CRICOS Provider No. 00103D Page 1 of 6 ITECH1100 Understanding the Digital Revolution Assignment - Formalwear Life Overview For this individual assignment, you will use skills acquired through...

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CRICOS Provider No. 00103D Page 1 of 6 ITECH1100 Understanding the Digital Revolution Assignment - Formalwear Life Overview For this individual assignment, you will use skills acquired through practical laboratory exercises to automate a business process, and to visualize the impact of the automation. You should use Microsoft Excel (or equivalent open-source software) for this assessment task. Important: This assignment specification is generated just for you. Do not distribute this specification. If your personal specification is made publicly available online, academic misconduct charges may be applied. Timelines and Expectations Percentage value of task: 20% Due: Refer to Course Description Learning Outcomes Assessed The following course learning outcomes are assessed by completing this assessment: A1. Prepare a basic solution to a business problem; A2. Select appropriate IT solutions for business functions; A3. Apply business information software for data visualization and analysis purposes. S1. Write basic programming logic; S3. Interpret and construct representations of business data flow and processes; K8. Outline the basic principles of programming. Assessment Details For this assignment, you will complete the following set of tasks using Excel, and create a report to describe your work. Ensure you submit Excel files created for ALL tasks, along with your report. Scenario details Formalwear Life is a small clothing manufacturer, specializing in creating custom, one-of-a-kind formalwear. They exclusively sell their product through their online store. Formalwear Life is run by a team of three staff members: Allie, Bertha, and Cleo. Allie and Bertha work together to manufacture formalwear. Cleo manages orders, sales and delivery. Team hours Most of the time, team members work the following shifts: Allie works 6.5 hours on Mondays, Tuesdays; Bertha works 6.5 hours on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays; and Cleo works 2.5 hours every weekday. CRICOS Provider No. 00103D Page 2 of 6 Additionally, Allie and Cleo share responsibility for managing the Formalwear Life social media presence, with Allie working one extra hour in the evenings on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, and Cleo doing the same on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Costs Allie and Bertha, as skilled manufacturing staff, cost $24 per hour to employ. Cleo, a part-time employee, costs $32 per hour to employ. All staff are also entitled to four weeks of paid annual leave, during which a casual replacement is required at a cost of $36 per hour. Fixed costs such as rent and insurance are $18000 per year, and utilities costs are $460 per month. Task 1 - Costs of operating the business Using Excel, create a spreadsheet called operating_costs.xlsx that calculates the projected annual outgoing costs of running Formalwear Life. Your spreadsheet should be configured such that the working hours, hourly rates, and fixed and utility costs can be varied easily. Document your findings in your report (approximately 100 words). Manufacturing formalwear Formalwear Life receive requests through their online store, and Cleo responds with a quote, after consulting with a member of the manufacturing team. If the customer confirms their order, Allie and Bertha manufacture the ordered products, and Cleo organizes delivery. Currently, the process for generating a quote is entirely subjective, based on the requested material and formalwear size. Staff members quote an amount based on their personal experience. For several months, staff have been keeping track of the quote date, material, size, quote amount, and manufacturing cost for each order in a spreadsheet. As each product is hand-made, the manufacturing cost may vary between similar orders. If a quote was not accepted by the customer, then manufacturing cost is not included. This spreadsheet is available for download on Moodle. Task 2 - Order information Using Excel, process the history of orders spreadsheet and use appropriate charts to visualize: How some aspect of quoting or manufacturing has changed over time; and How the quote amount differed for each staff member. You will need to find a way to use Excel to associate each quote with a staff member. Describe your approach and your findings in your report (approximately 250-400 words). CRICOS Provider No. 00103D Page 3 of 6 Task 3 - Price consistency Using Excel, analyse the historical data you have available, and create a spreadsheet