Riordan Manufacturing is a company that is wholly owned by Riordan Industries.
The company has annual revenue of 46 million dollars and expertise in plastic manufacturing. Riordan has several manufacturing units in Georgia, Pontiac, Michigan, Albany and China. The corporate headquarters is located in San Jose California. The various units of the company are connected by a Wide-Area Network. The Riordan Manufacturing Company has several customers that belong to the aircraft industry, defense, bottlers, electronic item manufacturing, household item manufacturers, etc.
Riordan Manufacturing is using an Oracle database as part of the vendor and staff management system (for the procurement department). There are several users on the company’s database. The database is a part of the company’s business to business website. The company can place its order’s directly with the manufacturers on the company’s website. Once the order is placed, the vendor or the distributor would be notified through email or a messaging system.
The process of acceptance of the order and delivery of the order would also be enabled through the database.BodyThe purpose of improvement of the database would also include the vendor’s (besides the procurement department), as they are committed to the organization. The process of developing the database would include 4 steps:-· Defining the requirements of the company· Designing a system· Prototyping of the system· Implementing the database and sorting out problems associated with its useThe current database is utilized for placing orders with the vendors, advertising, marketing, information of delivery of the product and distribution (by the procurement and the marketing department). It contains information about various aspects including IP addresses, routing of the registry information, reverse DNS allocations and any related objects.
At various locations, people would be accessing the database using a web interface. The database would ensure that information can be stored and accessed over the internet. The users can enter, delete, modify, view and update information over the internet by entering the database. The system is manually configured, updated and trouble-shot by the administrators.As the system proposed new database would have several users located in different parts of the country, it may be very difficult to manually configure, install and maintain all the systems that form a part of the database. The current system uses a very simple architecture and has manual solutions.
This is because the users are located in the same city and can be accessed and maintained manually. However, the new system has vendors and other users located in various parts of the nation due to the expansion of the company. Hence, the architecture of the system is complex and the maintenance needs to be automated. Having an automated system would also provide a cost-effective solution of maintaining and updating the database frequently.The database would be connected to the several users located through the internet. The database would be centrally located and the users would have to log into the system through a web interface.
The database would be installed with several programs which include Oracle support programs that would collect information of the users (mainly CPU, memory, hard disk, system parameters, software packages installed, patches installed, etc). Depending on the need, the central database would install software, patches, etc on the user system (updates) to ensure that the user can access the database without any problems. In this way missing patches can be installed. Using such an automated database would ensure that the network administrators do not have the manual task of going to the site and performing updating or trouble-shooting of the systems.The new database also proposes new solutions to recover data and has added security features.
The system would utilize an advanced raid set to prevent multiple disk failures. Such a system would calculate, write and distribute data across various drives. An Oracle database would offer advanced security and redundancy, for performance of business with multiple vendors.ConclusionThe new database would ensure that there is an improvement in the business to business processes that occur between Riordan Manufacturing and its vendors. It not only ensures better user management, more effective troubleshooting and updating, but also better security and better ways of preventing multiple disk failures.
The system would also have a method to back-up data at another physical location and in this way prevent loss of critical information. Based on the new database, the company can concentrate on better targets for the next financial year. This would ensure growth and development of the company. However, the company also needs to determine the positive effects the new database would generate over the costs of such a system an in this way, justify the procurement of such an advanced system.
