Information technology as we know it today plays a big role in the modern day business environment, every business needs to update their systems to ensure that they stay ahead of their competition. Technology is a blend of knowledge, techniques, systems and methods of organisation. Software plays a large part alongside technology. There is a large and diverse network of software available to all business sectors, these software programs have been designed to gather information and present it in a usable manner. Every company will have tailor made software packages to serve their business needs, but will also use off the shelf packages for the more general business tasks. Information management is the gathering and collation of information from many sources, the gathered information is then distributed to a diverse audience. For example we could look at hotels room sales over a six month period, and this is how we would gather and process the information. Data element is a list of raw information, which rooms sold well and which rooms didn't sell as well, and what revenue was generated from the sales of these rooms. Process element, look at the raw information gathered and group into two lists. One list showing which rooms sold well, and another showing which rooms sold less well. Both lists would show what revenue was generated from all the sales. Information element, at this point the information would be summarised to present it in a usable form, this information can then be used to help make a decision as to where the hotel needs to improve on room standards to boost sales. Action element, this would be the point where the decisions made will be put into action. The hotel would improve the standard of the rooms that sold least well, and also keep the high standard of the rooms that sold well. All relevant parties involved would be alerted of the decisions and action. These decisions put into action would improve the standards of the hotel and expand its revenue. We see from this example that information systems and information management has an important purpose in business, it helps any business to look at its key sales area and make decisions on how to improve. These systems apply to every modern business environment. Transaction processing system is the processing of transaction accurately. Staff at the transaction processing system level is involved in stock checking, and ensuring that they have adequate stock for operation. The decisions made at this level would be simple. Operational Management at Management Information System level would be involved in looking at their suppliers of stock, and making a decision if they need to change a supplier if a certain line of stock wasn't selling as well as it should be. Operational management would take their data from the Transaction Processing system level and make their decision from this information. The Reports they would generate would be used by middle management. Tactical Management at the Decision support system level would use more detailed reports and information, and from this would prepare contingency plans for uncertain times for the business. They would look at their options and alternatives at this level, long term decisions would be made at this level. Strategic management at the executive support system level would use key internal and external information. They would look at what their main competitors were doing. Decision at this level would be strategic and long term. They would look at their contingency plans and would involve a lot of data analysis to help make the long term business decisions. People with the most important function are the tactical management at decision support system level, and strategic management at executive support system level. The reason being that they plan the future of the business, and how they will succeed and get through what if scenarios. They plan and build contingency plans to succeed, also taking into consideration what is going on around them, and how they can beat the competition. All these decision support levels make up the Information Systems hierarchy. From this research I can clearly see that information technology plays an integral part in a company. Every business needs are different and their systems and software will reflect this, but each business will use the same information systems hierarchy to help with decision making. Technology has become a key tool to help maximise business revenue, no modern business could perform and compote with their competitors without the integration of information technology. So it has become an underpinning factor for any business practice.
Introduction to my chosen company
I have based my research on the Vion Food group Ltd, which is the United Kingdom arm of Vion N.V., and specifically concentrating on their modern poultry processing plant at Llangefni in North Wales. Vion food group produces and processes beef, lamb, pork, and chicken. They also produce a large variety of convenience products such as sausages and cooked meats. The United Kingdom operation has facilities across the country, from farms and hatcheries to modern processing, production and packaging plants. The company employs 14,000 personnel across the country, and its main core business areas are red meat, pork and poultry. One of my main reasons for basing my research on this company is the size and diversity of their business, I believe that each of their processing plants have a wide variety of information technology systems and it plays an invaluable part in their day to day running of the company. Below is my investigation into the themes within their business.
Networking
The site PCs (clients) are networked locally, this local area network is split into two halves. The newer debone side of the factory has a series of network switches 10/100 with a fibre optic link across to a similar hub on the old side of the factory where it connects to the file and print server and to the wide area network gateway. Please see diagram 1 in appendix. This only structured this way due to the physical distance limitations of running a copper infrastructure network. Not all the sites clients look like PCs, there are food industry PCs inside the indicator heads of all the weighing scales. These are networked to the ordering system so the people on the factory floor know how much of each product to pack and for which order. The WAN gateway is just one of many gateways connected to group domains associated with the various business sectors within Vion, some of these sectors are UK Poultry, UK Red Meat, Dutch Pharmaceuticals, German Beef, German Pork. These domains are then connected via leased line fibre national networks to form the inner network of the entire company.
