You have been selected to design and implement an order-entry and customer service IS for Acme Books. Acme's corporate office, publishing division, printing division, and distribution center are located in three adjacent buildings in the suburbs of Chicago. Their sales and customer support centers are located in three regional offices across the U.S. Acme produces textbooks for colleges and professional books for book stores and businesses. Acme sells textbooks to colleges and individual customers across the U.S. and in England. The company currently manages its entire business manually through a sales staff at each regional office and through call-in orders taken by phone. The manual operations result in slow turnaround of orders, out of stock books, cumbersome customer service, and mistakes made in shipping. Acme is unable to expand its business due to these problems.
Acme needs an IS to allow the company to support the existing customer base; develop the capacity to win new customers; allow for order entry, order tracking, and shipping; and develop a customer database and an inventory database. Acme would also like to set up a Web site to allow customers to order books online rather than by phone. The Web site should have access to every book Acme publishes, track the number of books in stock, and automatically update the inventory when the books are shipped. The system should also generate packing slips and invoices for each order. In addition, Acme plans to implement an accounting system, but it is not within the scope of this project.
Acme's Physical Layout
The following is Acme's physical layout:
Chicago: This is the main office of Acme Books. Building A of the main office houses an executive staff of 50 employees. Building B contains the publishing unit employing 50 employees for soliciting manuscripts from authors, negotiating the terms of commissions of the authors, and preparing new books for printing. Building C houses the printing division employing 25, the warehouse division employing 10, and the shipping division employing 35 employees. The Chicago office does not take book orders from customers.
Saint Louis (southern region): This office takes book orders and serves the customers in the southern U.S. The office employs 50 employees.
Detroit (northern region and international sales): This office takes book orders and serves customers in England and the eastern and northern U.S. The office employs 75 employees.
San Francisco (western region): This office takes book orders and services customers in the western U.S.
The Saint Louis, Detroit, and San Francisco offices mail their book orders to the Chicago office. The books are shipped to their destinations from the Chicago warehouse. The warehouse also receives book returns after obtaining a return merchandise authorization from the appropriate regional office.
Deliverables to submit for the systems analysis and design process include:
A physical layout diagram of Acme Books.
A work breakdown structure of the project plan for Acme Books' IS development.
A paper explaining the techniques that will be used in the requirements gathering activities and a list of hypothetical requirements for the Acme Books' IS
A context diagram, using MS Word or Visio, illustrating the following processes:
Customer ordering books
Fulfilling customer orders
Customer service
A class diagram
A data model. Include tables Customers, Books, Orders, and Order Lines. Specify:
What data will be needed for the Acme Books' IS?
Where will the date come from?
How will the data be transmitted?
How and where will the data be stored?
For the data model, include a primary key and foreign key for each of the tables. Eliminate table anomalies by normalizing each table. Use MS Access to design and develop the database tables. Populate each table with 10 sample records. To set table relationships using MS Access, click the Relationships option in the Tools menu. Include the referential integrity constraints for tables.
A plan describing the data required, data sources, how the data will be entered or updated, and how and where the data will be stored
Design for input forms
A plan for building an MIS to fulfill the needs of Acme Books. Discuss feasibility. Discuss whether a traditional or object-oriented design will be used and why. Discuss how the system will be implemented.
The completed project should contain all of the above organized with:
A cover page
An executive summary
A description of the project
A final page listing what you have learned from the various project assignments and how these principles might help you in future projects
Reference