Service Request SR-rm-012
Team C
BSA/310
October 20, 2013
Iwona Rusin

Riordan Manufacturing A global plastics manufacturer, Riordan Manufacturing is a behemoth in the manufacturing industry, with yearly revenues in excess of $1 billion. Riordan has three operating facilities in Georgia, Michigan, and California, plus a joint venture in the People’s Republic of China. With such dispersed locations, the organization has relatively high demand for electronic business systems in order to manage all branches effectively. Riordan manufacturing has already implemented several business systems in an effort to bridge the gap, but with little success. Currently in place are such systems as bar code reading, electronic data interconnect, and an executive decision support system, but these systems only exist at corporate headquarters in San Jose, California. In the following service request will be outlined possible improvements to be made to existing business systems within the different departments. We will also be suggesting the different systems that should be implemented on top of the existing structure.

Finance and Accounting Riordan Manufacturing already has some systems in place that are needed, such as the Transaction Processing System. The TPS is just a simple processing system that allows the workers on the shop floor to input transactions, perform calculations, updates, merge and also alter data. This system also allows the user to output different types of reports. By having the TPS in place, it allows the organization to be able to work with the customers personally and easily. The second system is the Decision Support System, which grants managerial staff access to important business information in order to aid in the decision making process. Meaning, the decision support system will take hypothetical questions (i.e. yearly sales forecasts) and answer them based on past information. The last system is the Sales and Purchases systems, which allows Riordan Manufacturing to see what its customers are buying, and what they may want to get more of in the future. This system also allows the organization to monitor the products and the quantities it is purchasing, allowing Riordan Manufacturing to keep tabs on its expenditures more closely. Although Riordan Manufacturing has some systems in place, several of them are only available to its San Jose location. An example of this is its bar code reading system. Bar code reading allows for easy processing of stock, and can help expedite the paperwork for shipping items as well. If this system was placed in other locations it would allow the organization to see live inventory reports of the different plants. Another system exclusive to the San Jose location is the Electronic Data Interconnect (EDI), which acts as an interface between the different subsystems on its corporate network. The EDI creates a standardized format for the exchange of data among the different systems over the network, allowing staff to focus their efforts on other areas of the job instead of data formatting. Since this system has already proven effective at the San Jose location, it would be beneficial to the rest of the organization to extend this system to the remaining locations. The last system that Riordan Manufacturing has is the Finance and Accounting System (F&A), which is lacking a connection between the different locations within the organization. If the organization were to unify the F&A systems, there would be much less time spent balancing accounts among the different locations and performing other data analysis based off of sales records. With a few existing systems in place, there are several more that would be very beneficial to the organization. The first is a Management Information System, which will allow accountants and auditors to combine and organize all pertinent data in a central location. By enabling the collection of data to converge in a singular