Assignment - READ THE CASE ILLUSTRATION AND ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS.

BIA: Department summary.

BUSINESS UNIT: RECEIVING, DISTRIBUTION, AND TICKETING

Person(s) Interviewed: Susan Jackson, Business Unit Manager

Date of Interview: September 18, 2010

KEY POINTS:

Function Overview

Ms. Jackson is manager of Receiving, Distribution, and Ticketing (RDT). With a total staff of 34 people, RDT is an important element in the distribution supply chain for all brands throughout North and South America. RDT interfaces with inventory, warehousing, import/export, accounts payable, buyers, and store operations. The department handles merchandise from vendors in the United States and Europe. Specific responsibilities include correcting errors such as SKU numbers and missing PO style, creating receiver authorization for merchandise shipments, closing receiver authorization, creating tickets, picks, and putaways. Prices are set at corporate headquarters and transmitted by EDI for access by RDT. Price updates are received daily.

Department employees are crossed-trained and can process all brands. In addition, step-by-step procedures have been documented in an Excel document that is revised when any processes change. Printed copies are maintained in the manager's office.

The work done in this department is not duplicated at any other location.

Most Time-Critical Business Functions/Estimated Allowable downtime

EDI ASN invoices 1 day

Printing of picks 1 day

Printing of price tickets 1 day

Purchase order update 1 day

E-mail/communication 1 day

Intercompany transfers 2 days

Store replenishment 1 day

Generate tickets for price events (markups, markdowns) 2 days

Other department responsibilities include updating buyers of shipments by sending ASNs via e-mail, and tracking deliveries.

Peak seasons are September and October for holiday shipping, and June and July.

Applications Needed (excluding standard Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook)

JDA Excel "Invoice Tracking Record"daily spreadsheet used to log and track ASNs, invoices, and other related documents EDI (file transfer only) Excel "Return to Vendor (RTV)" filesmanipulates data from Invoice Tracking files Internet to track shipments E-mail is critical to our operations RDT Menu (Menu XYZ)

Standard Equipment Needs (estimate minimum number required).

Workspaces 12

Telephones 10

Shared Printers 4

Fax 2

Scanner 1

Special Equipment Needs

Manual ticket guns

Tickets (6 different types)

Monarch Ticket Printers

Financial Information

Loss of this function could stop or delay shipment of product resulting in lost sales and possible chargebacks.

Notes

Receive approximately 500 Advance Shipping Notices (ASNs) daily, up to 5,000 a week. No merchandise moves without this process.

In a typical one-week period, RDT processes 60,000 pieces for (brand) alone. During peak seasons, overtime is required to meet shipping and delivery time frames.

Use six types/sizes of tickets, approximately 25,000 to 35,000 daily. Some tickets are interchangeable. A 2-to 3-week vendor lead-time is required for ticket stock; a 6-month supply is kept on hand in the department. The vendor holds a limited number of additional rolls of tickets for immediate availability if needed (each roll has 2,000 tickets). In addition, while tickets are not currently purchased from other vendors, an alternate vendor that can supply all six ticket types has been identified.

If necessary for any reason, receipts could be recorded manually in a log and tickets could be handwritten, though this process would be slow and require a significant number of additional person-hours. Styles and distribution for the warehouse could also be handwritten, though doing so would take a great deal more time. An unanswered question is whether factories and suppliers would stockpile merchandise if we couldn't receive and for how long they would do so.

Questions:

1. Design a survey questionnaire that can be used to get the above BIA department summary.

2. What are the criteria for identifying critical functions? How would you ensure in the survey questionnaire and the follow-up interviews that only critical functions were identified? Are any of the functions listed above non-critical?

3. What has the summary missed in terms of department resource requirements in the BIA?

Answers in detail.