Eldanda St.

Batong Malake, Los Baos, Laguna

IMT CUSTOM MACHINE COMPANY, INC.:

SELECTION OF A HARDWARE PLATFORM

A Case Study Presented to the Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering of

TRACE College

In partial fulfillment of the requirements

for the
Course Software Engineering

CATAHAN, Jonalyn
CRISTOBAL, Joseph
ENCELAN, Wimbelle Kaycee
NATATA, Richard Angelo
NAVALEZA, John
PADAON, Orville
PARAYNO, Jake
PASCUAL, Sheryl
TAMAYO, Rodrigo
HIBEK, Rhonald
 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Client Name:
Fort Wayne Plant (IMT Custom Machine Company, Inc.) under the supervision of
Darrin Young
Industry:
Automotive Industry
Employees and Customer:
Over 1,200 employees (as of 1998)
More or less 500,000 individual customers (as estimated)

The case study was conducted to propose an intelligent strategy for the
Information Systems (IS) Department of the Fort Wayne, Indiana Plant, which is the
largest custom-machine factory in North America and subsidiary company of
International Machine and Tool (IMT-USA).

The IS division had made several proposals of incremental solutions to aid the
urgent needs of their system, however, they could not acquire the specific solution
which will show them what modifications should be done and how would it be done.

The aim of the study is to propose a new and latest hardware platform that
will suit best on the applications needed by the Fort Waynes Information System.
This study include the examination of the different subunits under the IS
department, the recommendations and solutions formed and the quantitative
analysis of the examiners.
 CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION

Background of the Study

Evolution of Fort Wayne Plant

The Fort Wayne plant facility, originally from WILMEC, was constructed in mid-
1960s specifically to manufacture the type of custom machine called a large
vertical. In 1985, WILMEC moved its medium horizontal production capability to
Fort Wayne, Indiana. After 5 years, GE Inc. abandoned its custom machine business
and sold it to WILMECs. GEs production equipment was then moved to WILMECs
Fort Wayne plant, however, the GE technology is very different from the 2 custom
machines which WILMEC produces, it is called large horizontal. With the 3
machine types, Fort Wayne continued its production until in mid-1995 WILMECs
sold all of its custom machine engineering, manufacturing and sales operation to
IMT.

The Fort Wayne Plant transitioned from a busy single-product, focused factory
to a factory that was nearly closed (due to a lack of orders) and employed only a
few hundred workers. It then evolved into a facility that supported three technically
different products (large-horizontal, large-vertical, and medium-horizontal custom
machines) that had originated from three different factories with three different
engineering design systems.

In mid-1993, IMT closed the Cleveland site and transferred the engineering
and marketing staffs to either Fort Wayne or Chicago. As the Fort Wayne plant
evolved to support multiple product lines, numerous informal procedures emerged
to handle day-to-day situations. These undocumented processes worked despite the
incompatibilities among the three different technologies, which used three separate
drafting systems as well as unique manufacturing processes. Very little capital had
been invested to upgrade the operations during the last several years of WILMECs
ownership. Not until IMT had completed the purchase of the technology and the
factories in 1995 had a major capital upgrade program even been considered. Low
margin and capital budget limits had prevented significant upgrades.
 In early 1996, the plant was reorganized into three product lines. Each of the
three machine types was considered a separate product line and profit center.

The Hardware Platform of the IS Division

The IS division uses IBM mainframes:
IBM model S/390- The current mainframe
IBM AS/400- inherited from General Engineering during the acquisition.
The MIS personnel attempted to facilitate these mainframes, transferring
data between the two systems. However this was not easily achieved due to
information security issues.
Since 1996, the heaviest use of the mainframe was from the computer-aided
drafting (CAD) and engineering users. Its usage was approximately sixty-five
percent (65%) of the current mainframe and about fifty-four percent (54%) of the
S/390s CPU capacity.
Statement of the Problem

In this study the major problem is how to find a good decision and direction
for IMT Information Systems without the need of exerting too much effort and
money in the hardware platform or systems upgrade.
Cited below are some of the specific problems of the case study:
How will the company balance the need for technological changes to
continue accomplishment of routine task?
What are the problems encountered by the current IS environment?

Objectives
General Objective
The objective of the study is to propose a new and latest hardware platform
that will suit best on the applications needed by the Fort Waynes Information
System.

Specific Objectives
To improve the software used by the company for several years.
To evaluate the managerial issues of computing, including the centralization
and decentralization of computing.
To make an assessment of which of the three (3) given options by Browning
are more appropriate for the company to use.

CHAPTER 2
METHODOLOGY
Research Design
 The study used qualitative research at the beginning of the design process to
uncover innovations. This results with the advantage of being useful when
budgetary decisions have to be taken into account. This research design is also
useful even if you know little about the topic. It uses plain observation as a main
source of data. Naturalistic observation was used since the objective is to examine
each department for root causes of problems.

Sources of Data

The study acquires data simply through observations, existing studies and
documentations.

Research Instruments

Since the research design has limited means to gather data, the only
research instrument used in developing the entire system was the case itself and
some readings from the internet.

Data Gathering Procedure

Data were gathered through data mining, which is much easier than the
survey and interview techniques. The proponents simply took time in going to the
school library and surfing the net collecting various information from books,
websites and other documentations which is required to begin and to finish the
study.

