BPMN 6053

MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS

Group Assignment (Case Study 3) For

Lecturer : Siti Noratisah Bt Mohd Nafi

Group members:

Edwin Ng Kian Chee 803634

Kaladevi Suppiah 803725
Lawrence Thomas 802242
Raja Darmataksiah BT Raja Yusuf 803732
Roshanizam BT Che Pee 802251
 WAGNER FOODS Inc – SOLUTION

COMPANY HISTORY

In 1898, Wagner Foods, Inc. establish and food manufacturer. They

acquired a reputation of providing high quality products and innovative
management. After the despair, the top management decided that limiting their
company to one product line which is not ideal business strategy plan and could
put company in danger. They started diversifying by providing other products and
services. The company grew through various mergers, acquisitions and
partnerships.

At 1990's, Wagner Foods is considered a multinational and multidivisional

corporation with approximately $600 million in yearly sales. The company
management believes in divisional independence but in term of reporting and
administrative divisions is in grouped. This created different division has their
own financial business responsibility in the company.

Wagner Development is one of the divisions of Wagner Foods. It has its

own organizational structure with the division head directly reporting to Wagner
Foods, Inc. CEO. This division was formed in the 1970s to build the company's
new manufacturing facilities. After completed project, the division starts to
develop the remaining acres for rental purposes. The division finally ventured
outside of the Baltimore metropolitan area to DC and Philadelphia and in the
1980s, it was successful Wagner Development represents 36% of Wagner Foods
Inc.'s assets and contributed 15% earnings in 2000.

Automation planning was established in October 1999, after feasibility

study was done to determine to form a separate information systems department,
and to purchase applications software that could run on IBM AS 400 server.

Wagner Foods own Information Systems department called Management

Sciences Division ("MSD") which provide Decision Support Systems. The
division reports directly to Cereal Products Group and functions as a profit center
expected to break even. It charges $825 per programmers per day and the
balance profit goes to Cereal Products Group. Currently plan to sell excess
mainframe space that could either increase their profit or reduce the charge
back. Since, others division is not required to use MSD, Wagner Development
stopped using the system.
PROBLEMS

A. Managerial Problems

1. Planning

Strategy - Incorrect selection of Information System project driver for

Wagner Development. The primarily decision to hire James Weeks is because of
his past association with Management Sciences Division (MSD). Although he
had an accounting degree, worked in the accounting department, and had no
real training as an IS employee, he was given the task of steering IT at Wagner
Development.

Tactical - Unstructured decision making phase. Indentifying and defining

potential problems and opportunities develop alternate solutions to the problem
and evaluate their feasibility and select course of actions were not validated and
thoroughly done. This lead accumulated frustration at the operational level.

Operation - Management expectation for user to develop own computer skill

to overcome day to day issues mounted to additional workload.

Strategy – Incorrect decision

making to select James Weeks as
IS project driver for Wagner
Development

Tactical – Unstructured structure

decision making; no validation.

Operation – Lack of end users

involvement in improvement &
developments; end users to develop
own computer skill and mounted
with additional workload.

2. Organization

Overall Wagner Foods practices autonomy and loosely structured. Management

is satisfied as long as the divisions are meeting their goals. Management
Science Division (MSD) regarded as profit centre rather IS support department
which is a major flaw in organization structure.
3. Staffing

Wagner Development supposes to hire two user support people and a network
administrator but end up hiring an analyst to assist and manage the systems.
Even the new hired skill was not capitalized. On the other hand Wagner Foods
on the whole has sufficient IT resources but widely scattered and not optimized
and end users were not trained with computer skill prior transitioning the new
system

4. Control

Wagner Development purchased Property Management Accounting System

(PMAS) with anticipated limitation and terminated MSD service right after
installation of PMAS before the configuration; testing and data conversion could
start. Failed parallel implementation of old and new system that cause the
system unable to perform well and allowed redundancy in both systems.

B. Technical Problems

Restaurant Flavoring & Frozen Industrial

Product Toppings Foods Product Wagner
MSD CPG Group Group Group Group Development
2 unit IBM S/390 X X X X X
1 unit IBM AS 400 X
PMAS X
CMAS X
Untag Capital Asset ** X X X X X
Email & Payroll X X X X X X X
Decentralized IT Resource X X X X X

Notation:
X = Applicable
** = Untag Capital Asset – Approximate 800 networked PCs along with 40
smaller PC based servers of various types

The MIS function at Wagner Foods is currently a combination of centralized and

decentralized systems. Uneven distribution of hardware systems, 2 units IBM
S/390 is shared across 5 out 7 sites while 1 unit IBM AS400 is secured within
Wagner Development leads to wasted storage space, data redundancy and
inconsistent data. Same goes to untag capital asset. PMAS and CMAS newly
purchased backend office system is not optimized to the maximum capacity.
Human is compensating system capability to deliver right information to the right
person in the right format at the right time. Decentralized IT resource equals to
redundancy of data maintenance and waste of time which could be applied for
other useful purposes.
C. Behavioral Problems

James Weeks is perceptive in approach and had made IS decisions

based on assumptions. Did not have any plan to educate the staff to overcome
the fear by implement new software. Know all attitudes and still in denial world,
while the fact problem do exist. Further, he is not receptive to guidance or open
discussion with other IT expert in other group despite lack of IS knowledge.

