Proposal For A New Information System For Wilmaplex Pty Ltd

Wilmaplex is an Australian company that works in the domain of manufacturing of hardware products. The company is set up in Victoria, Australia since past 20 years and has been producing & distributing since then. The company deals with the largest store chains in Victoria and also works with the leading wholesalers (Wilmaplex, 2018). The company has always adhered to the Australian Standards which has made it one of the most sought after companies in Australia. There were several issues in the organization, such as inability to streamline Accounts Receivable processes, chasing up of invoices of customer systems, and many more. The report covers the critical success factors, objectives, organization chart, current system analysis, and primary features of the new information system. The potential security risks and data breaches are also covered in the report.  

The critical success factors of the company are as listed below.

• Enhancement of the business operations while maintaining compliance with Australian Standards and procedures of the trading partners.
• Ease of implementation without any implementation errors.
• Reduction in the monthly costs associated with the implementation process.
• Better accounting efficiency (Pacificcommerce, 2018)
• Better customer payment timelines and structures
• Cost efficient system with ease of usage
• Reduced frequency of data and information security risks & attacks
• Improved knowledge management system

The primary objectives of the company are as listed below.

• Adherence to the Australian Standards and policies at all times
• To enhance the level of customer satisfaction and engagement levels
• To enhance the profits and revenues with the use of latest technological tools and equipment

There would be a lot of information that will be required to evaluate the objectives of the company. The compliance reports will be needed to ensure that the compliance level is maintained at all times. The customer feedback on the current and new system and services will be required to determine the level of engagement and satisfaction of the customers. Technological compatibility analysis report, technical updates report, and review reports will be required to understand the use and application of technology. There will be a lot of sales data and information needed to determine the revenues and profits earned by the company. Production reports will be needed to evaluate the ethical and legal compliance status.

The aim of Wilmaplex Pty Ltd is to provide the customers with better quality hardware products at reasonable costs and with adherence to the Australian standards and policies.

Organizational Chart

The organizational structure that is currently followed in the organization is Wilmaplex Pty Ltd. The organization chart has been shown above.

There are certain weaknesses that are associated with the organization:  

• The Accounts Receivable processes were not streamlined with the customer procedures.  
• Regular chasing up of the invoices in customer systems to validate if the complete payment was done or not
• Internal technological capabilities were also one of primary set of problems associated with the current system
• Need for resources to implement any of the new systems
• Use of postal services to send the invoices to the customers which usually results in the delays and deteriorated customer trust

Flowchart

Data flow diagram

In order to avoid the above issues and challenges, the company decided to implement and use Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) in the year 2015. However, the use of EDI appeared as over budget and the company decided to implement an alternative system at lower costs. The system has not been updated since then and there are issues in accounting and invoicing services that are coming up. This is implicating the customer trust and engagement levels for the organization. There are also certain issues with the hardware manufacturing processes that are also being seen currently as a result of limited capabilities of the current system. The inability to update the system has brought up increased probability of the data security risks and attacks.

It is necessary to implement a new information system for the organization owing to the current set of challenges associated with the organization. Some of the weaknesses and challenges with the current system include Accounts Receivable processes were not streamlined with the customer procedures, regular chasing up of the invoices in customer systems to validate if the complete payment was done or not, and Internal technological capabilities were also one of primary set of problems associated with the current system. Some other issues include need for resources to implement any of the new systems, and use of postal services to send the invoices to the customers which usually results in the delays and deteriorated customer trust. The proposed information system that will be implemented for the organization will have three main modules as Manufacturing Resource Planning (MRP), Manufacturing Resource Planning 2 (MRPII), and Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) (Zhao, Lai and Young, 2002).

Use of Information to Evaluate the Objectives

ER diagram

Attributes of all entities are as follows:

EMPLOYEE

• Employee No
• Employee Last Name
• Employee First Name
• Employee designation

ADDRESS

• Address ID
• Street name
• City name
• State name
• Pincode

CUSTOMER

• Customer No
• First name
• Last name
• Email
• Phone no

PAYMENT

• Payment ID
• Amount paid
• Payment date

ORDER

• Order ID
• Status
• Order date
• Fulfilled date

Order Detail

• Order Detail ID
• Quantity of order

PRODUCT

• Product ID
• Product name
• Description

INVOICE

• Invoice ID
• Amount
• Paid Date

INVENTORY

• Inventory ID
• Stock

User view #1 – List of all products available in a warehouse on a particular date – In this particular view, details of those products – product ID, product name, product type, product description are displayed which are available in at least one warehouse on a particular day, month or date. In complicated scenarios, details of warehouse can also be shown – warehouse number, warehouse name, warehouse address and warehouse manager.

