McAllister Towing is a marine towing company founded in 1864 with operations in several East Coast ports. McAllister Towing of Charleston was established in 1987 to provide towing services in the Charleston area. The company uses McAllister Central Dispatch (MCD), an in-house information system, to manage business processes like billing, dispatching, and job tracking across all locations. MCD allows input of job details, generation of reports, and answering of business questions about customers, tugboat usage, and past jobs.

1. McAllister Towing of Charleston, Inc.

2. Business Description McAllister Towing: a marine towing and transportation business One of the oldest and largest companies in their industry Cities of operation: New York City, Staten Island, Portland, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Hampton Roads, Wilmington, Georgetown, Charleston, Jacksonville, and Port Everglades

3. Business Description (Continued) Founded in 1864 Services offered: ship docking, coastal towing, harbor towing, bulk transportation Customer base of over 1,000 steamship companies Usage of 70 tugboats and 12 barges Headquarters in New York City, New York

4. McAllister Towing of Charleston, Inc. Established in 1987 Offers additional offshore assistance and towing Located on the CooperRiver Mission: provide superior service to the Charleston area by employing the finest marine engineers, captains, and technicians and maintaining the most efficient tugboats Goal: to be the top marine towing business in Charleston Objectives: keep the level of their tugboatmaintenance high, maintain employee licenses, and have a high response time for their customers

5. McAllister’s Information System McAllister Central Dispatch, known as MCD Main business processes: billing and dispatching Sub processes: job confirmation and review, tow job review, dispatch listings, port job log of Charleston

6. McAllister’s Tiered Process Input of information for requested job Information reviewed by port with detailed times Sent to the New York office to be reviewed and approved Invoice is generated from New York office

7. MCD Input and Processes Input information: ship name, agent for each ship, customer name, time of job, type of job, etc. Processes: job scheduling, vessel data updating, relaying of docking instructions, updating and relaying of notes, adding to job list There are many separate options and fields to input data into

8. MCD Input Methods Manual typing: job tonnage, date of order placement Drop down menu: agent, who bill goes to Look up screen: vessel name, job location Automatically entered data: port (Charleston), job to (MCA Towing Charleston Division) Previously selected data: type of job (ship assist)

9. Main Questions Answered by MCD Details of jobs that occur What time ships depart Summary of the job

10. Development of MCD McAllister Central Dispatch developed specifically for the organization Not a standard program off the shelf IT department interviewed different programmers around country IT advised company president about best system Company president had final decision MCD is maintain in house by McAllister’s IT department MCD is the universal system used by all eleven McAllister Towing locations

11. MCD Sample Reports Job confirmation and review: dispatcher inputs all information for job when requested, used the most frequently

12. MCD Sample Reports Tow job review: summary of job, not frequently used unless there is a problem with a job

13. MCD Sample Reports Invoice: generated frequently with every job for customer

14. MCD Sample Reports List of dispatch jobs: list of jobs with color coding system

15. MCD Sample Reports Port job log: most complex, answers business questions

16. Port Job Log Can show all previous jobs Allows for specific selections of a data set Information: order date, time requested, time started, vessel to be assisted, NRT, tug boats used, type of work, job location, customer number and name, job number

17. McAllister Business Questions How many tugs were sent out on October the 22nd with a job type of docking? Five How many time have jobs been requested by customer number 124018, Hamburg Sud? From October 10th to October 24th there were four requests Which tugboat is being used the most? The Dorothy McAllister was used twenty-one times by itself, the Nancy McAllister only used four times by itself

18. Business Questions Which customers have a tendency to request a job type of sailing or docking?

19. Business Questions How many tugs are used with each vessel requesting assistance?

20. Conclusion MCD is a very effective system that generates all necessary information for the company With a specific design for the company and the ability to be maintained in-house, the system is very successful Using MCD, the company can answer many questions about customers and jobs to help analyze their company