requirement gathering to find out the solutions of problems.The main purpose is to obtain the ideas from a group of people.

Interview: Interview of users and stakeholders is important to understand their goals and expectations .

The figure illustrate the Object diagram using UML:

The below figure snip shows the DFD level 0

The below snip represents the DFD level 1: