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SAM11486 System Analysis and Modeling Assignment Sample

Assignment Case Study – L-Mart

Disclaimer: The situation described in the following case study for assignment help is fictional, and bears no resemblance to any persons, businesses, or organisations, living or dead. Any such resemblance, if exists, is merely co-incidental in nature, and is not intentional.

L-mart is a national business that sells all kinds of varied goods directly to consumers through its physical retail stores and growing online presence. It is looking to upgrade and improve its inventory management system, as its current system is old, outdated, slow, and difficult to use – not suitable for a growing company with rapidly increasing online sales.

L-mart’s inventory management system needs to keep a record of all of the products that are sold at L-mart and the suppliers of those products. It also keeps records of all sales and inventory at both individual physical retail stores, and at regional warehouses.

In the online web store, products are displayed to consumer with their name, retail price, a short description, current stock at each location, and an image. The wholesale price (the price that L-mart paid to a supplier for the product) and barcode are also recorded for each product.

The system also prints shelf labels for in-store use (for staff to put on shelves or individual items). These shelf labels only include the name, retail price, and barcode of the product.

L-mart’s physical retail stores are named after their suburb and state (e.g. “Bruce, ACT”, “Queanbeyan, NSW”), along with their street address, email address, phone number, and a store manager (a person with a phone number).

Regional warehouses are named after the city/area they serve and state (e.g. “Canberra, ACT”, “Western Sydney, NSW”), and have the same information except that they do not have a store manager. The inventory management system keeps a record of all sales. In-store purchases are obviously recorded against the store they are purchased from (and reduce the inventory held by that store accordingly). At the moment, online purchases are always shipped from a regional warehouse directly to the customer (there is no click-and-collect functionality at present, although L-mart is currently investigating the feasibility of this for the future). The time, sale location, product, and quantity are recorded for all sales, and online purchases also record customer name, address, and payment details. Each location can mark individual products as ‘active’ or ‘inactive’. An ‘active’ product is for popular, regularly-ordered products, where stock should automatically be reordered. An ‘inactive’ product is for products that are seasonal or infrequently ordered.

For ‘active’ products, when stock of a product at a particular location reaches a critical threshold (this is different for each product and each location, due to varying stocking and sale rates for each product at each location), the inventory management system should automatically create a purchase order, to be approved (or rejected) by store or warehouse staff. If an order is approved, the staff will specify the amount of new stock to order. Each month, all of the approved purchase orders for each store go out to each supplier for processing. ‘Inactive’ products are never automatically ordered but still have critical thresholds - store or warehouse staff are still alerted when stock drops below these levels and they can manually create purchase orders for these (or other products) if needed.

Each supplier provides multiple products for L-mart, but L-mart only orders a product from a single supplier at any given time. As an ICT business analyst, you will be tasked with analysing and modelling L-mart’s current business practices in order to better understand the current situation of the business, with a view towards creating a single, updated ICT system to manage their inventory management system.

Solution

Introduction

L–mart is regarded as a national business organization that provides its customers with various goods sold directly through the physical retailing stores of the company to their customers. The L-mart company is currently following their outdated and slow system for inventory management, which is becoming old and is thereby increasing the company's difficulties in maintaining proper efficiency. Hence, L-mart company is focusing on developing an advanced inventory management system to manage customers' growing demand effectively and to impart its online presence. Hence this report will provide the context diagram, the data flow diagram and the use case diagram. The company will also focus on the data dictionary, reflecting on the data presented within the context and flow diagrams.

1. Additional research and assumption

From the given case study, it is seen that the L-mart company will be looking to update and improve its inventory management system, for which the company will be focusing on enhancing the features of the online site (Ahmadi et al., 2019). Therefore for bringing the changes to the website, the technical department of the L-mart company will be basing their inventory modelling on some of the basic assumptions. The most important assumption that the L-mart company will be making will be that the customers' demand is constant and continuous. Apart from this, the case of product shortage is not permitted within the company, which indicates that the inventory should consist of an adequate amount of products that will meet the customers' needs (Wautelet et al., 2018). Apart from this, the inventory system should be formed by integrating 3 factors: frequency, order size and timing, and the company's ability to track its inventory. After in-depth research, it is seen that the system must contain proper lead time knowledge and, at the same time, contain variability.

2. Context diagram


Figure-1: Context Diagram of L-mart
(Source: Self-made)

Through the help of the context diagram, the L-mart company will be able to gain a conceptual view of the inventory management system. Therefore through the help of the context diagram, the L-mart Company will be able to show the overall data flow for inventory management and thereby enable data management.

3. Data dictionary

4. Data flow diagram

A data flow diagram is considered one of the most influential graphical representations of the data flow process associated with the flow of information system management design process. Here in this context, it has been identified that the aspects of data items flowing through the data flow diagram are initiated from the external data sources towards internal data sources effectively (Fauzan et al., 2019). In the following section, a top level of DFD has been produced, which effectively incorporates an effective detailed model design for the organisation's L mart inventory management system. Based on this data flow diagram, a structured accomplishment of system mechanism and how the entire retailing operations are done through web process effectively. Based on the smooth flow of information, effective mode of order stocks and inventory control, the possibilities of overstocking and higher inventory costs can be reduced effectively.

Figure 2: Data flow diagram
(Source: self-made)

Level 2

Figure 3: Data flow diagram level 2
(Source: self-made)

5. Process specifications

In response to the case scenario, it has been identified that the approached inventory management system can keep all the sales records for the organisation L marts effectively, including in-store and online purchases. It has been identified that the entire process includes direct shipping operations from the company's regional warehouses to the customers to maintain better feasibility (Irhamn and Siahaan, 2019). Here in this context, it has been identified that the inventory management system specifications include details such as the time, sale location, product, and quantity effectively. In addition to that, the online process also incorporates recording customer names, addresses, and payment details. Hence in this context, critical specifications involved in this process are storing process, organisation, management and inventory data analysis. To maintain efficiency and accuracy of the entire system specifications to deliver better inventory control and management support documentation, and in addition to that, employee training at an advanced level is also required.

Hence as retail operations, including in-store and online retail, ensure vast process flexibility, that is why the process being described is one of the most exciting and complex processes of the system in response to having the support of employee training and support documentation.
6. Use-case diagram

Figure 3: Use a case diagram
(Source: self-made)

7. Use case description

In response to the entire information system operations for the company inventory management process, it has been identified that product marking has been taken under consideration as it is identified to be one of the most compelling use cases of the entire inventory management system.

Product marking:

As this product marking helps the system to ensure a better product threshold, it is considered a fascinating and complex use case of the system in context with warehousing operations and stocking management of the organisation L mart.

Conclusion

This report has developed a new inventory management system for the L-mart company, for which the additional assumptions needed are being described. The context diagram, along with the data flow diagram and the use cases for this case, has been provided through which the L-mart company will be able to enhance their data management regarding their product inventory and will be able to handle their increasing demand more effectively.

8. Reference List

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