Feasibility Study: Computerized System Design For City Glaziers - An Essay.

Background

This assessment is designed to improve student collaborative skills in a team environment and to give students experience in constructing a range of documents as deliverables form different stages of the Software Engineering Process using a simulated industry case study.

In this assignment students will work in small groups to develop components of the Software Specification and Design Documents discussed in lectures.

Carefully read the associated case  study for this assignmen

City Glaziers

City Glaziers is a medium business operating in and around the Melbourne metropolitan area. The company supplies glass for windows and doors, and other structures within the Melbourne area. Glass can be ordered in bulk as part of a construction project, or in smaller quantities as replacement for broken windows, doors containing glass, bus shelters, and larger areas such as internal feature walls etc. The company began by operating in the Melbourne CBD originally, but has since expanded its operations to include most of the surrounding metropolitan area.

The company has built a reputation for providing high quality glass, as well as excellent service to it customers.

Background

The owner of the company, Robert Johnston, began the company in 2001, operating a single glaziers truck from a warehouse in North Melbourne. Robert operated successfully in the Melbourne CBD, providing a high quality service to his clients. The business has steadily increased over the last 14 years, and Robert now operates a fleet of 11 glazier trucks and has expanded the operating territory to cover the entire Melbourne Metropolitan area.

The Business expansion has included a move to a large warehouse and glass preparation area, with the head office located next door in a modern office block. The business seems to be expanding and Robert is now beginning to consider opening franchises in outer Melbourne areas, to be serviced from the central warehouse operation. Robert also has arranged to deal exclusively with a large glass manufacturing plant, Melbourne Glass Plant, located in an outer Melbourne suburb. By becoming a large customer of Melbourne Glass Plant, Robert gets lucrative discounts which he can pass on to customers, helping him compete in this competitive environment.

The size of the business has now reached a stage where Robert can see major issues arising. As the business has grown, the operations have become more complex, and this will only become more so if franchises are added to the current operations.

Robert has decided to employ your team to investigate the business needs and to conduct an initial feasibility study into the possible options for computerizing part or all of the operations.

A number of issues have arisen that have prompted City Glaziers to contract you to look into the system. 

• It is difficult to keep track of the Work Orders and Job Sheets to re-order stock before it falls below threshold levels.

• When Glaziers need to raise work-orders at a client site because they don't have the material, it is not till the end of the day when Glaziers return to the warehouse that these can be collated to begin preparation for the next day, resulting in some delays.

• Sometimes paperwork has gone missing for large scale projects and needs to be tracked careful to avoid delays and loss of awarded contracts

• The fleet of Glazier trucks needs to be managed better as sometimes with the paperwork double booking can occur and result in frustration and delays

• Additionally, we need to keep better track if kilometres travelled so trucks can be services in a timely manner.

• Delays in sending paperwork to our suppliers can cause delays in order processing and result in longer delivery times of stock.

• The level of paperwork is increasing and the accounts department is having trouble keeping up with the timely production of monthly statements, processing of payments and general financial reporting.

• With customers beginning to ask for different methods of payment such as email, PayPal etc, we need to look at incorporating this into our business processes somehow.

The system is based on focusing over the business processes for City Glaziers. The present system is based on a manual working procedure, which is unable to serve the increasing demand of workload. Customers could range from individual customers to large companies who would propose their demands to the company. The new system would bring in an online system that would include each of the functionalities based on ordering of raw materials, designing the glass panes and supplying them to the customers as per their needs and demands. The new system would also help the business to issue statements for customers at every month end. Whenever an order is placed, a Job Sheet would be created based on which the level of stocks would be monitored. Any stock if found to be lacking in nature, would be reported by the system to the administrative section and thus replacement of new orders would be made accordingly.

The project is based on designing a computerized system for City Glaziers that would help the administrator to bring in changes within the existing system by mitigating the issues already present within the system. In the present system, there is a major problem as the existing system deals with paperwork, which further leads to making delays and further loss of contracts. There are also some form of delays in processing of orders and ordering of new stock of goods. Customers also demand new methods of payment to be incorporated within the payment section. Thus, the new project is aimed to incorporate each of the missing functionalities within the project in order to deliver the best kind of outputs.

