Operations_and_Logistics

Week 4 Operations and Logistics 1 Operations and Logistics Carlos Flores BSA/502 Business Systems II Instructor Arthur Willner September 22, 2008 Week 4 Operations and Logistics 2 This paper will provide information on the Operations and Logistics side in a company system in today’s business industry to include examples. The following will be explained in more detail which are: •Purpose and Charter. •Key Requirements. •Major inputs, outputs and their importance. •How outcome is measured and if successful. •Concerns with customer management and stakeholders. •Anticipate problems or challenges during system development. •Implementation concerns, training, timing, contingency plan. Purpose and Charter The purpose and charter of Operations and logistics in a company is to Manage and control the flow of goods, energy, and people from the source of production to the current market place. A company cannot accomplish a this purpose unless they have established the plan on how this will be accomplished. A company which products are shipped in the US and abroad needs to know how the products will reach their final destination by means of Air Water Land or Train. What time frame it will take for the products to get there. How many facilities the company operates and product control warehousing. How much labor or resources it will take and cost effectiveness of providing this to customers, other companies or other governments. Company management will have to design for their needs with system to help the company be effective and competitive in the logistics of their operations. What hours of operations will the system be used by the different Week 4 Operations and Logistics 3 facilities if they are different and time zones if the facilities are abroad. They also need to know if the ERP will in house or if this will be outsourced to a vendor. Key Requirements The ERP system in logistics needs to be able to handle the following key logistics requirements: •Purchasing – The purchase of raw materials by the company for manufacturing of the products and keep tract of these material towards the production line. •Customer service – Data of company customers with names, locations dates of last purchases, products sold, customer needs, contact information and last follow ups. •Strategic planning – What materials for production or delivery time for projects and quantity. •Transportation – What means of transportation by Air, Land, Water or Train. •Materials handling – What materials are to be used, tracking of such materials from origin to final destinations for customers or assembly at another company facility. •Warehousing – What location are raw materials stored, finish products for customers or assembly at another company facility. •Inventory control – Keep track of all materials, to include tools for assembly for customer demands. •Forecasting – Forecasting delivery dates of products to customers or parts for assembly projects from production lines, sales to customers and project schedules. These are important requirements if the company has different facilities or outsource by a vendor. The ERP system needs to be inter phased with the company offices and their facilities where it can communicate live and information can be updated on a daily basis by company users. Week 4 Operations and Logistics 4 Major inputs, outputs and their importance The company information that is submitted by the users such as office personnel in Logistics, Managers, supervisors, engineers on a daily basis is very important. The ERP systems needs to be able to have capabilities to provide information or orders, delivery dates, locations times of status of orders, information as to parts available with cost to company and cost to customer. If a company needs to provide a spare part to one of the fleet trucks because it broke down at another facility. The information submitted for search in the system can track the necessary part and have it delivered to the correct facility with a time and date shipped and the plane and jig indentified. The information in the system updated daily will provide a smooth operations without delays. Management can request a report of status on current project assigned to different departments and forecast on going logistics with production, warehouse of parts and delivery. An example: Boeing has a contracted with the US Air Force on the assembly of delivery of supersonic war planes. The information in the system will provide as the planes are assembled and be tracked by users in the facilities shipping the parts to the assembly facilities, order new parts from vendors, project forecast delivery time and avoid searching for parts. This information provided in reports will give management information on materials purchased and assembly time at their facilities. This information can be given to the company customer being the US Air Force. How outcome is measured and if successful The outcome of the ERP system will be measured first on the trial run before implemented for daily use in the company. Making sure that all the modules of the system is working correctly with all the departments involve with the new system. A trial run normally Week 4 Operations and Logistics 5 will be to run the system through all its phases in the company for a designated period. During this time any issues or errors can be corrected or fixed (Bugs) and at the same time the system will be measured. The importance of this is to make sure the system is operating as intended because if not working correctly then the company can suffer in daily task by not delivering the needed parts to the other facilities for assembly or to its customers on time. The incorrect order might be shipped to the wrong address or trying to find an important part might not show in the system. The system normally will be tested first in a small department of the company and after some time designated by the company with management, IT and end users trial operations successfully. Then the system can be implemented throughout the rest of the company. Example: A jib is being delivered from one facility of Air Bus to one of the company’s warehouse. After the information was keyed in the system before leaving the facility and at the airport where the plain is loading the jib in the system is giving an error on the jib ID and this has happen several times during the last 2 days by displaying error and providing all 999999. The technical department gets into fixing this and after several days no other issued has been detected and scheduled parts arrive on time and all parts of products in warehouse accounted. Now Management know that the system is working and their operations runs well with no delays. Concerns with customer management and stakeholders The company management always has concerns on any updated or new system in today’s working environment because they know that a system can fail for many reasons. The main concern in the Logistics and operations is time. If the company like Air Bus which is constantly in assembly in its different facilities and in constant delivery of parts to its assembly plant. Time is going to be important to ensure that while the new system is tested, fixed with any issues that Week 4 Operations and Logistics 6 it will not disrupt its production delivery or assembly lines. They want to make sure that once in place that it will make the working environment a smooth transition and this goes to the stakeholders as well. They are aware that if issues come up once implemented it could cause time, loss of data, delivery delays, missing parts and un happy employees affecting company operations. An example would be if a set of A380 plane wheels are suppose to be shipped to one of the assembly plants in Hamburg and the wheels do not show in the system when the wheels are physically in one of company’s other warehouse. The company can lose valuable time just trying to search for the wheels with phone calls and manually having managers and supervisors search for them when this could be holding the assembly line. This means wasted time and not good customer service when the assembly has a deadline to meet. Anticipate problems or challenges during system development The anticipated problems during system development are always present in the minds of management and development department. The most common problems can be when the development team cannot agree with information from management because of incorrect information received from the end users like for example, warehouse manager on inventory parts. If this correct information is not in the system then it can cause parts missing by not showing or the wrong calculations on amount of as parts that are distribute or incorrect tracking of parts from delivery to destinations. The important factor in development is time which is allotted to complete the system by management or the project is not on scheduled due to delays. If the ERP system is from a vendor and the vendor was provided with wrong information then this could cause errors, delays and possible money to update with new correct information. Week 4 Operations and Logistics 7 Implementation concerns, training, timing, contingency plan Once the new ERP system is implemented the concerns will still be issues or system problems (bugs) they can be corrected as soon as possible by the technical support and those they are knowledgeable with the system that proper corrections can be done. Training the end users (Company personnel) to include management and supervisors or the new Logistics personnel. Training can be from a couple of days to a month depending on the department’s times scheduled for all the company personnel to understand fully the system and follow up with questions and emails. A contingency plan would be to have the system revert to manual mode or the old way of doing daily task until the issues has been resolved. Normally this can be in matter of hours however, sometimes could be 24 hours. Week 4 Operations and Logistics 8 References Huffman - Facts. (2008). Facts About Huffman Trucking. Retrieved September 22, 2008, From https://ecampus.phoenix.edu/secure/aapd/CIST/VOP/Business/Huffman/InterSite1/Facts.htm Wall, R. (2007, November 5). Tagged To Go. Aviation Week & Space Technology, 167(18), 51-52. Retrieved September 22, 2008, from Academic Search Complete database. Soule, A. (2007, November 5). Top 10 in forward-looking tech. Westchester County Business Journal, 46(45), 11-11. Retrieved September 22, 2008, from MasterFILE Premier database.