Chapter 5
1) The resource management process includes events associated with both personnel and payroll functions. Describe four data items that could be used by functions. Describe two data items for each function that would not necessarily be needed by the other. Personnel action forms document the hiring of new employees or changes in an employee status. Time sheets track the hours the employees work. Payroll deduction authorizations are used to authorize the payroll system to deduct amounts from gross pay for items such as parking, health insurance, and union dues. Paycheck and earning summary is a summary of every employee’s hours and check amount. The personnel’s functions are to hire new employees and maintain employee records. The payroll function is to record the employee’s time cards and create employee payroll checks.
3) In this chapter, we discussed many data inputs to an organization’s production process. What are the specific data items to input to a system when adding a new raw materials inventory item? What specific data items need to be input when a worker records time spent on the production line? The essential data items for inputting are materials requisition form, bill of materials, master production schedule, production order, and finally the job time card.
5) Are the inputs and outputs of a production process likely to be different for a home builder than for a cement company? How? For the most part the processes will be pretty similar because they are both basically in the construction business. However, some of the items may have a customized AIS system that is specifically designed for their business.
11) Discuss specific steps you would take as a manger to ensure that a business process reengineering effort is successful. If a bank takes a huge amount of time for processing and approving a loan because too many people are involved with the process, this process needs to be reengineered. I would first start out by evaluating each person that performs the jobs and see if it were possible to allow one person to perform all of the tasks as the others performed another task. Design a specific department for loans and have a couple of employees only handle these loans. Then train each employee to do all of the paperwork versus sending the paperwork from one person to the next and the next, so on and so on. If one or two people can handle the loans, they will have a better knowledge of each loan and know what is going on personally which in turn would eliminate many of the errors.