Epicurea Corporation (EC) manufactures and supplies specialty foods and confectionery in a number of countries Custom Paper

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Epicurea Corporation (EC) manufactures and supplies specialty foods and confectionery in a number of countries. The three (3) main categories of product include (i) cakes and oven baked items, (ii) sweets and chocolate, (iii) cooked meats and patés.
Each of the main product categories is manufactured in factories that are located in the various countries. Each factory produces and sells products for a SINGLE food category that are specialties of the country in which they are located; it also exports for sale to other countries. In some countries there is more than one factory that produces products for each product group (there may be more that 3 factories in any one country). The customers of EC are large supermarkets and wholesalers who operate in the countries where EC have a presence.

Structure
At the head of the company are the Chief Executive and the Board of the Company. Reporting to the Board are three (3) Global Product Directors with responsibility for each of the three (3) product categories. Reporting to the Global Product Directors are the Factory Managers of all the factories that manufacture and sell the relevant product category.

The operational reporting structure for the whole company is thus;

MGT LEVEL Reporting Structure

Senior *Mgt
Strategic CEO and Board

Middle Mgt
Tactical Global Product Director

Local Mgt
Operational Factory Manager

EC Products
Each factory produces products for a single Product Category (PC).
Each Product Category has a number of named Products (PR).
Each Product has a unique Product Code (PRCode) which includes a 2 character Country Code and a 1 character Factory Code at the end. An example is shown below (country ‘UK’, factory ‘1’).

PC: Bakery
PR: Victoria Spongecake
PRCode: B123456UK1

The company wishes to implement a Global MIS that is capable of storing details of volume (numbers) and value for each product manufactured and sold by each factory in each country. The systems will allow numbers of products, cost of manufacture and value of sales to be aggregated at appropriate management levels. Thus, managers at all levels in the reporting structure have a consistent measure of the performance of the organizations and products they are responsible for. Also, the MIS will allow ‘drill down’ to lower levels and greater detail.

Task 1 – 30 Marks
Describe the way you would go about investigating managers’ reporting requirements at all levels in the reporting hierarchy. Make clear and justify (a.) How you would determine requirements, and (b.) How you would document requirements.
Please note that you are NOT required to describe the requirements; you have far too little information for that; you simply need to describe and justify processes and methods to elicit requirements and document them.

Task 2 – 20 Marks
Based solely on the information in the case, develop a Data Model for the organization spanning global level to product level. Include;
i. The relationship between data entities at global, country and factory level.
ii. A description of the main attributes for EACH of the entities in the model.
iii. An example of the data content at EACH level illustrating how data is agreed.

Task 3 – 20 Marks
Prepare a Use Case Specification for a global product director reviewing the performance of a Product Category and drilling down to country, factory and product level.

Task 4 – 30 Marks
For EACH management level of EC (Strategic, Tactical, Operational) describe and discuss ONE example of a decision made by management at that level, information required to support the decision and how the MIS or a related system can provide this information.
Your answer should include, for EACH of the THREE levels;
i. Description of the decision and how it relates to company performance.
ii. Key information needed to support it.
iii. How the information from the MIS or other systems provides this information.

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