CHAPTER 3
DATA ANALYSIS AND RESULTS
In this chapter, the data acquired through the examination of the different
subunits under the Information Systems (IS) division are further discussed.
 Figure 2.1 Data Flow among Functional Areas of IMT CMCIs Information System

Figure 2.1 presents the flow of significant data among the different subunits
under the IS division. From the different division the following findings below were
notably considered:

Marketing This unit uses a mainframe negotiation program written in

COBOL where results from the technical description of specification for a new
machine of a customer were interpreted and has a Query System used to
analyze data from ongoing negotiations as well as contracts won or lost.
 Admin and Finance The purchase order, accounts payable and accounts
receivable were the three (3) systems, which were custom developed by GEs
MIS staff on the AS/400.

Engineering This subunit was responsible for handling three (3) separate
design systems for the three (3) types of custom machine that Fort Wayne
produces.

Drafting At Fort Wayne, CAD applications ran on the IBM mainframe and
consisted of eighty-five (85) seats of CAD. (A seat was one hardware CAD
setup with a high-resolution screen, keyboard, function button box, and a
pointing device that functioned like a mouse.) The development of the
automatic drawing progress was very convenient with both CAD and the
custom machine design program on the same platform.

Manufacturing When all the drawings for a custom machine were

completed, the BOM (Bill of Material was manually transferred from the
drawings into the BOM database system, called DBOMP. With the three (3)
types of custom machine, DBOMP could not handle the large drawing
numbers and no one at Fort Wayne knew the DBOMP code well enough to
make changes. In this case, the MIS group was backlogged in supporting the
rapid changes that were occurring at the Fort Wayne Plant.

Test Test information was written on a form that was interpreted and copied
from the customers specification in marketing and engineering. Test
department had several PCs connected to LAN.

Human Resources There were no plans to connect the LAN with Fort
Waynes mainframe due to security corners over the confidentiality personnel
records residing on the HRs computers. Besides, the HR organization was not
even considered a local support issue because its applications were
supported from the corporate MIS group in New York.
 After acquiring the findings above, the group cited specific problems
encountered on some of the subunits of the IS, and they were as follows:
1. The Admin and Finance is the only subunit which is not under the current
mainframe of the Fort Wayne. The systems for this department are
developed in the IBM AS/400 mainframe.
2. At the Manufacturing Department, when a computerized system failed to
provide needed functionality, paper systems were created to support the
information needs. This is due to the large number of drawings in CAD
that DBOMP could not handle.
3. PCs in the Test Department are connected to the mainframe but only used
occasionally. Furthermore, electronic test result data were not shared on
the mainframe but remained in the test department LAN only.

Below are three (3) major options presented by Charles Browning:

1. Centralized Computing. Commit to staying with the current mainframe for
all important applications such as the CAD and the DBOMP though it
would be a long-term venture. Discourage the use of UNIX work stations
and eliminate the AS/400 and place the Admin and Finance along with the
other department systems in one mainframe.

2. Workstation Computing. A strategy that will discard the mainframe, make

significant investments in the UNIX workstations, PCs, servers and LANs
and will architect a full client/server environment. Install high-speed
network to link all computers via LAN and install gateways to bridge
between networks. One database would serve the entire UNIX network
system. And CAD and other major applications will be shifted off the
mainframe to dedicated UNIX workstations. But the process is expected to
take approximately 10 years before mainframes could be downgraded and
migrated to workstations.
3. Watch Carefully. Do not act yet. Wait and see what develops and decide
only as circumstances force key issues. This means that each decision
would be made in response to immediate demands and on lowest risk and
least expensive alternative at decision time.
Cost-Benefit Analysis

A. Quantitative Analysis
A.1 Cost of Major Upgrade on Hardware Platform
Software Component Costs
Hardware Component Costs

A.2 Cost of Maintenance (By Contact)

A.3 Cost Savings

A.4 Payback Period

Software cost components

Travel and training costs
Effort costs
Salaries of engineers
Social and insurance costs
Costs of building, heating, lighting
Costs of networking and communications
Costs of shared facilities
Hardware cost

CHAPTER 4
RECOMMENDED SOLUTIONS

Proposed Solutions

From the listed options developed by Browning, the group decided to choose
the third option, which is the Watch Carefully. Do not act yet. During the
examination of the study, the group discovered that even if the Fort Wayne was
experiencing such problems in their Information System Division, the employees
still managed to resolve the problems and make the company earn profit. Since the
problems are evolving only on specific units under IS division, we could make
solutions directly to the root problems without involving the mainframe and other
unaffected areas of the system. This would further result on incurring lower risk,
faster payback as expected and additional opportunities would be available to
evaluate new technology.

Plans

The statements below are the developed plans of the proponents:

1. A high-speed network would be installed for faster upload and download
of data from the mainframe to different PCs connected through LAN.
2. A new DBOMP database for the Manufacturing Department would be
created and replace the old one which cannot handle large number of
drawings and materials for each type of custom machine.
3. All unprocessed paper systems would be updated in the computerized
systems to maintain accurate support of data and information.

Timeline

CHAPTER 5
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
Summary

The case study was conducted to propose an intelligent strategy for the
Information Systems Department of the Fort Wayne Plant, which is a subsidiary
company of International Machine and Tool (IMT-USA).
 The IS division made several proposals of incremental solutions for the needs
of their system, however, they could not acquire the specific solution which will
show them what modifications should be done and how would it be done.

The proponents examined different units under the IS departments and

searched for the root problems existing in the division. The third option, Watch
carefully. Do not act yet. was chosen by the group as the best among the options
presented and strategically developed the plans to solve the problems.

Conclusions

After the study has been conducted, the proponents concluded that to be
able to plan a working solution for an existing system. A careful observation and
examination of functionality of units under the system must be done in order to
trace the root causes of problems and to provide direct solutions to it.