Inventory Control System Course Project - Exercise

Objective: Identify the fundamental components of the inventory control system project that will be used throughout the course.

Instructions

Because we will be using the example of an inventory control system throughout the course, you need to begin thinking about the functionality of this application. Picture yourself standing inside a warehouse.
You see rows of products on pallets and shelves. Workers are loading and unloading trucks, filling orders, locating stock in answer to questions, and talking with other departments and shipping companies.

Problem Statement

Receiving

The receiving clerks receive incoming shipments by matching purchase orders against the stock in the shipment.
They inform the Accounts Payable department when the purchase order items have been received.

Stocking

The stock may come from cancelled orders, returned orders, and received shipments. The stock is placed in the warehouse in predefined locations. The stock clerk looks up the correct location for the new stock, places the stock in that location, and updates the inventory with the location and quantity. Other staff members fill orders by locating the stock required for the order. As they fill the order they update inventory to reflect the fact that they have taken the stock. They also notify the Order Processing department that the order has been filled.

Shipping

When the orders are filled they are then packed and prepared for shipping. The shipping folks contact the shippers to arrange delivery and update inventory to record the fact that the products actually shipped. They also notify the Order Processing department that the order has shipped.

Please provide at least three answers to each of the following questions:

Who will use this application?
What resources will the users require? In other words, what objects and information do the workers/users manipulate and manage?
What functionality will the application need to provide? In other words, what tasks would the workers tell you they perform?

It is extremely important that you do not include anything that has to do with software or hardware.
The first step in any project is to understand the problem domain.
Software issues come later when you are ready to investigate possible automated solutions.