Business project

· Company Background

     For the last 40 years, Adam’s Hardware has been Conway Kansas’s number one hardware supplier. Conway is a small town based around agriculture. Adam’s Hardware services the hardware needs of the many farmers and townspeople of Conway and the surrounding area. It has always been Adam’s Hardwares role to provide affordable and reliable hardware for the community. In the future Adam’s would like to expand his store to new locations and pass his business on to his sons.

     Adam’s has operated in Conway for the last 40 years since its founding by John Adam. Though it has maintained its success, its operations and procedures are as old as the building itself.  In recent years new competitors have entered the market through online services. Additionally, quality employees have been in short supply.

     The store has 5 employees: John Adam as owner/manager, one accountant, and 3 sales associates. The owner/manager is mostly responsible for human resources, inventory management, maintenance, and final say on all business decisions and planning. The accountant runs the finances of the business. Lastly, the sales associates are responsible for customer services in store, stocking shelves, and maintaining a clean store.

     Adam’s is looking for a system to lighten the work-load as potential employees have become sparse and he nears retirement. He is concerned that the work-load on his current employees is too high and that it is affecting customer service. 

· System Description

· It looks like Adam’s Hardware is having trouble finding qualified employees to work in his store. Because of this, his current employees must work extra in order to keep up with the work demand. It appears that Adam’s hardware would benefit from a productivity system solution.

· The proposed solution seeks to boost the productivity of the current employees by managing and providing useful information about inventory and staff scheduling. 

· The system will impact most operations in Adam’s Hardware. The system will make inventory management and stocking more accurate and efficient. Along with this it should also help with wage calculation.

· Some alternatives to the system could be simply hiring more employees to ease the work-load on current employees. Another solution could be to downsize the store to make operation more manageable.

· We recommend that Adam’s Hardware goes with a new inventory management system and a clock-in/clock-out system. The system should be able to dynamically track current inventory. Additionally it should be able to track information about inventory such as when certain inventory is getting low, or which inventory is being sold the most / least. The manager should also have the ability to add new inventory items or remove old inventory items to the system to reflect changes in store inventory. This system should also be able to give hints to employees where the inventory is to be stocked. Additionally there will be a clock-in / clock-out system which automatically tracks when certain employees have worked, calculates each employee’s pay for any given period, and tracks their pay over time. This system should generate useful information about employees such as average hours worked, average pay, etcetera.

We’re choosing this system as we expect that it will help greatly increase the productivity of employees and generate useful information which will result in better service and better business decisions. The system should also make many employee’s jobs easier which will result in higher staff morale.

· Feasibility Statement

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· Management Plan

· Requirements and Analysis

· Since the company we are developing for is so small, it would be best to do individual interviews with each employee and at least one meeting session in which all employees are present. The goal of these is to get useful information about business processes and feedback on planned features and requirements.

· The system will be required to:

2. Track current number of in stock items for each inventory item.

2. Allow for addition / deletion of inventory items from the system.

2. Allow for update of current number of in stock items when a shipment comes in.

2. Generate forms to determine which items are getting low in stock, and sales information about inventory such as which has been sold the most, which has made the most profit etcetera.

2. Allow employees to clock-in / clock-out from a terminal.

2. Generate forms such as owed wages, average wages, average hours worked, etcetera.

. Modeling

2. Context

2. Level-0 Diagram

2. Inventory System Level-1

2. Wage System Level-1

2.

Data Dictionary

Data Element Dictionary
Name	Type	Length	Default	Acceptable Values	Description
EMP_ID	Num	4 digit	None	Any non-null 4 digit number	Unique employee identification number.
EMP_NAME	String	32 chars	None	Any non-null string less than 33 chars.	Employee name.
EMP_SSN	Num	9 digits	NULL	Any 9 digit number	Employee social security number. NULL if there’s no SSN provided.
EMP_HRLY_WAGE	Currency	8 digits	$7.25	Any non-null number greater than 7.25, less than $100,000.00	Employee hourly wage.
SHIFT_ID	Num	4 digit	None	Any non-null 4 digit number	Unique shift identification number
Clock_In	Date/Time	14 digit	None	Any non-null 14 digit number	Date and time of clock-in of shift.
Clock_Out	Date/Time	14 digit	NULL	Any 14 digit number	Date and time of clock-out of shift. NULL if shift has not checked out yet.
PROD_ID	Num	4 digit	None	Any non-null 4 digit number	Unique product identification number.
PROD_VENDOR	String	32 har	NULL	Any non-null 4 digit number	Product vendor name. NULL if there’s no vendor
PROD_QOH	Num	6 digit	NULL	Any 4 digit number	Number of products in stock. Null means 0.
PROD_PRICE	Currency	8 digits	None	Any non-null number greater than 0.00, less than $100,000.00	Product price.
PROD_LOCATION	String	128 char	NULL	Any string up 128 char long.	Product in-store location, NULL means not on shelves.
PURCH_ID	Num	4 digit	None	Any non-null 4 digit number	Unique purchase identification number.
PURCH_QTY	Num	4 digit	None	Any non-null 4 digit number	Number of products purchased.
Wages Owed Form	String	4096 char	None	Any string less that 4096 chars long	A string formatted in a readable way that displays the amount of wages owed to employees.
Wages Form	String	4096 char	None	Any string less that 4096 chars long	A string formatted in a readable way that displays the amount of wages owed to employees.
Product Info Form	String	4096 char	None	Any string less that 4096 chars long	A string formatted in a readable way that displays the amount of wages owed to employees.
Prod Sales Form	String	4096 char	None	Any string less that 4096 chars long	A string formatted in a readable way that displays the information on all product sales.
Employee Info Form	String	4096 char	None	Any string less that 4096 chars long	A string formatted in a readable way that displays the information about all employees.
Prod Info Form	String	4096 char	None	Any string less that 4096 chars long	A string formatted in a readable way that displays the information on all products.
Prod Location Hint	String	4096 char	None	Any string less that 4096 chars long	A string formatted in a readable way that displays the location of a product in store..

