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Project Details
Supply Chain Management System (SCMS)
As you may have surmised from M1 and M2, this semester's project is designing and implementing an application/simulation of a Supply Chain management system. For those of you who are business or ISYE majors, you will have to bite your tongue a little since this application is a simplification of a real supply chain application. A supply chain is typically a complex network of suppliers, factories, warehouses, distribution centers and retailers. Traditionally, the marketing, distribution, planning, manufacturing and purchasing organizations along the supply chain have operated independently. To enhance productivity and profit, these diverse organizations need to be tied together into a coherent system. We will code a simple application/simulation of the major components of an SCMS for this semesters project. The three major parts of the SCMS are the Point of Sale Location, the main coordination system, and the supplier.
The Point of Sale (POS) Location
The whole purpose of the SCMS is to ensure that when you go to a retailer, the goods you wish to purchase are there. On the other hand, retailers don't want to carry a huge inventory of goods, since that ties up their money and warehouse space. For our purposes, the system may have some number of point of sale locations each of which represent a single location like Home Depot or Best Buy. Each point of sale location keeps track of the inventory at that location. To accomodate multiple locations, each store also has a number–thus there is a Home Depot 234 which may have different inventory and order points than a different store location like Home Depot 132.
POS Specifc Requirements
- The system should support any number of unique POS locations.
- Each POS location has its own inventory.
- An inventory consists of a set of items.
- Since prices are volatile, the price the POS paid for an item may vary over time. While I may have 5 X-Box on hand, 3 may have cost me 199, while 2 may have been 205. To account for this, items are received with a lot number. All items with the same lot number, have the same price.
- When the inventory of a particular item goes below the reorder point, an order is generated and sent to the main coordination system. If the item quantity on hand is zero, the order is marked an emergency order.
- Each POS should have a sell policy. There are four choices: FIFO (First In First Out, that is the earliest item received is the one sold), LIFO (Last In First Out, the latest item received is the one sold), CIF (Cheapest Item First, the item we paid the least for is the one sold), or EIF (Expensive Item First, the item we paid the most for is the one sold). Note that this policy affects which item is sold to consumers and how much profit the location makes on that item.
You should have a POS UI that allows you to:
- manually send an order from a POS to the central system (useful for establishing an initial inventory)
- adjust sell prices and reorder points for each item at a POS
- sell items at a POS
- view the items currently in the inventory
- display total cost of the inventory
- display total market value of the inventory
- display the items currently on order
- set/change or display the current sell policy.
Central Coordination System
The central coordination system (CCS) handles the interface between all the POS locations and all the suppliers in the system. It receives orders from the POS locations (either normal or emergency) and routes them to the appropriate supplier. For our simulation there is only one supplier for each unique item, but you may allow a supplier to provide more than one item. Thus for X-Box 360 for example if Acme, Inc is the supplier then it is the only place to order the X-Box from. Acme, Inc may also supply PS-3 consoles, but again if that is true, then no other supplier will provide that item either.
When the supplier sends an invoice to the CCS, the CCS routes it to the appropriate POS location. When the POS location receives the invoice, it also receives the items on that invoice. You do not have to model the transportation delay (except maybe for extra credit).
Specific features:
- Keep track of all POS locations in the system
- Keep track of all Suppliers in the system
- Receive orders from POS locations
- Send orders to the correct supplier for each item in the order
- Receive an invoice from the supplier for items ordered, then notify the POS that items are available and pass along invoice information
- Save and restore existing POS and Suppliers.
- Provide a UI for the CCS which acts as the main UI for the application/simulation.
This UI should allow:
- creation/deletion of POS locations
- creation/deletion of suppliers
- view reports as detailed in the report section
- launch the POS UI for a specific POS location
- launch the Supplier UI for a specific supplier
Suppliers
A supplier represents a single supplier in the system. A supplier may provide one or more items. For any item, only 1 supplier will supply that item. The Supplier receives orders from the CCS and fills them when it has enough items to satisfy the order. (Backorders and partial fulfillment are extra credit, so for basic credit you can assume the supplier always has enough items).
Specific requirements of the Supplier:
- Keeps track of its inventory of items by lot number
- Each lot number has the same billing price
- Receive an order from the CCS.
- Send an invoice to the CCS when enough items are on-hand to fill order.
- Provide a Supplier UI which provides the following:
- Show supplier inventory
- Create lots of items (where each lot has a number and a price per item for that lot)
- View outstanding invoices (those received, but not processed yet)
Reports
- Item Price volatility: Show a graph plot of orders on the x axis and price on y axis for a specific chosen item.
- Emergency order: Show a pie graph of orders with two segments, normal orders and emergency orders based on all orders the central system has received
- Supplier Quantity: Show a bar chart of quantities of items provided for a specific Item/Supplier by POS Location.
Extra Credit:
- Database back end
- Multiple Concurrent Processes/Threads where the POS, Supplier and CCS run concurrently.
- More realistic simulation.
- Automatic random sales rather than manual selling
- Random item production by supplier
- Partial order fulfillment. Allow the Supplier to provide part of an order, and backorder the remainder. The backorder would then be filled when the items become available.
- Additional reports and graphs
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