that allows a member of the Formalwear Life team to enter the formalwear material and size, and gives a quote amount. Ensure that you include enough text and formatting to make your spreadsheet usable by a member of the Formalwear Life team (or by a University lecturer). You may base your quote amount either on historical averages, or to ensure that Formalwear Life makes a profit. Validate your quoting approach by applying your formula to historical data. Justify your approach in your report (approximately 150 words). Process improvement The team want to improve their quoting process to reduce time spent waiting for customers to approve quotes. They would like to start manufacturing immediately for orders that they might be able to sell in future, even if the customer does not go ahead with the order. That is, they would like to change to the processes indicated in the following swimlane diagrams: CRICOS Provider No. 00103D Page 4 of 6 U np op ul ar it em p ro ce ss Cu st om er Done Review quote Quote unacceptable Confirm OrderQuote acceptable St or e Item is not popular Manufacture ItemSend quote Deliver item Po pu la r it em p ro ce ss Cu st om er Done Review quote Quote unacceptable Confirm OrderQuote acceptable St or e Item is popular Manufacture Item Send quote Deliver item Check Inventory Not in stock in stock Task 4 - Process improvement Extend your spreadsheet page from task 3 to automate the above processes, allowing a member of the team to enter the formalwear material and size, and in addition to the quote amount indicate whether to start manufacturing immediately. It is up to you do determine how to determine which items are popular. Justify your approach in your report (approximately 150 words). Bonus challenge task (optional!) Disclaimer: This task is 100% optional, and you can receive full marks without attempting or completing it. It is intended to be a challenge if you are interested in such things, and the marks available do not reflect the significant research and effort required to implement it correctly. Tutors will not provide significant assistance for this challenge task. Optional task 5 Reimplement Tasks 1, 3 and 4 using either Python or HTML+JavaScript. CRICOS Provider No. 00103D Page 5 of 6 Write a brief overview of how to run your solution, and attach a zip file containing your code submission. There are no partial marks awarded for this bonus task - you must complete all features to attain the bonus marks. It is possible to attain full marks for this assignment without completing this challenge task. Further details Assignment support This assignment is supported by the first 6 lectures and labs. Work on the assignment should be spread over several weeks after the relevant lab has been mastered. Submission All files should be submitted to Moodle by the due date and time. Check with your tutor as to whether a hard copy is required in addition to the electronic submission. Marking Criteria/Rubric Refer to the attached marking guide. Feedback Feedback will be supplied through Moodle. Authoritative marks will be published through fdlMarks Plagiarism Plagiarism is the presentation of the expressed thought or work of another person as though it is one's own without properly acknowledging that person. You must not allow other students to copy your work and must take care to safeguard against this happening. More information about the plagiarism policy and procedure for the university can be found at http://federation.edu.au/students/learning-and-study/online-help-with/plagiarism. http://federation.edu.au/students/learning-and-study/online-help-with/plagiarism CRICOS Provider No. 00103D Page 6 of 6 Marking Guide: Processes and Automation Feature Criteria Maximum Obtained Operating costs Appropriate projection calculation 2 Configurable hours, rates, fixed annual and monthly costs 2 Description of findings 1 Uses hand-calculated values (-1) Visualization Visualization of changes over time 2 Visualization of staff member differences 2 Description of approach and findings 1 Price consistency Spreadsheet interface for pricing 1 Validation of approach based on historical data 2 Justification of automation 2 Unclear instructions (-1) Process improvement Appropriate identification of popular item combinations 2 Use of formula to indicate whether to start manufacturing 2 Justification of strategy 1 Miscellaneous penalties Poor grammar or written English (-2) Indecipherable file naming scheme (-1) Bonus optional challenge task Faithful reimplementation of tasks 1, 3 and 4 using Python or HTML+JavaScript (+2) Total: 20
Answered Same DayJan 05, 2021ITECH1100

Answer To: CRICOS Provider No. 00103D Page 1 of 6 ITECH1100 Understanding the Digital Revolution Assignment -...

