Technical issues: Issues/problems with the 'hardware side' of Innovative Plastics

People issues: Issues with employees of the company (ethical and lawful issues)

Innovative Plastics co-operative is a business with enterprises in England, France and Spain. The aim of this report id to develop a new computer system to integrate into the company, supporting all areas of their business activities. Innovative Plastics' existing system is not fulfilling all their business needs and is resulting in several problems falling into two main categories, 'Technical' issues and 'People' issues, listed below:

Poor communication, a major problem for Innovative Plastics, is both poor internally, i.e. within the enterprise in England (for example), and externally, i.e. between all three enterprises in the different countries. This leads to other problems, such as an unharmonious set of working practices.

Other than the hard-drives on the minicomputers, storage devices for Innovative Plastics will more than likely consist of magnetic tapes used for backups of files (such as databases of order, product and customer details). These would be in the form of a 'grandfather-father-son relationship' (where 3 backups are kept, a 'grandfather' i.e. the least recent backup, a 'father', the backup made in the 2nd period, and the 'son', the most recent backup), with the tapes stored off-site (in-case of theft or fire for example). Floppy disks and CD-ROMS could also be used to store smaller amounts of data.

technical and a people issue, as without up-to-date efficient technology, communicating abroad (such as via. E-mail) can be made virtually impossible, yet internal communication is clearly breaking down somewhere, possibly suggesting a problem with the chain of command (for example) or low-morale / de-motivated / untrained employees.

Sales Managers, Accountants and Secretaries and Clerks are having extreme difficulty in keeping data up-to-date and are finding it inaccessible. For example, Pet Sharp, the Sales Manager at Innovative Plastics in England finds that keeping track of and accessing product, customer and order details difficult using the existing system. This also has implications for the enterprises in France and Spain, suggesting that data inaccessibility does not just apply within each enterprise, but across them too.

Therefore, coaxial cable for the network would be the superior option. Although more expensive than twisted-pair cable, it is high speed and reliable when it comes to data transmission (not very susceptible to noise).

Working practices used by the three enterprises in England, France and Spain are working more as separate groups against each other, rather than together as one company. Therefore, these need to be harmonized so that the company can become more efficient in handling data inquiries, updates and additions, as well as becoming more efficient from the consumer's point of view.

An ideal system for Innovative Plastics is one that will, firstly, solve their current problems (for example communication, keeping data accurate and up-to-date, and making data more easily accessible to all). Additionally however, it needs to lay the basis for possible future expansion, meaning increased 'work loads', data and most importantly of all, the need for an increase in the exchange of information between the 3 enterprises.

Security also needs to be considered here. File-based locking should be implemented, to ensure data, when being updated/changed, is correct at the time of access. This will mean that as soon as a user has access to a file it is locked, blocking anyone else anywhere (from within the

Some common words found in the essay are:
Innovative Plastics, Local Network, Peripherals Input, France Spain, Innovative Plastics', UK Spain, Wide Network, Ms Mandi, Plastics England, innovative plastics, Connectivity Minicomputers, existing system, poor communication, france spain, business tasks, improve communication, 3 enterprises, automation software, customer details, computer system, improve communication 3, innovative plastics' existing, product customer details, plastics' existing system, communication 3 enterprises,
Approximate Word count = 1850
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)