The Athletic Footwear

The Athletic Footwear Manufacturing Company makes athletic footwear. Processing of the production orders is as follows: at the end of each week, the production planning department prepares a master production schedule (MPS) that lists which shoe styles and quantities are to be produced during the next week. A production order preparation program accesses the MPS and the operations list (stored on a permanent disk file) to prepare a production order for each shoe style that is to be manufactured. Each new production order is added to the open production order master file stored on disk. Each day, part department clerks review the open production order and the MPS to determine which materials need to be released to production. All materials are barcoded. Factory workers work individually at specially designed U-shaped work areas equipped with several machines to assist them in completely making a pair of shoes. Factory workers scan the bar codes as they use the materials. Once a pair of shoes is finished, it is placed in a box. The last machine in each work cell prints a bar-code label that the worker affixes to the box. The completed shoes are then sent to the warehouse.

Required:

a) Describe a comprehensive set of control procedures that should be included in each system. (20 m)

b) Describe opportunities to use information technology to further improve efficiency of operations. (20 m)