Construction Rental Company rents tools and small equipment to the building and

Question

Construction Rental Company rents tools and small equipment to the building and construction industry. They have over 10,000 items available for rent. All items are stored in a single warehouse. Items are stored in an equipment table in the company's data base with the item serial number as the primary key. Customers selected the items they want to rent and the sales staff enter the item serial number into the system to generate a rental agreement. When items are returned, the serial number is used to record the return and the system calculates the invoice. Recently, the company has lost sales because they cannot find items in the warehouse. A physical inventory resulted in a write-off of 10% of the inventory due to lost or stolen equipment. PWC is recommending the company implement an RFID system to better track the equipment within the warehouse and the and the point of sale/return. REQUIRED: Describe the key design elements for the system including the hardware and database elements (example. RFID tags must be attached to each piece of equipment).

Explanation / Answer

There are 6 basic key design elements for any computer based information system:
1. Hardware
2. Software
3. Data
4. Procedures
5. People
6. Communications

1. Hardware: It is the most apparent part of a statistical system. Hardware refers to the computers themselves, along with any and all peripherals, which includes server, router, monitor, printer and even storage devices too. A information system may use a single computer or thousands.

2. Software: Without software, the hardware wouldn't be very beneficial. Software, being the second element of a system, is what tells the hardware how to perform task. It collects, orders and show data and takes out instructions. Everything you do using a computer is performed using the software.

3. Data: Data is the third element of a system. Just as hardware cannot perform task without software, software cannot perform task without data. This is part of an information system, and whether that is statistical data, combination of instruction, lists of names or even graphics and animations, it is all key to a iinformation system.

4. Procedures: It is usually said that "procedures are to people what software is for hardware." The fourth element of any information system is procedures which are protocols, illistrations and command for how things are required to be performed. In any information systems, procedures are usually covered in instruction or user handbook that illustrate how to utilise the hardware, software and data.

5. People: People are the most often unobservable and most vital unit of an information system. It is people who design and function over the software, load the data, assemble the hardware and put it executing, mark the procedures and it is finally people who have the decisive power to divert information system for its success or failure.

6.Communication: Communication is abandoned out of some lists of information system elements, but for a system that demand more than one piece of hardware to perform operation, communication or connectivity is a necessity. This is, in unit, because some units of it are wrapped under hardware. The units that allow one computer to communicate with another are hardware and are controlled by software. If communication between people is covered in this element, though, it is an vital element.

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