Case Study
Company Overview
Case Study-Transport UniversalWith branches across the United States and Europe and partners worldwide, TUI continues to expand, and it has experienced rapid growth through acquisitions. Note: The term supply chain refers to all the elements involved in bringing an organization's products from the raw-goods stage to the customer. The Association for Operations Management (APICS) dictionary ((https://www.apics.org/Resources/APICSDictionary.htm) defines "supply chain management (SCM)" as the design, planning, execution, control, and monitoring of supply chain activities with the objective of creating net value, building a competitive infrastructure, leveraging worldwide logistics, synchronizing supply with demand and measuring performance globally.
The Business Challenge
TUI is competing in an environment where freight transport is as much about keeping customers informed as it is about on-time delivery. The company has adopted webbased technologies for tracking freight, differentiating its services, keeping customers informed, and ensuring the on-time delivery that is TUI's hallmark. As a result, TUI enjoys a very high level of customer satisfaction.
Its mobile workforce has rapidly increased, with drivers using PDAs to scan consignments, which are then synced in real time via GPRS links to headquarters applications that track the consignments. Customers use TUI's web services to view the progress of orders, from dispatch to warehousing to final delivery. Customers also use TUI's web-based systems to create freight documentation and generate reports. With the EDI interface, invoices and payments are transferred directly between the customers' systems and TUI, saving both time and money.
As the company has expanded, the data flowing in the system have increased as well. Now, with more than 5,000 employees and thousands of customers worldwide, TUI is suffering from the effects of explosive growth. Demands on its wide area network (WAN) are exceeding capacity. The main data center has experienced several network outages and unscheduled downtime. The aging ISDN telephone system is failing, as the company has avoided the costly upgrades necessary to keep it operating at optimal performance. Telephone bills have increased without warning, and the voice mail system is overloaded.
The Opportunity
TUI wants to provide increased bandwidth between all 47 of its US offices and the main data center. There are three metropolitan areas that have four to eight TUI locations that need to coordinate among themselves: Chicago, Los Angeles, and Baltimore. The company desires a reliable and secure network to accommodate its planned growth as well as the unexpected.
The company does not want to spend any more on telephone services than it does today, and its goal is to upgrade the services while protecting against escalating costs from its ISDN service provider. Efficiency and productivity goals for this rapidly growing company are of paramount importance, and there is a desire to provide capabilities and services that incorporate technology solutions to improve in those areas as well as retain the high level of customer satisfaction. TUI is also interested in reducing travel between its sites by implementing video conferencing. In addition, TUI wants to be able to monitor and manage data and voice services, and ensure that consumption is appropriate to its business needs.
The Deliverable
Using this case study, you are to identify a minimum of five requirements, analyze them, and offer a proposal that provides TUI with an converged network solution and explains how the components of the solution, and the solution as a whole, meet the identified requirements. The proposed solution must address each of the requirements identified. At least one (1) diagram or illustration must be incorporated to illustrate your proposed solution. You should do some research to address the cost issues and defend the proposed solution from a cost-benefit perspective. This is to be a general analysis of the benefits versus the cost of a converged network, not a full cost-benefit analysis with cost data.
Here is what you need to do:
Use MS Word to prepare - 5 page white paper with the attributes discussed above.
2. The 3 - 5 page count does not include the cover page, Reference/Works Cited page (see below), or illustrations (if used).
3. Please note that illustrations, if used, must be appropriate, be related to the topic, and add value to the paper.
4. The paper must have a cover page that includes the document title, date and your full name. The cover page is not included in the page count.
5. Line spacing must be no more than 1.5 and the font must be Arial, 12 point.
6. Use the bolded "Attributes" in the Evaluation & Scoring Rubric below for section headings in the paper.
7. External research and a References or Works Cited page (see below) are required. You must use of at least three (3) external scholarly resources. This is in addition to any course materials from assigned readings.
8. The paper must have a separate References or Works Cited page at the end of the document that is used to correctly cite and reference all sources including course materials, as appropriate. This page must be titled, References or Works Cited, and not some other title like bibliography, citations, end notes, etc.
9. You should use scholarly journals. If you need assistance with determining what a scholarly journal is, the UMUC library is a very good source of information, accessed via the following link: https://www.umuc.edu/library/libhow/articles.cfm.
10. Do not simply copy and paste information from the Web or copy information from the readings or other sources.
11. Be sure to provide the appropriate APA formatted citations on the References or Works Cited page to avoid the perception of plagiarism. This includes citing all external sources including the vendor Web sites, assigned readings, the case study, and other sources, as appropriate. NOTE: Wiki sites such as Wikipedia and authorless sites/blogs are not acceptable references.
12. If you are not familiar with the APA style and citations, there are also several links under Webliography that can assist you. If you are using MS Word 2007 or 2010, there is a Citations & Bibliography feature located under the References tab.
13. At all costs, avoid any hint or perception of plagiarism.
14. Be sure to check for spelling, grammar and format errors prior to submitting the document. These are all items that will be evaluated and scored.
15. Submit the paper by the due date (See the Course Schedule) in MS Word format via the Project 3: Case Study assignment folder as an attached document with your last name in the beginning of the filename (Last Name_Case Study).