Week 9 Questions

Define the term operations management

Operations management is the management of systems or processes that convert or transform resources into goods and services

Explain operations management’s role in business
Operations management's role in business is to:

• Forecasting
• Capacity planning
• Scheduling
• Managing inventory
• Assuring quality
• Motivating and training employees
• Locating facilities
  

Describe the correlation between operations management and information technology

Management can use IT to heavily influence OM decisions including productivity, costs, flexibility, quality and customer satisfaction. One of the benefits of IT on OM is making operation decisions because OM exerts considerable influence over the defree to which the goals and objectives of the organisation are realised.

Explain supply chain management and its role in a business
Supply chain management involves the management of information flows between and among stages in a supply chain to maximise total supply chain effectiveness and profitability.

List and describe the five components of a typical supply chain

Five components of a typical supply chain are:

• Plan: the strategic portion of supply chain management. A company must have a plan for managing al the resources that go toward meeting customer demand for products or services
• Source: companies must carefully choose reliable suppliers that will deliver goods and services required for making products
• Make: The step where compnaies manufacture thier products or services
• Deliver: THe step is commonly referred to as logistics. This is the set of processes that plans for and controls the efficient and effective transportation and storage of suppliees from suppliers to customers
• Return: The most problematic step. Companies must create a network for receiving defective and excess products and support customers who have problems with delivered products
  

Define the relationship between information technology and the supply chain.

Information technology and the supply chain are related because enable and organistation to:

• decrease the power of its buyers
• increase its own supplier power
• increase switching costs to reduce the threat of subsitute products or services
• create entry barriers thereby reducing the threat of new entrants
• increase efficiencies while seeking a competitive advantage through cost leadership

All answers came from Business Driven Information Systems (Baltzan, Phillips, Lynch, Blakey)

Week 8 Questions

Explain the business benefits of using wireless technology.
Business benefits of using wireless technology include:
it enables employees to move laptops from office to office
they can connect to the network in lunchroom areas
quick and easy access
low cost

Describe the business benefits associated with VoIP

VoIP uses TCP/IP technology to transmit voice calls over internet technology. Benefits of using this enables businesses to make voice calls over the internet. This is able to be of lower cost for companies or free. Businesses are able to use programs such as skype which gives businesses more opportunities to contact people overseas and interstate

Compare LANs and WANs
A LAN is a local area network it is designed to connect a group of computers in close proximity to each other such as in an office building, a school or home. It is useful for sharing resources such as files, printers or games. A LAN in turn often connects to other LAN's and to the internet or wide area networks
A WAN s a wide area network that spans a large geographic area such as a statem province or country. WAN's often connect multiple smaller networks, such as local area networks

Describe RFID and how it can be used to help make a supply chain more effective
RFID or Radio Frequency Indenfication technologies use active or passive tags in the form of chips or smart lables that can store unique identifiers and relay this information to electronic readers. RFID tags can cut costs by requiring fewer workers for scanning items, also provide more currency and accurate information to the supply chain

Identify the advantages and disadvantage of deploying mobile technology
By deploying mobile technology there are some advantages. These include technology being able to be taken anywhere, such as in the form of wireless internet, mobile phones, cordless computer peripherals, satellite television, WiMAX wireless broadband and security sensors
There are disadvantages as well as there are risks involved and data needs to be protected

All answers came from Business Driven Information Systems (Baltzan, Phillips, Lynch, Blakey)

Week 7 Questions

List, describe, and provide an example of each of the five characteristics of high quality information.

The five characteristics of high quality information are:

• Accuracy: Are all the values correct? For example, is the name spelled correctly? Is the dollar amount recorded properly?
• Completeness: Are any of the values missing? For example, is the address complete including street, city, state and postcode?
• Consistency: Is aggregate or summary information in agreement with detailed information? For example, do all total fields equal he true total of the individual fields?
• Uniqueness: Is each transaction, entity and event represented only only once in the information? for example, are there any duplicate customers?
• Timeliness: Is the information current with respect to the business requirements? For example, is information updated weekly, daily or hourly?

Define the relationship between a database and a database management system.

A database management system is the computer program used to manage and query a database. A data base maintains information about various types of objects, events, people and places. Typically a given database has a structural description of he type of facts held in that database, this description is known as a schema

Describe the advantages an organisation can gain by using a database.

The advantages an organisation can gain by using a database are:

• Increased flexibility: a good database can handle changes quickly and easily Databases provide flexibility in allowing each user to access the information in whatever way best sits his or her needs.
• Increased scalability and performance: Only a database could scale to handle the massive volumes of information and the large numbers of users required. It refers to how well a system can adapt to increased demands and measures how quickly a system performs a certain process or transaction
• Reduced information redundancy: redundancy is the duplication of information, or storing the same information in multiple places. Redundant information occurs because organisations frequently capture an store the information in multiple locations
• Increased information integrity: Information integrity is a measure of the quality of information. Within a database environment, integrity constraints are rules that help ensure the quality of information
• Increased information security: The organisation must protect its information from unauthorised users or misuse

Define the fundamental concepts of the relational database model.

A relational database is a collection of tables from which data can be accessed in many different ways without having to reorganise the database tables. Data is able to be linked so that information is more easily accessed such as finding out what doctor is seeing what patient and which students are in which classes

Describe the benefits of a data-driven website.

Advantages of a data driven website are:

• development: allows the website owner to make changes at any time
• content management: a static website requires a programmer to make updates
• future expandability: having a data driven website enables the site to grow daster than would be possible with a static site
• minimising human error: bugs and inconsistencies that can be time consuming and expensive to track down and fix
• cutting production and update costs: a data driven website can be updated and published by any competent data entry or administrative person
• more efficient: computers are excellent at keeping volumes of information in tact
• improved stability: any programmer who has o update a website from static templates must be very organised to keep track of all the source files

Describe the roles and purposes of data warehouses and data marts in an organisation

A data warehouse is a logical collection of information, gathered from many different operational databases, that supports business analysis activities and decision making tasks. A data warehouse holds information such as marketing, inventory, sales, billing, competitor, industry, mailing list and stock market analysis

All answers came from Business Driven Information Systems (Baltzan, Phillips, Lynch, Blakey)