User view #2 – List of all agents registered on a particular date – In this view, details of all agents – agent ID, agent first name, agent last name, agent business contact number and email ID are shown on a particular date, day or month.

User view #3 – List of suppliers – In this view, details of all agents – supplier ID, supplier first name, supplier last name, supplier business contact number and supplier email ID are shown on a particular date, day or month.

User view #4 – List of outdated products – In this particular view, details of those products – product ID, product name, product type, product description are displayed which are no longer available or company has stopped manufacturing them.

Manufacturing Resource Planning (MRP) is a technology that provides an integrated solution for the execution and management of all the manufacturing activities. Efficiency and accuracy of the processes is improved with the aid of the technology by effective management of the basic set of processes, such as production scheduling and inventory management. The issues associated with the accounts and invoice management of the company can be addressed with the incorporation of the technology. MRPII is the advanced version of MRP and comes with advanced set of features, such as machine capacity scheduling, demand forecasting, quality assurance, general accounting, supply chain management, marketing automation, project management, and many more. Core financials and enterprise asset tracking are the two other benefits that come with MRPII that are absent in MRP (Towers, Knibbs and Panagiotopoulos, 2005).

Some of the features of the technology that will be included in the new system are listed below.

• Feedback – MRPII is a technology that includes a significant feature of feedback that comes from the production floor. It can be used in the new information system for the integration of the information sets across all levels of schedule to allow the next run to be updated at regular intervals.
• Schedule of Resources – Management of inventory and its control involves a lot many scheduling processes and is dependent upon the resources, such as machinery, raw materials, equipment, and likewise. The technology will provide the information system with the capability of easier scheduling of the resources (Ip, Kwong and Fung, 2000).
• Batching Guidelines – There are a wide number of batching rules that are integrated in MRPII software. These will be used for the batching and scheduling jobs.
• Lot for Lot – Lot for lot refers to those batches that fall in line with the client orders and expectations. The feature will be enabled and integrated in the new information system.
• Economic Batch Quantity (EBQ) – The batch size in this case is calculated with a formula that leads to the reduction of the costs by maintaining a balance between the cost of set up and the stock costs.
• Part Period Cover – It refers to the batch production that fall in line with the demand that is placed over a specified time period. The feature will allow easier placement for the orders.
• Software Extension Capabilities – Inventory management and controlling of the resources are the two essential features that come with MRPII. However, there are other capabilities that the technology will offer to the new system. Scheduling processes can be enhanced and improved with the use of the technology. Sales ordering, and stock recording processes are the two features that come with the technology that may be useful for the information system to be implemented.
• Planning for Labour Capacity – Standard labour necessary for the business processes and operations can be planned using the technology and will be significant for the new information system as well. The scheduling of the labour will be made possible on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis (Tan, Idrus and Yusof, 2011).
• Accurate Data – It is extremely essential that the initial data that is typed shall be accurate to make sure that there is positive impact in the manufacturing activities. Any of the errors in the encoding information may be problematic to the business. However, with the use of MRPII, the accuracy of the data sets can be obtained with much ease.

The use of the technology in the new information system will be relevant to the organization as it will allow the resolution of the current set of problems and issues. It will offer the following set of benefits to the organization.

• There will be detailed information sets that will be made available with the use of MRPII as the technology that may be useful for Wilmaplex for the execution of the core functions and the management of the functions, such as management, production, and problem-solving activities.
• The overall workload on the resources is brought down with the use of MRPII technology if there is accurate management involved.
• The data sets that will be involved in the MRPII module will allow the management and administration of Wilmaplex to plan and forecast for the activities to the carried out in the future to attain the overall benefits from the business operations (Singh, 2017).
• The overall efficiency of the business processes will enhance and the unwanted set if expenditures will be avoided and the profits will increase.
• The traditional processes of stock and inventory control will be replaced by the advanced technology providing technological capabilities to the organization.
• The production schedule that will be obtained with the use of the technology will enable the cost efficiency for the organization and will also result in adequate allocation of the labour.

Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) refers to the technology that enables the electronic exchange of the organization documents with the aid of computer systems. These can be shared with the business partners and other stakeholders with the company. EDI is a secure replacement of the postal mails and emails. Emails are also the electronic exchange of messages and information; however, there are still people involved in the process. EDI documents on the other hand straightaway go to the receiver’s computer without the involvement of the human. The main business documents that Wilmaplex shares are the business documents, such as purchase orders, and invoices. These also include customs documents, shipping status documents, ship notices, and payment documents. There is a standard format that is defined by EDI for the exchange of such documents and the standardization is maintained for all the documents. Two of the most popular standards that may be used are ANSI and EDIFACT (Jimenez-Martinez and Polo-Redondo, 2008). The technology will be relevant for the organization as it will offer several benefits and will overcome the current set of problems and issues. In order to avoid the above issues and challenges, the company decided to implement and use Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) in the year 2015. However, the use of EDI appeared as over budget and the company decided to implement an alternative system at lower costs. The system has not been updated since then and there are issues in accounting and invoicing services that are coming up. This is implicating the customer trust and engagement levels for the organization. There are also certain issues with the hardware manufacturing processes that are also being seen currently as a result of limited capabilities of the current system. Over the years, there are modifications that have been made to the EDI systems that will bring down the costs and offer enhanced functionalities to the organization.

• EDI is technology that will prove to be the highest-value integrated in the information systems as it leads to the elimination of the time-consuming manual effort associated with order management and invoice management. The use of EDI with the new information system will streamline the order management activities and workflows for the improvement in the productivity and responsiveness. This will also bring down the costs which is one of the major concerns associated with Wilmaplex. With the increase in the number of trading partners, the operational costs will further come down (Lee, 2010).
• The technology does not demand the presence of experts or specialized skills to handle the EDI operations and services. It would be possible for the employees of Wilmaplex to handle the EDI transactions and the automated processes involved. It would be possible to automatically schedule the activities associated with the import and export of the EDI documents. The enhanced involvement of automation will mean that the probability of errors will come down and it will lead to better user engagement and satisfaction levels (Ngai and Gunasekaran, 2004).  
• There are various EDI commercial software packages available in the market as of now. However, the involvement of such commercial packages will provide Wilmaplex to customize the package as per their current and future requirements. The configuration will be made as the environment and needs and the complexities will come down. There will also be lesser requirement of converting the data sets.
• Web access is enabled with the use of the technology that will provide the employees with the ease of usage and access. There will be non-stop accessibility that will be involved with the use of the technology and it will lead to the enhancement in the engagement levels of the customers and end-users.

Mission Statement

The use and implementation of the new information system will offer the organization with several benefits. However, there will be certain security risks and drawbacks that will also be involved. There may be information security risks and data breaches that may come up.

The information system will be accessed and implemented over the network. These computing networks will be primary threat agent that may lead to the enhanced probability of the network-based attacks. There may be issues of network eavesdropping and man in the middle attacks that may appear. These are the attacks in which unauthorized entities may gain network access and sit over the network during the transmission of the information from the source to the destination. The attackers may gain information out of the network activities which may be misused later. Many of the flooding attacks may be carried out through the networking channels. Two of the primary forms of flooding attacks may be denial of service and distributed denial of service attacks. In these attacks, the garbage traffic will be flooded on the networking channels associated with the new information system (Jouini, Rabai and Aissa, 2014). It may result in the blocking of the system availability and accessibility. The breakdown of the services will occur and the quality will also be deteriorated. Data breaches, data leakage, and data manipulation are the issues that may appear with the occurrence of the above security issues. The access control practices may also be violated to breach the data sets. There may also be scenarios wherein the employees of Wilmaplex may be provided with the access to the information system on their mobile devices. These mobile devices may get lost or may be stolen by the attackers which will result in the leakage and loss of data. The issue may appear on the networking channels as well wherein the properties or details of the data sets and packets may be altered or the destination address may be modified. The packets may not reach their destination. The manipulation of the message and media sets may be carried out. Insider threats may also come up with the new information system that may lead to breaching of the data sets. The employees will be provided with the access rights and permissions that may be misused by the attackers. The employees may exchange the information sets with the competitors of Wilmaplex that may cause a poor impact on the integrity and confidentiality of the data sets. Malware attacks will also be common with the new information system. For instance, ransomware is one of the malware codes that may be launched on the new system. It will block the access for Wilmaplex employees on the new system and there will be message displayed by the attackers to pay a ransom to gain the access to the system. All the files will be encrypted and the system access will be blocked. Viruses and worms may also attack on the new information system to impact the functioning of the features integrated with the information system.

