Brown and Gordon Auto parts (B&G) is the third largest auto parts manufacturer in the world. It is an autonomously run division of a large conglomerate, RST, Inc. Their head quarters and principal manufacturing facilities are in Cleveland, Ohio, but they operate plant in East Chicago, Illinois, Indianapolis, Indiana, Columbus and Cincinnati, Ohio, and South Bend, Indiana. Total annual revenues are close to $2 billion, but profits were reduced dramatically in 1989 and 1990 because of the recession and particularly because of the decline in automobile sales. Plant capacity has dropped to 60%, with a slight pickup in the fourth quarter of this year. (RST, Inc. has turned in record profits in the same two years, with all divisions save B&G performing beyond plan) Most of B&G’s management teams are on-line managers who have proven themselves in operational jobs and have worked their way up in hierarchy. They don’t believe Continue reading
Business Information Systems
E-Business Model – Meaning, Elements and Types
In this Globalization era the developed, undeveloped and developing countries are preparing their societies and communities for globalization. The globalization is possible only because of revolution in communication technology. The concept of global economy is emerging which is making e-business, an indivisible component of business strategy planning. Banking, tourism, shopping, hotel booking, airlines booking, auctioning and the list is non-ending. Millions of internet users just rely for their financial as well as other services on their online transactions. As more and more people have started using internet, more specifically e-business, for their day to day working, e-business has become more and more popular. The excitement of using e-services has grown and the potential for success of businesses increased. As more and more companies have started using internet for their business growth, some problems have to be understood properly and the solutions to them have to be thought carefully. At one Continue reading
The Five Phases of Ethical Hacking
It is debatable, if hacking can be ethical or not, the term “Hacking” over time has been associated with destructive activity. These are some of the terms used in the context of hacking which provides better clarity, Hacker is somebody who enjoys learning hacking for a defensive purpose; an ethical hacker is the security professional who exercises his skills for a defensive purpose. The term Cracker refers to a person who uses his hacking skills for destructive purpose. The ethical question here is in regard to the physical activity of hacking which is sometimes hard to differentiate from cracking. The main difference being, Ethical hacker just identifies vulnerabilities and does not exploit them unlike a cracker. Ethical hacking is the process adopted by ethical hackers to discover the vulnerabilities existing in information systems operating environments. With the growth of internet, computer security has become a major concern for business. Organizations Continue reading
What is Enterprise Application Integration (EAI)?
Supply Chain Management (SCM) applications (for managing inventory and shipping), Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications (for managing current and potential customers), Business Intelligence (BI) applications (for finding patterns from existing data from operations), and other types of applications (for managing data such as human resources data, health care, internal communications, etc) typically cannot communicate with one another in order to share data or business rules throughout a company. Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) is the process of linking such applications within a single organization together in order to simplify and automate business processes to the greatest extent possible, while at the same time avoiding having to make sweeping changes to the existing applications or data structures. Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) is defined as the unrestricted sharing of data and business processes among any connected applications and data source in the enterprise. It is considered as a framework that is formed of Continue reading
Case Study: How Walmart Enhances Supply Chain Management with ERP Initiatives?
Wal-Mart was founded in 1962 by Sam Walton and is been in the business of selling anything and everything people need for their everyday life with an everyday low price strategy. The success of Wal-Mart is mainly due to its focus on continuously improving operations through its efficient supply chain management practices. Sam Walton was not mainly concerned about opening more stores in small towns, but also came up with several innovative practices to improve the way business was conducted in the store. From the inception, Sam Walton provided products at a reduced cost than its competitors. Wal-Mart follows the “Everyday low prices” business model. As the years passed Wal-Mart grew to a size which gave it power to bargain the cost of products with its suppliers. To provide customers with “Everyday low prices”, Wal-Mart has highly invested in IT system to effectively manage their supply chain activities. Wal-Marts company Continue reading
Limitations of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Systems
In today’s increasingly competitive world where the world is converging into a single market place, organizations are looking for ways to become globally competitive. Companies must be able to meet customer requirements in the shortest possible time faster than competition and this requires extensive production planning and close coordination between the company and it’s suppliers and customers. MRP (Materials Requirement Planning) was one of the most widely used systems for production planning but it’s main focus was only on managing the production requirements in an organization. MRP systems helped in time phase release of production orders and aggregating planning for material requirements. With time, companies realized that there needed to be an integration of all the functions in an organization and this lead to the development of ERP (Enterprise resource planning) systems. ERP is defined as an Enterprise wide system that facilitates integrated and real-time planning, production and customer response. Continue reading