Problem Definition

1. Introduction

Auto Ancillaries Limited (AAL) is in the business of manufacturing important ancillaries for the two-wheeler and four-wheeler automobile industry. For the past few months they have been facing problems with their current system. Due to the problems they have felt the need for a change in their system. For this purpose, they have approached you to develop products. They would like you to study the problem at hand, and evolve a strategy for solving the current problems. In addition to this, they also want you to suggest solutions using which the company will get an added competitive edge in this cut-throat competitive market.

2    Existing Scenario

AAL has an annual turnover of $ 15 million. The company has 4 factories and 4 warehouses. The clients of AAL are Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM).  The company reaches to the customer through dealers. A distribution set up for AAL is as follows:

The Ware Houses dispatch the orders directly to the OEMs and other customers. There are two types of dealers – Regular dealers and Exclusive dealers. 
Regular dealers are the general dealers for other companies as well as for AAL’s products. Exclusive dealers cater only to the AAL’s product line. The company is thus required to have an elaborate system in place wherein all customers receive material without any delay and the dealers are updated with their stocks. 
Presently the company is facing the following problems:
1.    There is no automation involved to speed up the distribution process or any other business process.
2.    Credibility with customers seems to be declining recently due to slip-ups on customer order processing and dispatches.
3.    Finished goods stock is not being managed properly and holding costs are high.
4.    Difficulties in communication and updating data due to distributed set up. 
5.    Maintaining stocks at ware houses
6.    Preparing Invoices as well as dispatching the related documents and routing them to relevant departments or locations. 
7.    Calculating discounts and other taxes and levies 
8.    Delivering material in time
9.    Categorizing items as Fast or Slow moving while controlling inventory 
10.    Prioritizing orders based on customers requirement and distance
11.    Increasing material rejection from customers   
12.    Discrepancy between ordered and invoiced quantities due to either partial availability of stocks or due to clerical oversights. 
13.    Insufficient checks in the current system for ensuring customer credit limits are not exceeded.
14.    Analyzing sales data to streamline production volumes.

3    Proposed Scenario

A system needs to be established which takes care of inventories, preparing invoices, categorizing goods based on consumption pattern, tracking payments from the customers, tracking the consignment, generating material rejection reports. The system also requires connecting warehouse servers to the server of the manufacturing plant, furnishing the warehouses with the necessary information, allow clients to view the current status of production and stocks at warehouses. 
The system has to be hosted on the Web. The firms will have different discounts for customers based on their payment records. Each customer has accounts for logging into the system and is eligible to query about the production status. There would be an authentication process, which would enable the system to recognize the members or customers. The system should enable the members or customers to do the following:
Non-Financial:

• The account will primarily maintain the history of the members / customers in terms of the details of all the transaction made by the customers with the manufacturing firm.
• The customer should be able to place orders over the system. Once an order is placed the system should generate the invoice for the same. His payables should then be made available to him, taking into account his rating as a distributor. The customer system should host the inventory levels of the Warehouses and on the request of the customer, the server should be able to access this and inform the member or customer on his Economic Order Quantity (EOQ), Re-order point, time for placing the next order etc.
• The Customers, depending on his ratings would, have the option of viewing the Finished Goods inventory levels of the manufacturing unit.
• The Warehouse server data can be updated as soon as manufacturing unit update the current production.
• The Warehouse accepts the orders in a predefined format from customers through mails, faxes, web sites.
• Warehouses should be able to track material rejections. System should generate material rejection report. 
• Central Inventory control system must keep a track of the material consumption and based on that should be able to categorize fast moving or slow moving, regular or seasonal goods.   

Financials:

Billings for each order has to be done by the system and credited to the customers account. The system should be able to provide each customer with his current financial position in terms of details of payment made, outstanding and his rating as a customer with the company. The rating as a customer would be dependent on the volumes of purchase by them, his history as a defaulter etc. This in turn would determine his credit limit, entitlement to discounts, other benefits. 
All the above facilities should be made available to the member or the customer as per his query, i.e. the customer may want to know all his outstanding balances and the system should provide him with his figures by extracting data from all the firms.

4. Functional Requirements

1.    Registration of Member (Customer) to the Site
2.    Creation, Maintenance and Updating of Database, which will contain

• Information regarding all transactions made
• Details of Customers
• Details of the Warehouses 
• Details of items and stocks 
• Details of the purchase orders 
• Details of invoices
• Details of Material rejections

3.    Login and verification
4.    Entering query parameters by the user (Inventory status of company, rating of the customer, outstanding with the companies etc)
5.    The company databases should maintain the following 

• Details of customers 
• Other information like inventory, order status etc. that it wants to forward to the service 

6.    Transmitting the queries to the servers of each Company.
7.    Each server has to perform the search as per the query parameters.
8.    The server has to transfer the data to the Web Site.
9.    Presenting the result to the user in a consolidated format.
10.    Accepting order booking from user.
11.    Forwarding booking request to the particular Company server.
12.    The order should be booked, server database updated in terms of availability.
13.    The billing for the order is to be calculated taking into account the customer entitlements in terms of discount and credit period.
14.    The member account should be updated in terms of finances and transactions.
5. Video Review

Link tải source code tham khảo (Google Drive) - pass hỏi thầy Charles Chung