PRJ2

Smart Tech Computer Co.

PRJ # 1

Group # 9

Andrew Kauffman

Cole Smith

Dana Alkathem

Linyu Xu

Parker Nielsen

Organizational Overview:

Smart Tech Computer Co. is a large personal and office computer manufacturing company that distributes to well known tech focused retailers like Best Buy, Amazon, Walmart, and Target. We are based out of Corvallis, Oregon and have over 500 active employees with three main roles. One division in our company is the actual assembly of our computers, another division is our sales and retail relations department to keep our retail stores satisfied with our business, and our shipping/distribution warehouse which handles all deliveries of our computers to our retailers. We average about $30 Million in sales revenue and have a target sales growth of 4% annually.

Every wholesale we approve must meet a minimum quantity of 200 units. Our price per desktop computer is anywhere between $500-$700 depending on the make and model. Our price per laptop ranges from $650-$800 also depending on make and model. Our four main retailers order on average 1500-2000 units every quarter.

Process Overview:

Smart Tech Company’s process involves computer assembly, sales and relations, and shipping/distribution of the computers to retailers. Our company has outsourced the transportation, which is used to ensure the computers reach the designated customers in a timely manner and unharmed condition. The firm will get supply of the raw materials from the local suppliers and will import that to manufacture laptops and desktops computers.

Smart Tech Company’s distribution process is comprised of shipping personnel; transport manager, loader, firm’s driver and receiving departments transport manager. The company has been keeping clean information records concerning products dispatched to retailers, the number of items/units, their condition, sizes and expected arrival time which are kept in database and files too. The transport manager has the role of ensuring the computers are taken to the retailers in a safe manner in which they were taken from the firm in and them arrive in prompt manner. The loader is mandated to keep computers safe and the driver takes them to designated point and offload them as needed. Coordination of the transport crew ensures that computers will reach retailers in timely manner and safe condition. An example of how Smart Tech Company’s succeeds in manufacturing and distribution of computers is when the transport manager calls a good number of retailers to check on them whether they got the goods they ordered and in the best condition and expected time of arrival.

Retailers have been so much dependent on the firm for the manufacturer, supply and later get computers of their choice both desktops and laptops as per their order. Due to this link between the firm; Smart Tech Company and its retailer, there are potential risks where the computers delivered can be damaged or not as per the order. When goods mismatch the retailers order, the huge risk would be to return the computers to the firm, termination of the contract among the parties or suing the firm due to delivery of unworthy computers. Since we deal with these retailers often and want to provide the best service, we need to ensure there is consistency in our business. The main success factor in this part of our process is the care that our shipping and handling employees take. Due to the fact that computers are fragile in nature it is of the utmost importance that our product is handled with extreme care. We are looking to contract shipping and handling personnel that are top notch and we aren’t afraid to spend a little extra money in order to ensure that our products are in good hands. Another important factor to ensure the success is to deliver the products timely, hence the supply chain has to be very reliable.

Process Description:

The distribution process is initiated immediately after the sales department receives the order details. However, computers are often sent unassembled to minimize damages, hence there is need for bubble wrapping to ensure that each component is packed and that the package is safe. Afterwards, the order is passed to the shipment department for approval or rejection. If it is approved, the Sales department verifies it in the database. However, if it is not, it’s sent back to the Sales department for repackaging. It then proceeds to the shipment department for approval and once it is approved, it is verified in the database and then sent to the warehouse and put into pallets. The pallets are warehoused in ready for shipment.

In the warehouse, the inventories are updated to take care of new orders and expected future orders. These updates are done by the loader who puts the information to the dataset. On successful updates, the shipping department assigns the vendors order to a delivery driver that will be inspected before shipment begins. For existing vendors, shipment invoice is created automatically and invoice data posted automatically to the database, whereas for a new vendor the review sub process is triggered to authenticate the vendor in ready for shipment.

Once this has been done, the Zero freight company is notified of the computers to be transported to their destinations. However, the shipment department has to cross check the shipment order details including the recipient address, contact number, and quantity before they can be handed over to Zero transporters.

Transactions and Objects:

A transaction table is used to record an event in a process. An object table stores information about a person, product, or service that is associated with the business process.

Object tables:

Object table is the table used to relate the inventory data stores, here the inventory data stores an object computer. The data contained here will show the particular of the materials that is which part of the computer, color, the size, their number and the cost of each part which will be used for assembling the computer after shipping. The reason computer data is considered as the object table, it’s having the main inventory details which will be required in trade normally and the availability of inventory will be ensured from this module.

The vendor table, stores information concerning the particulars of vendors, including their contact info like address, name, origin, email, gender, and phone number.

Transaction tables:

The order table will store all of the orders that are placed by our customers. For each order made specifics like Order Number, Date of transaction, Product description, Quantity and Price are noted. Each of these attributes is vital towards keeping our process organized and in check. All of these orders are going to be placed through an online order application that will notify the customer if we have the product available or not. This platform will help with customer transparency and will improved our customers relations and entire company image.

The invoice table will be composed of all of our invoices to clients. This will contain the invoice number, product description, product breakdown by price and quantity, and will also contain the clients credentials(company name, address, phone number, etc.) Each of the invoices that are entered in this table will be processed through a invoice management system. This system electronically process invoices and uploads them into the table. This is one of the key controls that we have in our process because it takes out the potential for human error. If we had an accounts receivable employee manage this part of our process there would be a high probability for human error. With our invoice processing technology we have eliminated this potential for mistakes in our process.