Problem 1: Difficulty in Tracking Inventory
MACHINES
They do not use their valve machine to aid in counting the withdrawn raw materials
- valve machine requires constant maintenance
- cost-cutting
They lack an Information System that consistently provides and manages their information needs (old)
- Rainchem is a small company so they cannot afford the subscription costs/inapplicable to them
- NetSuite, an "ideal" system for the company, costs millions per year for maintenance/service cost
- Focus on administration (Finance/Human Resources/Purchasing) rather than Inventory system.
-- inventory monitoring is still manageable (manual checking)
-- it is done by one personnel, doing multiple tasks
---Lack of manpower
---- Cost-cutting
MATERIALS
There are too many raw materials
Their base raw materials are oils/liquids (difficult to measure/count)
METHODS
Inventory records are on separate files/records
Recording and updating of records is difficult
- Production staff withdraws raw materials from the warehouse without informing the warehouse officer
-- warehouse officer is not present
--- flexible workload
---- lack of manpower
----- cost-cutting
- They use one central logbook (cannot be updated by multiple users at the same time)
They cannot consistently update their excel files (inventory records/logbook)
Their excel file (inventory records) isn't systematic/organized yet
- No-one can update it consistently
-- lack of manpower
--- cost-cutting
-- lack of defined system for inventory
MANPOWER
Disorganized task assignments/flexible workload
- lack of manpower (to update and monitor the inventory)
-- cost-cutting
Problem 2: Reliability of their New Information System
They bought an Information System, however, it is difficult to use because it is a generic information system
- There are many unnecessary fields to be filled up / not customized to RAINCHEM's business processes/req'ts
- The information system is, on estimate, 10-years old
Information System is susceptible to malfunction during brownouts
- instance where all database records were deleted at a brownout
- they were doing data conversion and it happened midway
- user accounts were inaccessible
- functionality of the system is dependent on local database