Deepti answered on Jan 13 2021
152 Votes
Solution/49332-report.docx
Formalwear Life
Task 1 – Operating Cost of the business at Formalwear Life
The company named ‘Formalwear Life’ manufactures clothing in its own style. It is a small-scale manufacturing company which deals in customized formalwear. Formalwear Life have an online store as the only platform which is specifically created to run the sales orders and manage the deliveries. All the dealings are managed through this platform. The team at Formalwear Life comprises three employees Allie, Bertha and C
leo. The manufacturing is managed by the former two and Cleo handles the sales, orders and delivery.
The operating costs of the company include the costs of regular staff, temporary staff (in case the regular staff is on leave) and the fixed costs. The monthly staff cost is calculated on the basis of the number of working hours, hourly rate per employee. Monthly cost evaluates the annual cost incurred on employees. The fixed costs for running the company include rent, insurance and utility costs. These values are variable and are added to the total cost of operations. The worksheet in excel facilitates insertion of further staff or overhead expenses if and when incurred. Casual replacement employees or more permanent employees may also be further added to the same sheet.
Screenshot: Operating Costs
Task 2 – Order Information Visualization
The quote price is the cost proposed to the customer for the specific customized order. This is the price that shall be paid by the customer on confirmation of the order. This price is decided by the employees on sales side and manufacturing side after discussion on the basis of material of the cloth and size of the garment requested by the customer. The quote is offered to the customer during working hours. The order is confirmed once the quoted price gets a nod from the customer. The quote may differ among similar orders.
The worksheet for Task 2 records the quote prices on the basis of experience of the employees with reference to the manufacturing price and average sales. The line chart depicts the quote price over time. It shows consistent increment in quotes over time. During the period of observation, the quote ranged from $84.56 to a highest value of $251.06, the average being $167.27. The line chart shows very less variation. These figures deduce that the company witnesses high profits over those weeks.
The price of a garment majorly depends on the type of material requested by the customer. Certain material cost more than the others and thus, formal garment manufactured from those material costs more. For example, the cost of orders required in cotton material is less than the cost of order required in leather material.
The chart further shows the prices quoted by Betha and Allie. It can be seen that the price offered by Bertha were lower than the price offered by Allie where cost of manufacture is observed to be almost same. Therefore, it is established that during those weeks of business and with availability of same resources, Allie contributed to better profits of the company as compared to Bertha.
Screenshots of Charts
Task 3 – Price Consistency
The sheet for task 3 depicts the rates at which a garment may be manufactured in a particular size for a particular material. The data from sheet 1 is utilized to generate these quote prices based on the feedbacks obtained from customers. An average of the prices is calculated over the weeks of observation. The green cells in this sheet can have variable value according to the customer’s order and the quote price shall be evaluated on the basis of that requirement.
This sheet fixes the quote price for garment on the basis of material and size and thus provides consistent price for orders, contrary to the observation in the previous worksheets where the quotation prices were inconsistent for the same product. Such inconsistency would cause dissatisfaction in the customers. This sheet helps the employees to offer unambiguous quote price to customers thus maintaining better professional relations with their customers.
Screenshot: Price Consistency
Task 4 – Process Improvement
Since the manufacturing of the formalwear is long-drawn-out process, it may create a bottleneck between in-flow of orders and out-flow of deliveries. It may further make it difficult to meet the deadlines of the delivery dates of the orders. This situation can be managed by pre-manufacturing certain garments in the material and size which are in high demand. The employees will become more efficient in taking orders without any manufacturing delays and in providing timely delivery thus improving the quality of services. The data on worksheet of task 4 helps to understand which items should be pre-manufactured to improve overall quality of orders and services. It shows that the item whose count is higher than the average count of all the items manufactured should be considered for pre-manufacturing. The sheet operates on the data from sheet 1 according to the material and size of the garment mentioned in the green cell.
Screenshot: Process Improvement
Solution/SolutionFormalWear.xlsx
Sheet1
        Quote date        Material        Size        Quote amount        Manufacturing cost ($)        Staff...
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