This situation, erode staff’s motivation due to uncertainty of systemic help

from the management lead by James Weeks. Redundant job to sustain right
information to the right person at the right time and morale was down due to lack
of ownership and urgency to correct created gross error.

ALTERNATIVE SOLUTIONS

A. Managerial Problems

1. Planning

Strategy - James Weeks to be re-located to his area of expertise. Either

back to accounting department or finance MIS scope. Temporarily continue to
assist the new appointed person till project completed. MSD appointed as the
project driver for Wagner Development, since it has sufficient knowledge,
knowhow and experience in setting similar requirement for the other divisions. No
reason why this can’t be capitalized.

Tactical - Advice James and MSD to revisit decision making process or

phase to understand potential opportunity to correct root cause errors. Sit with
the end users to understand their requirement and concerns negotiate and work
with PMAC to overcome system incompetency and training module to rely on.

Staff - Work with vendor to embrace train the trainer concept to enhance
internal computer skill or software. System automation and automated formatted
reports are essential for both operational team in order to ease current workload
and for the top management strategic decision purposes.

2. Organization

Top management need to restructure from horizontal (Autonomy) to vertical and

come up with standard internal operating procedure to ease redundancy in job
scope and as an aid to monitor performance of each division. MSD cannot be a
profit centre, restructure to central support IS Department or Division.
Propose IS & Administration Organization chart

Board of
Directors

President

Management Centralize
Science Division

Administration

Restaurant Flavorings & Frozen

Cereal Products Industrial Wagner
Products Toppings Foods
Group Products Group Development
Group Group Group

Cereal Products
Division

3. Staffing

Re-assignment of task across IT/IS resource Wagner Foods to optimize the

resource, skill and knowledge. Adopt train the trainer concept to elevate level of
internal computer proficiency.

4. Control

MSD need to review and revise current agreement between PMAS and CMAS in
terms of licensing, training and service and software maintenance and
enhancement. Internal IS support to tap knowledge management for system
debugging and minor upgrading or enhancement. With this in place end user will
have comfortable working environment to share their expertise for betterment.
B. Technical Solution

MSD to be restructured:

1. As IS department and central support for all subsidiaries or divisions.

2. Centralized database in order to optimize IT resources, eliminate data
redundancy and inconsistency.
3. Work with vendor to provide structured documented manuals and later
serve as training provider.
4. Good IT equipment or asset tracking list to monitor equipments
maintenance, upgrade and integration needs to enhance competitive edge
in IT/IS technology.
5. Advice top management to re-consider selling of main frame computer, it
can be requiring for future IS development within the company or provide
other outsource service.
6. MSD should continue provide service to external companies which can
generate additional profit to the company.

C. Behavioral Solution

1. Attitude

MSD to have communication session to inform employees on the company

development, enhancement, vision and future goals. Close loop feedback
system, two way communication to promote open discussion to meet
company objective in one voice.

2. Motivation

Employee (tactical, operational) involvement in decision making to create

ownership and feel the importance of their presence. Automated, accurate,
reliable reports to eliminate redundancy of job. Reward system to cultivate
shared learning culture (KM – =Knowledge Management)

3. Morale

Accept constructive criticism for betterment of the company.

RECOMMENDED SOLUTION

Our one and only recommender solution for Wagner Development is to

reposition James Week to Account Department or to support finance MIS in view
of his background expertise and not adaptive to changes. MSD restructured
from profit centre to centralize IS department to support all subsidiaries and
divisions. MSD to capitalize its experience, skill and recognition as large MIS
shop as a tool for competitive advantage. The restructured team will provide
immediate assistance to employees' day-to-day computer needs as well as
training and serve the organization with all of its hardware and software support.
On organization structure it has to change from horizontal to vertical delegation
of task (role and responsibility). Standard operating procedure has to be
established for the betterment of Wagner Foods.

PROPOSE IMPLEMENTATION PLAN

Refer attached milestone (Appendix 1)
 Wagner Foods Inc - Improvement Plan Time line (workweek)

Task
Project activities Resp Duration 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24
Strategy

Appendix 1.
Repostion James Weeks to finance MIS scope/accounting dept BOD + 1
Restructure company organization chart President 2
Communication
Top Management to communicate plant-wide President 1
- Updates on company development, vision & future goals.
- Anounce new role & responsibility of James Weeks.
Close loop system, 2-way communication & open discussion
Task form team
Identify cross-functional team Division 1
Cross-functional team work on the project heads 1

Analysis and Requirement Confirmation

Requirement and analysis (system and reports) Team & 2
Review and confirmation Vendor 2
Requirement signed off
Integration & Customization
Review current IS vs new requirement Team & 2
Review current agreement between PMAS & CMAS Vendor 2
Training
Identify pool of trainers (from operational + tactical level) Team & 1
Condust TTT (Train the trainer) program Vendor 2
Testing (User accpetance testing) 1
System Commissioning
Content and User set up in information system Vendor 1
Administrative training Vendor 1
Establish standard operating procedure (SOP) Team 3
Proliferation
Proliferation to other division (if any) Team 1
Total 24