 | Management Information Systems 4/e - James A. O'Brien | |||||
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Chapter 2: Fundamentals of Information Systems
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1. Jefferson State University
Students in the College of Business Administration of Jefferson State University use its microcomputer lab for a variety of assignments. For example a student may use a word processing program stored on a micro-computer's hard drive and proceed to type a case study analysis. When the analysis is typed edited and properly formatted to an instructor's specifications the student may save it on a floppy disk and print a copy on one of the printers in the lab network. If the student tries to save the case study analysis using the file name that he or she has already used for saving another document the computer will display a warning message and wait until it received an additional command. Make an outline to identify the information system components in the preceding example.
2. Office Products Corporation Office Products Corporation processes more than 10 000 customer orders a month drawing on a combined inventory of over 1 000 office products stocked at the company's warehouse. About 60 PC workstations many with printers are installed at Office Products headquarters and connected in a local area network to an IBM AS/400 midrange computer. Orders are received by phone or mail and entered into the system by order entry personnel at network computers or they are entered directly by dealers who have networked their PCs to Office Products. Entry of orders is assisted by formatted screens that help operators follow data entry procedures to enter required information into the system where it is stored on the magnetic disks of the AS/400. As the order is entered the AS/400 checks the availability of the parts allocates the stock and updates customer and part databases stored on the computer's magnetic disks. It then sends the order pick list to the warehouse printer where it is used by warehouse personnel to fill the order. The company president has a PC workstation in her office as does the controller sales manager inventory manager and other executives. They use simple database management inquiry commands to get responses and reports concerning sales orders customers and inventory and to review product demand and service trends. Make an outline that identifies the information system components in Office Products order processing system.
3. Western Chemical Corporation Western Chemical has networked its computers to those of its customers and suppliers to capture data about sales orders and purchases. Such data are processed immediately and inventory and other databases are updated. Videoconferencing and electronic mail services are also provided. Data generated by a chemical refinery process are captured by sensors and processed by a computer that also suggests answers to a complex refinery problem posed by an engineer. Managerial end users receive reports on periodic exception and demand basis and use computers to interactively assess the possible results of alternative decisions. Finally top management can access text summaries and graphics displays that identify key elements of organizational performance and compare them to industry and competitor performance Western Chemical Corporation has started forming business alliances and using intranets extranets and the Internet to build a global telecommunications network with other chemical companies throughout the world to offer their customers worldwide products and services. Western Chemical is in the midst of making fundamental changes to their computer-based systems to increase the efficiency of their business operations and their managers' ability to react quickly to changing business conditions. Make an outline that identifies:
4. Al's Appliance City The sales staff at Al's Appliance City are paid on a commission basis. The amount of commission earned is based on two components. A standard commission of 2 percent is paid on all sales. An additional bonus is paid on sales of items that have been identified as "high-priority items." Generally these are items that are overstocked. At the beginning of each week Al distributes to his sales staff a list of the high-priority items for that week as needed to move overstocked items. Because of the complexity and changing nature of the commission system used commissions have always been hand calculated. Al's Appliance City uses a PC-based accounting package to handle its order processing. That package is used to produce weekly sales totals for each sales person. The total dollar amount of all sales and the dollar amount of sales of high-priority items by each salesperson are reported. A listing of this data for the most recent week is shown below. Click here to download Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. Al has requested that you create a spreadsheet for him that will allow him to calculate the total bonus owed each employee. The bonus rate for high-priority sales should appear on the spreadsheet as a parameter that Al can change when necessary.
5. Monroe City School District The Monroe City School District currently operates four high schools. Enrollment in three of these schools is significantly above their planned capacity. The school board will meet soon to examine proposals to alleviate overcrowding. The superintendent of the Monroe City School District has collected data shoeing planned capacity and actual enrollment for each high school over the past five years. These data are shown below.
Your task is to summarize these data in graphical form in a way that will highlight the nature of the problem for the school board members. Your graphs should give an overall picture of the problem and also allow more detailed examination of the situation faced by individual schools. The data you present should highlight the magnitude of the current problem but should also give the board members a feel for the historical trends that are at work.
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