You are the Operations Manager for a $50,000,000 (sales) subsidiary of a $750,000,000 corporation. You report to the Divisional Vice President. Your division produces industrial products that are used in the construction, maintenance, transportation, and equipment manufacturing industries. The other two divisions in your corporation serve the automotive and electronics industries. A few products are cross-marketed. Your division is currently number three in your market place. The number one firm has about 60% of the market, the number two firm has about 25% of the market, and you have about 15% of the market. Your products are often used in human safety applications, so product quality is paramount. Neither you nor your competitors have a competitive quality advantage, nor a distinct production cost advantage. Being number three in the market place has meant that your division must excel in customer service and delivery reliability. Over 90% of your sales come through manufacturing representatives to regional distributors who hold inventory of your most popular products in limited quantities. To keep your distributors loyal, your company works very hard on customer service. Your division currently has about 4,000 products in your catalog. About 1,200 items are “in-stock” (MTS, Make-to-Stock) items. The remaining 2,800 items are “non-stock” items that can be considered to be Make-To-Order (MTO). The MTO items are not stocked but are manufactured if, and only if, an order for them is received. Your division promises to ship all “in-stock” items within 24 hours of receiving the order. If the order is received by noon, the order is shipped that day. Because most of your orders are small and are delivered to diverse addresses, UPS is the preferred shipping mode. In contrast, your two sister divisions operate on a much longer lead-time and ship in comparatively larger quantities. They tend to operate much more in the MTO mode and do not offer the fast 24-hour shipping responses that your division does. The corporate headquarters are in St. Louis, Missouri, where the company was founded in the 1910s. You are located in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, where manufacturing operations were moved in the 1950s to exploit the lower labor costs. The corporate North American Warehouse (NAW) is located in a western suburb of St. Louis to be near the St. Louis airport. Virtually all shipments to customers are made from the NAW. Several years ago, to stay competitive, production operations started to shift from the Cape Girardeau location to a plant in Mexico. The shift to Mexico has been successful overall, but the plant does not always deliver what is needed and is sometimes late in delivering parts to the NAW. The corporation installed SAP several years ago. You have been far too busy to thoroughly investigate all of the details, but everyone in the organization seems to be satisfied at some level with the system. Because you are the STO (Senior Technical.

1. You are the Operations Manager for a $50,000,000 (sales)
subsidiary of a $750,000,000
corporation. You report to the Divisional Vice President. Your
division produces industrial
products that are used in the construction, maintenance,
transportation, and equipment
manufacturing industries. The other two divisions in your
corporation serve the automotive and
electronics industries. A few products are cross-marketed.
Your division is currently number three in your market place.
The number one firm has about
60% of the market, the number two firm has about 25% of the
market, and you have about 15%
of the market.
Your products are often used in human safety applications, so
product quality is paramount.
Neither you nor your competitors have a competitive quality
advantage, nor a distinct production
cost advantage. Being number three in the market place has
meant that your division must excel
in customer service and delivery reliability.
Over 90% of your sales come through manufacturing
representatives to regional distributors who
hold inventory of your most popular products in limited
quantities. To keep your distributors loyal,

2. your company works very hard on customer service.
Your division currently has about 4,000 products in your
catalog. About 1,200 items are “in-stock”
(MTS, Make-to-Stock) items. The remaining 2,800 items are
“non-stock” items that can be
considered to be Make-To-Order (MTO). The MTO items are
not stocked but are manufactured
if, and only if, an order for them is received.
Your division promises to ship all “in-stock” items within 24
hours of receiving the order. If the
order is received by noon, the order is shipped that day.
Because most of your orders are small
and are delivered to diverse addresses, UPS is the preferred
shipping mode.
In contrast, your two sister divisions operate on a much longer
lead-time and ship in
comparatively larger quantities. They tend to operate much
more in the MTO mode and do not
offer the fast 24-hour shipping responses that your division
does.
The corporate headquarters are in St. Louis, Missouri, where the
company was founded in the
1910s. You are located in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, where
manufacturing operations were
moved in the 1950s to exploit the lower labor costs. The
corporate North American Warehouse
(NAW) is located in a western suburb of St. Louis to be near the
St. Louis airport. Virtually all
shipments to customers are made from the NAW. Several years
ago, to stay competitive,
production operations started to shift from the Cape Girardeau
location to a plant in Mexico. The