There are five certain areas in which the feasibility analysis in relation to the project would be defined. These include:

1. Technical Feasibility– Technical resources that could be applied for the project would include the use of severs, hardware and a well-maintained software system. The system would help in managing the orders as per their delivery date and urgency. This system would also help in sorting each of the orders as per the request placed by customers. A Job Sheet would also be prepared automatically by the system after a certain job would be fulfilled.
2. Economic Feasibility– Before the designing of the system, the project manager would perform a cost or benefit analysis to determine whether the project would be considered to be feasible in nature.
3. Operational Feasibility– The operations to be performed at City Glaziers are based on taking orders from business clients while maintaining the stock levels and making arrangements for the dispatching of goods. During the planning for the project, a project plan would also be need to be planned that would list out the set of activities that needs to be performed for the project. Based on the defining of activities, the analysis of the phases of the systems development would be done.
4. Scheduling Feasibility– After the scheduling of activities for the project, the time taken for the estimation of activities would be done. The project manager would view the exact phases of the project and the time that would be taken for individual activities to be done within the exact time period. Based on determining the estimation of time and whether each activity would be performed within the certain time.
5. Legal Feasibility– Based on the context of the project, it can be discussed that the project would be checked whether each of the incorporations that would be made would suit the outcomes for the project. The legal feasibility would discuss each of the inclusions within the project would be aligned with the legal aspects of the country in which the project is been designed.

The functional requirements within the system includes:

1. A user of the system would be able to include the order data within the system. The details of the order placed would be viewed by the system and thus displayed on the screen.
2. The administrator of the system should have a comprehensive view over the entire system. The complete information of the workflow would be viewed by the administrator and thus they would be able to make edits, modify and also delete certain records from the database.
3. The compliance and regulatory needs of the system would be clearly defined in the documentation being provided for the system.

The non-functional requirements for the system includes:

1. The users login would be checked by an internal verification system been developed.
2. The software should be portable in nature and thus should suit the criteria of every kind of OS.
3. Information privacy would be maintained based on the use of restricted technologies.

The assumptions for the design of the computerized system are:

1. The project would be completed within the pre-defined time and estimated budget.
2. The system should be completed as per the defined requirements and appropriate planning.
3. The functional requirements within the system would be defined within the system as per the planned processes.

The constraints of the computerized system are:

1. The date and cost estimated for the project are the primary constraints of the system.
2. The system might develop problems based on collating the Job Sheets.
3. Inclusion of other payment methods can be defined as a major constraint.

Use Case Diagrams

(Figure 1: Large Projects)

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(Figure 2: Repairing Section)

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(Figure 3: Payment Section)

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(Figure 4: Supply of Orders)

(Source: Created by author)

Use Case Descriptions

1. The first use case is defined for the Large Projects section. This process defines the ways in which quotes are been set for the supply of glass based on developing major construction projects.
2. The second use case discusses the process in which individual customers would place orders for replacement or repairing of the manufactured glass panes.
3. The third use case describes the process in which payments would be made after a customer might have placed an order. A payment copy would be sent to the customer and also to the Head Office through direct post method.
4. The fourth use case describes the process in which the current stock levels would be maintained. Whenever a stock level needs to be refilled, the system would update the management about the process.

References

Grønbæk, K., Grudin, J., Bødker, S. and Bannon, L., 2017. Achieving cooperative system design: shifting from a product to a process focus. In Participatory Design (pp. 79-97). CRC Press.

Harper, J.D., Hira, K., Nguyen, G., On, B.N. and Rakes, J.M., International Business Machines Corp, 2016. Automating system on a chip customized design integration, specification, and verification through a single, integrated service. U.S. Patent 9,477,807.

Ray, S., Harris, I.G., Fey, G. and Soeken, M., 2016, November. Multilevel design understanding: From specification to logic. In 2016 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Computer-Aided Design (ICCAD) (pp. 1-6). IEEE.

Yang, J.S. and Levine, W.S., 2017. Design methods: Specification of control systems. In The Control Handbook: Control System Fundamentals, Second Edition (pp. 9-2). CRC Press.

Wu, J., 2017. Distributed system design. CRC press.

Michael, M. and Winarno, W., 2018. Design and Development of Computer Specification Recommendation System Based on User Budget With Genetic Algorithm. IJNMT (International Journal of New Media Technology), 5(1), pp.25-29.