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Directions

In MindTap, review the Appliance Warehouse Case, and do the following:

Read the Before You Begin Message and the Module 4-7 Appliance Warehouse Webmail Client Emails. Read the messages to help determine the tasks you must complete.

Review and analyze the weekly Appliance Warehouse case study content and resources.

Create a 3- to 4-page document that includes the following:

• Business Case Investigation
• Identify 4 employees to interview to support business analysis. For each employee, state the topic(s) used for questioning. The interview topics and responses will be used to influence future design.
• A possible use case diagram for making an appointment and verifying parts availability
• Identify the users of the system and requests into and out of the system.
• Implementation resources needed for the project
• Identify people and hardware. Human resources may include internal or external resources.

Case Scenario:

Hi,

I am delighted to announce that Emily Johns will be starting at Appliance Warehouse today! Emily will be undertaking the role of Service Manager and will be the force behind creating our new service department. Emily comes to us with 25 years of experience in the service repair industry. Emily began her career as a service technician and quickly moved through the ranks to the first female service manager in ABC Appliance Service Company’s history. After 17 years, she went to work for Acme Appliance Repair. Over the last 8 years, the revenue for Acme increased by 200% after being stagnant for the preceding 5 years

Our new service manager starts work today! This is great news! As our business starts to expand, we must move our software project along.

need to talk to some of our employees to better understand the functionality and requirements for the proposed system. This is important because they are the key stakeholders of the system.  list of employees who will want to interview.  learn the process for scheduling an appliance repair appointment and how the parts are obtained for those repair visits. Also, it is important to understand what reports that managers are hoping to extract from the new system. I find it is helpful to write down questions prior to your meetings as to not forget the topics that you want to cover.

My suggestion is at least 10 questions per person prior to the meeting. Make sure to use open-ended questions (at least 7 questions) to get the employees talking. Also use closed response and range of response questions. I find that each type of question can provide valuable information and are quite useful in requirements gathering.

Please send the questions to me for at least two of the interviews.

We have previously used both the Joint Application Development technique and the Rapid Application Development technique. However, many colleagues of mine swear by the agile technique. Each of these methodologies offer up some great advantages. Since we need to get this project done as quickly as possible, which of these techniques should be used? I want to ensure that we’ve created software that will handle all of our users’ requirements and that it is a robust system

I almost forgot to mention to also send a questionnaire out to the users of the proposed system. Should it be sent out to all employees or as a stratified or systematic sample?

Department in order to get the service estimates out to the customer and get the parts for the repair quickly. Meredith Parks (programmer): I think it would be a good idea to name our new service system. Any ideas? Alan Marks (store mgr): Service Information System? SIS? Emily Johns (service manager): Service Information Manager? SIM? Meredith Parks (programmer): OK, let’s vote. Meredith conducts a quick vote and all are agreed on SIM. Maddox Farley (parts director): I’m a little worried about how this SIM will affect my inventory levels. Meredith Parks (programmer): I need you to break this down a bit for me. Who is involved in this new process? Emily Johns (service manager): We definitely have the customers, parts department, parts, technicians, appointment setters, and calendar. Meredith Parks (programmer): OK, now we have our entities. What are the processes that will take place? Alan Marks (store mgr): Well, we will need to generate estimates and final invoices. Emily Johns (service manager): Right. And we’ll make appointments, order parts, assign technicians to appointments. Meredith Parks (programmer): Anything else? Emily Johns (service manager): A calendar should be able to be viewed or printed for each technician. Each technician needs their daily schedule of appointments at the beginning of each day. Alan Marks (store mgr): I don’t think so. Payment will be accepted by the current cashier’s system. Meredith Parks (programmer): OK.

Questionnaire results Results are ordered by importance. The top result (#1) is the most important to that group. Most common features requested by appointment setters: Reminder services calls/messages See technician’s availability Determination of discounts for customers See availability of parts to schedule repair View service history Most common features requested by technicians: Able to view own calendar See availability of parts to schedule repair Keep notes for each customer Mobile access of scheduling View service history Reminder services calls/messages Most common features requested by parts department: Can pull inventory requests every two hours. Database of requested parts. Most common features requested by management: Reporting by time period, type of appliance, brand Determination of discounts for customers Mobile access of scheduling Routing and mapping of technician’s driving to appointments See technician’s availability Suggest preventative maintenance to customers

The Appliance Warehouse is a facility that collects products and goods for the distribution to customers or other industries that may be able to use the products that are provided. The warehouse manager will be responsible for ensuring that all warehouse operations are done both effectively and efficiently by all staff involved with the said warehouse.

The case study concluded that millions of dollars are invested yearly purchase of materials and equipment needed for maintenance and development. The subsequent materials and equipment are then dispersed to three central warehouses and then shipped out to other warehouses and location sites as required. The management of the warehouse will be extremely important for this company as the warehouse will ensure maximum productivity with minimum investment through material handling and purchasing costs. An effectively managed warehouse will also be able to monitor the services and controls and even the flow of products. Being able to see what products the most demand and what products have can be scaled back a bit due to low demand.

One reason for the functional accuracy issues is that of poor skills training. The training requirements for store-related personal must be looked at in depth. All personnel that have any association with the warehouse both internal and external must undergo proper warehouse training. Training completion documents should be kept not only at the human resources office at the corporate office but also on hand at each of the individual stores. Some employees are not as proficient with the computer as they should be and must be trained adequately.

Warehouse management is an integral part in most modern-day businesses. Warehouses of organizations if run and managed efficiently and effectively can serve as safe storage of goods, clear and transparent tracking and accountability at the organizational level. The effectively managed warehouse can also ensure the allocation of the right goods at the right time whenever needed to all client departments, maximum productivity with the least amount of expenditures through proper warehouse ordering. It will provide services and controls to the flow of goods entering and being dispersed by the company.