Software
All the PCs on the Llangefni site are using versions of Microsoft Windows as their operating systems. The file and print servers use windows server with active directory. Almost all the PCs are using standard Microsoft Office 2003 as software, but the site does use some bespoke software and some off the shelf packages such as AutoCAD. Thin Client software is used for financial applications such as sales and purchase ledger, payroll and human resources management. The site uses MfgPRO for finance and sales, Open pay for payroll, and open people for human resources management. The site also uses a time and attendance system that interfaces with the payroll system. The site has local networked software reading and controlling temperature systems throughout the factory and a system that monitor the whole factories energy usage. The company is seeing a shift away from thick client applications towards thin client applications and web hosted information applications.
Hardware
When the business was under the control of Grampian Food Group most of the office and back office hardware was dell. Network switches were Cisco for larger switching operations and Netgear for smaller hub switching. Netgear and Hewlett Packard print servers were also used. The cabling infrastructure on this site is all cat5 4 pair copper. Wireless internet isn't really an option because of all the interference put out by the myriad of motors and other processing equipment, and also the security implications. The company operates several mobile phones, all the company vehicles and managers have mobile phones. Some managers use blackberry smart phones and have their work email routed to them. This can assist the business in obtaining a rapid written response to any issues. The fact that the message is written leaves little potential for ambiguity in the meaning, something that could easily happen in a spoken conversation
E - Business
Most of the sites business is inter group so e-business in the traditional sense doesn't really apply, although this may change in the near future as the site upgrades its processing systems. Generally the nature of the sites business isn't as fast paced as retail production. Orders come in by slower means via e-mail, fax, or phone. The site doesn't deal directly with the public.
Data and knowledge management
The site carries out a daily back up of all locally held data. Wide area network systems for finance and payroll are backed up remotely at the hosting site daily. The site also carries out a daily back up of local data and sends this to Vion ict for archiving.
Managerial support systems
There is no decision making software in use on the site. Most decisions are based upon collated and sorted data from either the wide area network systems or from spreadsheet data input by other users on and off site. A lot of information is provided for decision making purposes using spreadsheet data. Factory planning is, in the main done by spreadsheet input and analysis.
Limitations of the current systems
The system can be slow depending on inter group traffic. Information technology support does not always tie in with production timetables leading to situations where the site have to work around downtime because the factory still has to continue with its tasks regardless of whether the Information Technology infrastructure is up and running or not. This can then lead to input delay in getting the systems up to date and can lead to data being lost or mismatched.
Conclusion and Recommendations
Vion is a large European company with many diverse areas of business. Integration of systems would be ideal but would have to resolve significant issues to become truly effective. Legacy systems from businesses joined through acquisition, preferred systems within one type of business may not suit other areas of the business. Poultry processing uses an effective bill of subtraction methodology for its end product, how this works take a chicken, remove its feathers, create a by product, remove its insides create a by product, cut it up create a by product and so on. Ready Meals production at another site uses the classical bill of assembly methodology this is how it works, take some ingredients and mix them requires raw material from external supplier, then cook it requires more external input, then package it requires more external input, then ship it. The company's competitors operate in a similar way. The back office systems may be different, they may use SAP or ERP software, this site uses outlook as the main email tool but are soon to mover over to lotus notes as it ties in with what they're using within Vion on the continent. This site uses one particular weighing factory order production system manufactured by Marel, whereas a competitor site uses a Hellenic weighing system. Production equipment within the industry will be mainly similar with variations only coming about because of the products being manufactured. Some other Vion sites who deal with major supermarkets will have direct links between the supermarkets own ordering system and theirs. This way the supermarket can order directly and their requirements will filter directly into their FOPS system. This site does not deal directly with supermarkets so there is no need for this level of integration.
