Trendy Garments Ltd

Trendy Garments Ltd (TGL) started off as a small textiles manufacturer with 10 employees about 10 years ago. It then grew consistently to 90 employees about 5 years ago. It was started by its owner who had previously worked as a director of a major garments manufacturing company. It is based in a small city with population of over 500,000 people, like Bradford. Due to the quality of its products, innovation and good customer service it expanded continuously at a very high pace. It now manufactures various type sof male and female garments.

Today, TGL employs over 150 employees in its 3 business units in 2 major cities. It has a number of central departments, namely: Accounting, Marketing, HRM, Design, Sales, Purchase and Warehousing, Manufacturing, Logistics and Despatch. It buys products from a variety of suppliers, such as fabric suppliers, etc. TGL has contacts with a number of local, national and international retailers and whole sellers. Each of its department plays an essential role in selling its garments onto customers. For example, the purchase department orders fabric, which get stored in the warehouse. The warehouse then forwards them onto the manufacturing department for cutting and stitching.

TGL takes the preferences of its (potential) customers into account when manufacturing clothes. Different departments handle different types of information. For example, the Accounts department is involved in handling purchase orders and paying for goods, whereas the Marketing department collects information about the popularity of products and then advises the organisation on particular types of designs. It also markets and advertises the products.

More recently, TGL has also created a new information systems department than what its had before. Since the Managing Director realised the need to introduce IS to enhance and yield greater efficiency

and effectiveness, given the international competition. An initial priority is to have a good network infrastructure to facilitate organisational wide computing. It needs good network to run simultaneously through out the organisation at its different sites.

Due to the growth and complexity of its operations TGL needs a number of new information systems across many of its departments. Different departments need different systems to provide different levels of functionality. For example, the use of systems by senior management would normally be for long term decision making to check the overall progress of the company. Moreover, different systems need to integrate with one another to yield greater value out of them.

Eventually, TGL would like to exploit the latest technology in the market, such as e-business. However, e-business requires a lot of changes, such as stream lining the current ways of selling by the Sales department. It would also result in changes to the current policies, procedures and ways of working in several other departments.

Assignment tasks:

You have recently been employed in the Operations and Systems Department as Business Operations and Systems Graduate Trainee. You have been asked to produce a report on the role and acquisition of IS for TGL for its senior management and line management. In this report you are asked to have a number of sections, listed below:

1) Using the transformation process model and systems thinking concepts, explain the key operations TGL works. Pay particular attention to flow of materials and the role played by different types of information systems. (Suggested length 900 words).

2) You are asked to look into the possibility of installing a new network infrastructure and deploying technological gadgets. Please make suitable recommendations after evaluating current networks and new technologies available for operational use in organisations like TGL. (Suggested length 900 words)

3) Management are very interest in selling direct to customer, hence wish aim to make their products available online.

3a) Advise on a suitable set up of operations using a carefully chosen e-business model and to specify a suitable online portal (website) design features/functions. You are asked to pay particular attention to business operations, for example analysing the impact of e-business over traditional processes of the organisation. (Please assume that the business environment is same as the one you are currently studying in). (Suggested length 600 words)

3b) Consider the drawbacks of introducing this type of customer and information processing technor both the customer and the company as the supplier. What problems could arise from this method of transacting with this company?