Business IT operations - Essay Example

Business and IT Operations Table of Contents Introduction 3 FYC Operations 3 Benefits of using Intranet 5 Intranet in FYC 6 Conclusion 7 References 8IntroductionRonald J. Dirksen and Richard Woodart established FYC (For Your Comfort) in the year of 1947. FYC is furniture manufacturing company and catered to the needs of residential as well as commercial furniture in small towns. Donna Dirksen is the present CEO of FYC. She wanted to have remarkable change in the FYC way of business by using new technologies.

FYC OperationsFYC is presently transformed into a technology savvy company with implementation on e – commerce and information technology managed operations for business process. With implementation of technology, the company had certain advantages namely the turnover period has reduced, the delivery and lead time is reduced, maintenance of database is easy, feedback related to demand and supply has become more reliable and fast, etc and all these factors have helped the company to know the latest trends in market and customers’ demand.

It helps the company to compete with quick changing environment where competition is increasing every day. It also helps in processes related to decision making of how to make customers more delighted and how can they customize their products so that profit increases with reduction in cost. Implementation of technology has also helped FYC in reduction of overall cost incurred in a selling process. Knowing mere about changes is not sufficient, what is important for an organization is distribution of this information efficiently so that the workforce who works in operation level knows the changes in time and can implement it.

CAD and 3D technologies are being used for manufacturing modern customized products. Nowadays “green design” is in trend. Product demands are span over a huge range and increased customization (Enterprise and Industry, 2008). For this workforce need training and sharing of ideas.Furniture manufactured is basically of two types: ready - to – assemble (RAT) and factory finished. Manufacturing process consists of purchase of raw materials, deigning process with 3D technology, engineering of the manufacturing process.

Manufacturing can also be computer - aided manufacturing and robotics (Hoovers, n.d.). In the manufacturing department, the various divisions include division for cutting parts, division for technical overview, and division for assembling parts, division for polishing and also division for reengineering. All these divisions have to work hand in hand. They should know the progress taking place in other departments so that they can maintain the pace according to the requirements. Both horizontal and vertical flow of information is important in order to have efficient and effective workforce.

Now fast, accurate and transparent information flow within the organization networking technology is essential. Intranet is a technology that will be more effective in this case. Through use of intranet information flow will become fast and transparent. Everyone can share their opinion and management can also share their needs and customer demand to their workforce. This will help everyone know the goal at every second of work and will make work more easy and efficient with less default time, resource and product.

Intranet like internet is linked to the company web server that follows communication standard of TCP/IP and uses a medium local area network. It operates through web pages for displaying information. Extranet is on the other hand is an extension of intranet. In intranet one can only connect to the employees in a specific area but through the extranet, clients and business partners both can come under network. Benefits of using IntranetIntranet helps in cost cutting in infrastructure as it is cheap to implement, efficient in process and also increase the ROI (Return on Investment).

Linking intranet to central database facilitates, employee can search the requisite information related to the corporate network. By maintaining blogs for alerting employees regarding all new developments, posting newsletters, organizing volunteer groups for participating in many training programs in intranet, corporate culture can developed within an organization. (Roos, n.d.) . Intranet in FYCTwo different technologies have been used under intranet. One is Push technology in which data are automatically distributed in every user’s computer.

It works according to intervals previously prescribed at implementation stage as events occurred. The other one technology is that of Pull technology where users themselves search and ask for data required to them. Push technology should be implemented at managerial level. Push technology helps in automatic report generation which includes production schedules, maintenance schedules, work schedules, sales forecasts, batch data, historical data, SPC data, ERP data, Database data, and MRP data.

Only thing manager have to take care, is to select a category of report from report list (e.g. sales, batch, etc.). This reduced time and effort of manager used in searching of information. This report is automatically updated according to need and demand. All this effort, results in reduction in lead time and turnover ratio. Intranet also facilitates ground level users by facilitating them to search, view and print any information related to work like drawings used in manufacturing process and maintenance process form any workstations within the intranet network of an enterprise (Wolak, 1998).

Pull technology of intranet facilitate ground level employees to give feedbacks and suggestion and issues they face during manufacturing process with solutions.ConclusionFYC, a furniture manufacturing company, is facing a problem of communication within an organization. Intranet is a technology used to efficient working and effective results. It helps everyone in organization to know the demand of work. ReferencesEnterprise and Industry, (2008). Furniture. Europe. Retrieved online on June 16, 2010 from http://www.

ebusiness-watch.org/studies/sectors/furniture/furniture.htm Hoovers, (No Date). Industry Overview. Furniture Manufacturing. Retrieved online on June 16, 2010 from http://www.hoovers.com/furniture-manufacturing/--ID__49--/free-ind-fr-profile-basic.xhtml Roos. D, (No Date). How Intranet works. How stuff works. Retrieved online on June 18, 2010 form http://communication.howstuffworks.com/how-intranets-work.htm/printableWolak. R, (1998). Success Stories. American Axle & Manufacturing: Intranet Business Case.

Retrieved online on June 18, 2010 from http://www.scisstudyguides.addr.com/papers/rwDISS740A3T2.htm