management informations systems paper
BCO216 · Managing Information Systems (MIS) Task brief & rubrics assignment week 5 Fall 2021
Task
The student will have to work on a case study and answer all open questions by himself without employing copy and paste practices or working in teams. Cover
sheet, table of content and in-text References and Bibliography are expected and will be graded.
The work needs to be converted into a pdf file before uploading to the submission point in Moodle.
Case Study TPS · TECHNOLOGY AIR CANADA TAKES OFF WITH MAINTENIX
Air Canada is Canada’s most prominent airline. It is the largest provider of scheduled passenger services in the Canadian market, the Canada-U.S. transborder
market, and in the international market to and from Canada. The airline serves over 33 million customers annually and provides direct passenger service to over
170 destinations on five continents. But the company’s information systems had plenty of room for improvement. When Air Canada technicians worked on
planes, they used several different legacy software packages installed over the past 15 years. The systems couldn’t interact with one another or with finance and
inventory systems. The inefficiencies of these systems were costing Air Canada the time of its engineers and money that could have been used on maintaining its
planes, instead of needlessly maintaining excess inventory.
Air Canada turned to Mxi Technologies for help in addressing these problems. Mxi is renowned in the airline industry for its Maintenix software package, which
provides integrated, intelligent aviation MRO (maintenance, repair, and operations) software to aviation organizations hoping to improve productivity. The
benefits of Maintenix that interested Air Canada were enhanced visibility of fleet-wide data, timelier decision-making, support of its currently existing business
model, and increased operational efficiencies.
Maintenix provides a system platform that is accessible via the Web and easy to deploy to all stations around the world. Mxi claims that their software reduces
repetitive tasks and time chasing missing or incomplete information by allowing maintenance, engineering, and finance divisions to easily share information.
Maintenix can supply data to the company’s existing enterprise resource planning (see Section 2.3) and financial software, and Air Canada plans to link it up with
its PeopleSoft finance and human resource applications. Wireless deployment also makes Maintenix more effective, since aviation technicians, equipment, and
parts are always on the move.
The Maintenix software package consists of six different modules, which are separate segments of the product that interconnect. Airlines deploying Maintenix
can choose which modules they want to use, as well as whether they want full or partial installation of those modules. The six modules are maintenance
engineering, line maintenance, heavy maintenance, shop maintenance, materials management, and finance. Air Canada chose to fully implement the
maintenance engineering, line maintenance, and materials management modules. The airline chose to implement the heavy maintenance, shop maintenance,
and finance modules because a separate contractor that also maintains Air Canada planes handles those tasks only partially.
The maintenance engineering module is the foundation of the Maintenix system. It is used to establish the configuration hierarchy, rules, and maintenance
program that all the other modules depend upon. Through this module, the airline can set up a “logical configuration”, which describes aircraft components,
part relationships, and compatibility rules.
Line maintenance involves matching a dynamic list of maintenance work requirements against finite resources at varying locations within a flight schedule that is
constantly undergoing change. The module includes line station planning applications, which are designed to schedule maintenance and allocate work, based on
the capabilities of the line station facilities as well as the aircrafts’ scheduled locations. For example, this module allows Air Canada to ensure that qualified
technicians are available before they schedule maintenance.
The materials management module deals with the logistically complex process of ensuring availability of parts without overstocking. Maintenix ensures that the
minimum amount of each part is always in inventory without causing engineers to be short on parts at any time. Maintaining this delicate balance is critical to
maximize revenue and achieve greater operational efficiencies. Maintenix allows wireless, real-time management of inventory, automates routine activities, and
integrates fully with an airline’s existing inventory management systems.
The biggest advantage of the system is that all this information provided by Maintenix’s various modules is in one place. This results in more rapid scheduling
and avoids pitfalls of poorly organized information systems, such as scheduling work to a station that lacks the proper qualifications to accomplish it.
One example of how Maintenix will increase Air Canada’s efficiency might be as follows. An Air Canada technician requests a part he needs for maintenance
from supply. Maintenix automatically processes the request. If the required part is available, Maintenix automatically reserves it, and the appropriate personnel
are immediately informed that the part is ready to be picked for issue. In the meantime, the technician is easily able to track the status of his part requests and is
made aware once the part is ready to be collected. If any change happens and the part is unavailable, Maintenix will notify the technician. As a result,
technicians can accomplish more maintenance work as opposed to managing details that Maintenix is now handling via automation. This leads to increased
productivity and increased profitability.
Question 1: How might the implementation of Maintenix help Air Canada improve its operations?
Question 2: What might have been the challenges faced by Air Canada when implementing the Maintenix system?
Question 3: What benefits might the implementation of Maintenix bring to middle / senior managers at Air Canada?
Open Questions:
a) How does a computerized system organize data?
b) Can you list the challenges of traditional file environments?
c) Explain in your own words the differences between non-relational databases and relational databases.Marks: a & h: 20 each, 10 marks for the rest. Total
marks: 100.
Formalities:
• Wordcount: 600
• Cover, Table of Contents, References and Appendix are excluded of the total wordcount.
• Font: Arial 12,5 pts.
• Text alignment: Justified.
• The in-text References and the Bibliography must be in Harvard’s citation style.
Submission: Week 5 · Sunday October 31st 23.59 CEST – PDF file Via Moodle (Turnitin).
Weight: This task is a 30% of your total grade for this subject.
It assesses the following learning outcomes:
• understand what a transaction processing system is, and how it can support any business model.
• distinguish between the main types of data bases and their use models.
Rubrics
Exceptional 90-100 Good 80-89 Fair 70-79 Marginal fail 60-69
Knowledge & Understanding
(30%)
Student demonstrates excellent understanding of key concepts and uses vocabulary in an entirely appropriate manner.
Student demonstrates good understanding of the task and mentions some relevant concepts and demonstrates use of the relevant vocabulary.
Student understands the task and provides minimum theory and/or some use of vocabulary.
Student understands the task and attempts to answer the question but does not mention key concepts or uses minimum amount of relevant vocabulary.
Application (30%) Student applies fully relevant knowledge from the topics delivered in class.
Student applies mostly relevant knowledge from the topics delivered in class.
Student applies some relevant knowledge from the topics delivered in class. Misunderstanding may be evident.
Student applies little relevant knowledge from the topics delivered in class. Misunderstands are evident.
Critical Thinking (30%)
Student critically assesses in excellent ways, drawing outstanding conclusions from relevant authors.
Student critically assesses in good ways, drawing conclusions from relevant authors and references.
Student provides some insights but stays on the surface of the topic. References may not be relevant.
Student makes little or none critical thinking insights, does not quote appropriate authors, and does not provide valid sources.
Communication (10%)
Student communicates their ideas extremely clearly and concisely, respecting word count, grammar and spellcheck
Student communicates their ideas clearly and concisely, respecting word count, grammar and spellcheck
Student communicates their ideas with some clarity and concision. It may be slightly over or under the wordcount limit. Some misspelling errors may be evident.
Student communicates their ideas in a somewhat unclear and unconcise way. Does not reach or does exceed wordcount excessively and misspelling errors are evident.