Data Record Dictionary
Record Name	Description	Aliases	Attributes
EMPLOYEE	Useful information about an employee.	None	EMP_ID EMP_NAME EMP_SSN EMP_HRLY_WAGE
SHIFT	Useful information about a shift worked.	None	SHIFT_ID EMP_ID CLOCK_IN CLOCK_OUT
PRODUCT	Useful information about an offered product.	None	PROD_ID PROD_VENDOR PROD_QOH PROD_PRICE PROD_LOCATION
PURCHASE	Useful information about a product purchase.	None	PURCH_ID PROD_ID PURCH_QTY

Use Case

The system we will implement will be used by all current employees. The sales associate(s), accountant(s), and manager(s) are all considered to be employees in the system. All employees must all clock-in and clock-out of the system in order to have their shifts recorded. Additionally, all employees may request a product location hint.

Next, both manager(s) and accountant(s) are allowed to access accountant features. This means they may both request a Wages Owed Form.

Lastly, the manager(s) have the unique ability to add/delete/edit employee records and product records, and can request Wages, Employee Info, Product Info, and Sales Forms.

Business Process Models

· Get product location

 

· Employee Clock-in/Clock-out

Decision Table for employee clock-in/clock-out

Decision table for whether shift record is found
Conditions	Rules
Is there a shift that belongs to the employee?	Yes	Yes	No	No
Does the shift have a NULL as CLOCK_OUT	Yes	No	Yes	No
Outcomes
Create New Shift		X	X	X
Edit Shift CLOCK_OUT	X

· Register adds purchase

· Manager adds/deletes/edits product

· Manager adds/deletes/edits employee

· Manager Gets Product Info Form

· Manager Gets Wages Info Form

· Manager Gets Employee Info Form

· Manager Gets Sales Info Form

· Accountant gets wages owed form

User Interfaces and Output Samples

· Employee Interface

· The left is an employees view before entering a product to look up, and the right is what the output of getting a product location hint should look like.

· Accountant Interface

· The right is the interface after calculating the wages owed.

·

· Manager Interface

·

· This is the main screen for the manager.

·

· This is the screen that will appear when the manager clicks add/delete/edit employee. When the manager presses confirm, then the screen will return to the main screen.

·

· This is the Edit product table screen which is where the manager is taken when they press add/delete/edit product.

·

· The above screens are the output of the form options.

Implementation

To create this system we must first conduct the interviews and meetings necessary to define the business rules or processes, constraints, and objectives. After this we can begin designing the hardware that will be needed and the data that we will be managing with the system. After we have designed the data we can begin designing the forms and interfaces to ensure that our customers needs are met. Lastly is the construction of the system in which we code, test, and implement the system.

The system implementation will be parallel operation. This will be done to ensure that all features are working as intended. Some things to consider are that all products and employees in store must be entered into the system prior to full operation. This can be done either during the coding phase, or as a part of its operation.

Tasks
Name	Duration (Days)	Predecessors	Slack (Days)
Conduct Interviews	2	N/A	0
Define Business Rules	3	1	0
Define Constraints	2	2	1
Design Data Entities	4	2, 3	0
Design Hardware	18	2, 3	7
Order Hardware	3	5	7
Design Forms	14	4	10
Design Interfaces	24	4	0
Coding	60	6, 7, 8	0
Testing	14	9	0
Implementation	14	10	0

Gantt Chart (Project Libre)

Network Diagram (Project Libre)

The critical path is: Conduct Interviews ➝ Define Business Rules ➝ Design Data Entities ➝ Design Interfaces ➝ Coding ➝ Testing ➝ Implementation.

To manage the critical path we must ensure that we are setting and meeting small milestones throughout each task, especially in the coding phase where it would be easy to say “we have plenty of time”. We must also know some potential risks and have good test data and situations that we can use even during the coding phase. We don’t want to get to the full testing phase and discover a fundamental code asset is not functioning correctly and that the solution cascades through the system changing many other assets.

To test the system we must test that each type of user can only access features that are allotted to them. Furthermore, we must ensure that the addition, deletion, and alteration of records in the system are consistent and flawless. We should also test that the forms generated by the system are created and displayed correctly for any possible records. Lastly, we must test how the system behaves during external irregularities such as a cord getting unplugged, or the power going out.

We must also be weary of connecting the system to the internet since that exposes the system to a wide variety of threats world wide. For this reason the system will be closed off and only connected to devices within the system that are not connected to the internet.

Some maintenance activities will likely be the manual clearing of the SHIFTS data store over time as there is currently no way to automatically delete, or edit records in the SHIFTS data store. Same goes for the PURCHASES data store. Likely, these lacking features will have to be addressed in the future through a system upgrade.

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