Case scenario

ABC Company (fictitious) was established in 2004, and its headquarter is located in Perth. ABC imports car parts from overseas and sells them in the Australian market. The company is expanding its operations to include research, production, testing, and selling of car parts. Consequently, it has acquired three factories in two countries outside of Australia. These factories will work together and coordinate their production of various car parts, conduct testing, and ship the parts to the Perth headquarters for sale in the Australian market.

To improve functional operations, the company wants to upgrade its current legacy systems into smart manufacturing systems that utilize data to automate manufacturing processes. The company also wants to connect the factories and headquarters together, as well as integrate various functional operations. These operations include the successful management and coordination of a high number of orders and production among the three factories. Additionally, the company aims to trace the parts it produces so that it can identify whether the parts are original or not in case of incidents and ensure the safety of people. The company should also be able to manage the huge amount of data it will receive from various sources, such as customers, maintenance records, real-time data generated by production machines, and so on, so that it can make informed and strategic decisions accordingly.

The start of a transformation journey for the company has just begun. ABC's leadership has reached out to you because of your extensive experience with IT-enabled business transformations. During the meeting on June 2, 2023, the Board expects you to explain to them what needs to be done with IT and how to proceed, preferably using language that they can all understand. The company's leadership is expecting an ICT strategic report that achieves the following objectives:

(1) Connect the three factories and digitise the production processes.

(2) Implement data-driven manufacturing and decision-making.

(3) Improve supply chain management and product traceability.

(4) Safeguard and protect business continuity by securing the company's operations and connections.

Develop an IT strategy report and propose systems and/or technologies that can help achieve the objectives mentioned in the scenario. Justify your selection and provide an in-depth analysis of the potential application(s) and benefits of the proposed systems/technologies. Your discussion should be directly related to the scenario, and you need to provide examples from the case scenario to illustrate your ideas.

Your report should also include recommendations for the company. The purpose of the recommendations is to inform the company's leadership of your approach to optimizing IT services in the company, ensuring the achievement of the perceived benefits from these technologies for the business, and optimizing the company's response to various incidents.

2000 words