3. shift to Mexico has been successful overall, but the plant does
not always deliver what is needed
and is sometimes late in delivering parts to the NAW.
The corporation installed SAP several years ago. You have been
far too busy to thoroughly
investigate all of the details, but everyone in the organization
seems to be satisfied at some level
with the system.
Because you are the STO (Senior Technical Officer) of your
division, you also manage the client
support group (located near the St. Louis airport) which
consults with clients on selecting which
products to purchase and offers consulting/project management
services for installing your
products. Your direct reports include the Plant Manager in Cape
Girardeau, the Plant Manager in
Mexico, the Divisional Supply Chain Manager, the Manager of
Product Quality Control, and the
Divisional Customer Support Manager. Your chief peers are the
Director of Marketing and the
Manager of the Divisional Headquarters staff. Order entry
reports to the Director of Marketing.
Purchasing, Accounting, Finance, HR, and IT functions are
handled at the corporate level. The
manager of the NAW formally reports to the VP of the
automotive division, but he is tasked to
serve all three divisions equitably
Several months ago, a new CEO took the reigns of your parent
company. She is looking to
improve profits, and is tasking all three divisions to reduce
costs. For your division, she is
particularly interested in reducing inventory while maintaining
(improving) current customer

4. service levels. She also questions whether having the Customer
Support staff centrally located in
St. Louis is really the best way (in terms of cost and service) to
service your customers.
Your boss, the Divisional VP, has asked you to put together an
analysis of your division’s
operations and to produce a plan to improve operations with an
eye to reducing costs.
(C)
This project requires you to perform a systems analysis and then
design a system solution using database software. Ace Auto
Dealers specializes in selling new vehicles from Subaru. The
company advertises in local newspapers and is listed as an
authorized dealer on the Subaru Web site and other major Web
sites for auto buyers. The company benefits from a good local
word- of- mouth reputation and name recognition and is a
leading source of information for Subaru vehicles in the
Portland, Oregon, area. When a prospective customer enters the
showroom, he or she is greeted by an Ace sales representative.
The sales representative manually fills out a form with
information such as the prospective customer’s name, address,
telephone number, date of visit, and make and model of the
vehicle in which the customer is interested. The representative
also asks where the prospect heard about Ace— whether it was
from a newspaper ad, the Web, or word of mouth— and this
information is noted on the form also. If the customer decides to
purchase an auto, the dealer fills out a bill of sale form.
Ace does not believe it has enough information about its
customers. It cannot easily determine which prospects have
made auto purchases, nor can it identify which customer touch
points have produced the greatest number of sales leads or
actual sales so it can focus advertising and marketing more on
the channels that generate the most revenue. Are purchasers

5. discovering Ace from newspaper ads, from word of mouth, or
from the Web?
Prepare a two-page systems analysis report, in APA format,
detailing Ace’s problem and a system solution that can be
implemented using PC database management software. Then use
database software to develop a simple system solution. Your
systems analysis report should include the following:
· Description of the problem and its organizational and business
impact.
· Proposed solution, solution objectives, and solution
feasibility.
· Costs and benefits of the solution you have selected. The
company has a PC with Internet access and the full suite of
Microsoft Office desktop productivity tools.
· Information requirements to be addressed by the solution.
· People, organization, and technology issues to be addressed by
the solution, including any proposed changes in business
processes.
Based on the requirements you have identified:
· Prepare an entity relationship diagram which models your
proposed design.
· Write the SQL statements to create the database tables,
relationships and populate each table with at least 10 records
per table, where applicable.
· Use Microsoft Access to create a database called Ace-Auto-
Dealers.accdb using your SQL scripts.
· Finally, use the database system you have created to generate
data input forms, queries and reports that would be of most
interest to management. The system is to support only the
processing requirements described for the existing manual
system. You should have:
· A minimum of 3 data input forms depending upon your

6. database design
· The following queries are required:
· Which touch point generates the most sales leads? Least sales
leads?
· Which touch point generates the most purchases? Least
purchases?
· Which sales representative sells the most vehicles?
· What is the best selling make of model?
· The following reports are required:
· Customer profile
· Leads by touch point including customer information
· Sales by touch point including customer and vehicle
information
You may choose to add more sophistication to your DBMS
application, but you are not required to do so. While the more
you do, the better your performance will be judged, it is better
to do the basics right, than to develop a sophisticated DBMS
application which does not work properly. In making your
decision, please keep in mind the time available to complete the
project, your relative experience with DBMS software, and your
prior experience with Access’ advanced capabilities. You are
not required to go beyond the basic application framework.