There are various security controls that are available that shall be used for avoiding the security attacks and data breaches. There are also accounting controls that are available that shall be used for ensuring that data security and accuracy is always maintained.

• Separation of Duties: It is one of the internal accounting controls that includes the separation of the responsibilities associated with the accounting processes and operations. The separation shall be done for the activities as bookkeeping, auditing, etc. The employees will be provided with the access rights and permissions that may be misused by the attackers. The employees may exchange the information sets with the competitors of Wilmaplex that may cause a poor impact on the integrity and confidentiality of the data sets. However, with the separation of duties, the probability of such fraudulent activities will be prevented and avoided.
• Advanced Access Controls: There are newer technological tools and concepts that have been introduced for the purpose of access control. Wilmaplex shall make use of the access control mechanisms, such as role-based and attribute-based access control. These access control mechanisms shall also be integrated with the authentication measures like multi-fold authentication. Encryption is also one of the technologies that may be combined with the access control mechanisms to ensure that the occurrence of the security attack is prohibited.
• Standardized Documentation: With the involvement of EDI as a technology in the information system, standardization of the documentation will be ensured. There is a standard format that is defined by EDI for the exchange of such documents and the standardization is maintained for all the documents. Two of the most popular standards that may be used are ANSI and EDIFACT.
• Physical Audits: With the involvement of large number of data sets, there is limited scope for the use of physical controls. Physical audits may not be frequently carried out in the new information system as there will be huge number of data sets that will be involved with the system. However, there shall be physical audits that must be conducted at bi-annual or annual basis so that the areas of improvement may be identified and rectified.

Conclusion & Recommendations 

It is recommended that the latest and advanced technologies, such as MRP, MRPII, and EDI are included in the new information system that is developed. There are security controls that shall be used along with the accounting controls. These shall include the anti-malware tools, anti-denial tools, and other network security tools to control the security risks and attacks. Wilmaplex is an Australian company that works in the domain of manufacturing of hardware products. The information system will provide the organization with competitive edge in the market.

References

Ip, W., Kwong, C. and Fung, R. (2000). Design of maintenance system in MRPII. Journal of Quality in Maintenance Engineering, 6(3), pp.177-191.

Jimenez-Martinez, J. and Polo-Redondo, Y. (2008). International diffusion of a new tool: the case of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) in the retailing sector. Research Policy, 26(7-8), pp.811-827.

Jouini, M., Rabai, L. and Aissa, A. (2014). Classification of Security Threats in Information Systems. Procedia Computer Science, 32, pp.489-496.

Lee, S. (2010). The relationship among formal EDI controls, knowledge of EDI controls, and EDI performance. Information Technology and Management, 11(1), pp.43-59.

Ngai, E. and Gunasekaran, A. (2004). Implementation of EDI in Hong Kong: an empirical analysis. Industrial Management & Data Systems, 104(1), pp.88-100.

Pacificcommerce (2018). Wilmaplex. [online] Pacific Commerce. Available at: https://www.pacificcommerce.com.au/page/wilmaplex [Accessed 23 Sep. 2018].

Singh, K. (2017). Enterprise system in a mid-sized Indian manufacturing organisation – a case study. International Journal of Indian Culture and Business Management, 14(3), p.257.

Tan, S., Idrus, R. and Yusof, U. (2011). Operational Framework for Manufacturing Resource Planning (MRPII) System Case Studies in Malaysian Small and Medium Enterprises a Taxonomy Model for Structural Misfit of MRPII System. Advanced Materials Research, 383-390, pp.6792-6799.

Towers, N., Knibbs, A. and Panagiotopoulos, N. (2005). Implementing manufacturing resource planning in a Greek aerospace company. International Journal of Operations & Production Management, 25(3), pp.277-289.

Wilmaplex (2018). Wilmaplex Pty Ltd. Website. [online] Wilmaplex. Available at: https://wilmaplex.com.au/ [Accessed 23 Sep. 2018].

Zhao, X., Lai, F. and Young, S. (2002). A study of Manufacturing Resources Planning (MRPII) implementation in China. International Journal of Production Research, 40(14), pp.3461-3478.