Wheelies is a bicycle manufacturing company based in Holland. Wheelies turned $18 million in profit from a sale of $100 million with over 8 branches in Europe and 6 branches in America. Wheelies buy all the parts for its bicycles from various suppliers around the world. The parts are then assembled in the factory in Holland and San Diego to produce a number of different bicycle models.Customers of Wheelies place orders for the bicycles they require, and delivery is estimated to take three weeks. Each customer order can consist of more than one model of bicycle, and the required quantity of each model is also recorded on the order. At the end of each week a forecast is produced so the manufacturing department knows how many of each bicycle model it needs to produce in the following week. The forecast is based on the number of each model in stock and the quantity of each model ordered by customers. The forecast is also used to place purchase orders for parts from the suppliers so that all the necessary parts are available for the weeks production. Each individual bicycle that is assembled has a unique code stamped on the frame.

Wheelies currently categorizes its bicycles into seven groups:

Road - Training, advanced and professional road bikes

Mountain - Includes bikes for various riding styles, from casual single-track to race- specific downhill bikes.

Comfort - A range of casual city bikes

Mode - Designed for teens

Indoor Cycling - Indoor fitness bikes

Family Cycling - Designed for children

Speciality - HALFWAY and the CLIP are the only bikes in this folding bike group

Core processes

Financial Accounting

Procurement (Materials Management)

Create Purchase Requisition>Create and send Purchase order>Receive goods from vendor >Receive invoice from Vendor >Send payment to vendor

Fulfillment (Sales and Distribution)

Pre-sales activity>Process customer sales order>Pick and Pack ship good to customer>Send Invoice to customer>Receive Payment to Customer

Production (Production Planning and Execution)

Create Planned order>CreateProduction Order>Issue material to production order from Inventory >produce and confirm Production >Receive material from Production to Inventory

Additional Processes

Warehouse Management

Material Planning

Integrated Processes

Customer Service

Enterprise Asset Management

Financial Accounting (Asset accounting)

Human Capital Management (Recruitment and Hiring)

Management Accounting (Profitability analysis, profit center accounting, product,

cost accounting)

When a customer order is ready for dispatch, the frame code of each actual bicycle allocated to that customer order is recorded so that each bicycle can be traced to a particular customer. Deliveries to customers can be arranged for complete or partial orders.Wheelies currently sponsor international cycling teams. The most famous are the Wheelies- Shimano team and the Global Wheelies Mountain Bike Team, as well as many national teams.

a.Identify the role and reporting alternatives of management information systems.

b. Describe how online analytical processing can meet key information needs of Wheelies managers in their respective geographical areas.