FT-Corp case study

Pharmaceutical company “FT-Corp” has been working on the market for 10 years and has been
manufacturing various kinds of drugs. Its core business is the whole production cycle of different
drugs and sales to distributors (mostly pharmacies) in different locations in different countries. Due
to the substitution policy, as well as the importance of the industry, the company began to receive
serious investment support from the very beginning of its business (both from the state and from
other investors), as a result of which, at the moment, the company's business growth has a very high
rate.

The company consists of the following departments:

1. Production department: is in charge of production planning and control. This service involves
capabilities including production planning, production dispatching, manufacturing,
monitoring and assessment, and quality control.
2. Research and development department: is in charge of conducting research to develop new
products and services. This service involves capabilities including project planning, project
monitoring, communication and scientific publishing to disseminate discoveries and company
achievements, fund raising to drain money for new projects, definition of new products and
services, and engineering of new products and services.
3. Supply chain and logistics department: is in charge of warehousing and inventory control,
procurement management, supplier management, and the management of transportation
and distribution.
4. Finance and accounting department: is in charge of budget planning, accounting and editing
financial statements.
5. Sales department: is in charge of sales planning and management of distributors.
6. IT department: is in charge of supporting users in their requests, maintaining and managing
Information Technology (IT) infrastructure, applications and services.
7. Facility and Asset management department: is in charge of insuring the availability and
reliability of buildings and assets. The service includes planning the maintenance of physical
infrastructure in terms of buildings, offices, and machines, conducting the execution of
maintenance tasks, insuring occupational health and safety, and managing and preventing
major industrial risks.
8. Strategy and advance planning department: is in charge of insuring technological and
competitive watch, prospecting new opportunities, market trends and innovations, and
foreseeing pandemics.
9. Lean management and digital transformation department: is in charge of monitoring the
satisfaction of stakeholder needs and requirements, analyzing satisfaction of targeted
strategies and objectives, developing and deploying continuous improvement strategies, and
planning and executing digital transformation projects.
10. Human resources and personal development department: is in charge of recruiting, training,
and promoting careers, skills and profiles of collaborators within FT-Corp.
FT-Corps is particularly sensitive to stakeholder needs and requirements, and works sustainably to
satisfy those requirements through Key Performance Indicator (KPI) measurement, and business
analysis to deal with any deviations.
1. Production Department
Production plants are located mainly in 3 cities:

 City 1 - manufacturing of half-products, which are then transported to city 2

 City 2 - manufacturing of end products
 City 3 - whole production cycle

High level production process description: At the beginning of each year, the Production
Department and the Sales Department negotiate the annual production plan. Once established, the
annual production plan goes to production planning process in the Production Department.
Periodically, based on the annual production plan, the production planning process establishes a
production schedule. Based on the schedule, a dispatching process in the Production Department
launches work orders, so that the production line starts working to consume materials and release
products. A quality control process in the Production Department controls product releases and
consumption of materials. Quality Control establishes material, half- and end-product reports.

Detailed production process description: At the beginning of each year, the Production Department
and the Sales Department negotiate the annual production plan and assess whether it is possible to
cover it with products. If the plan is possible to cover, the Production Department starts production
planning process. If not, the negotiation process with Sales Department restarts.

The final version of the annual production plan goes through monthly changes: at the beginning of
each month Production Department, Sales Department and Logistics Department analyze existing
orders from distributors and assess whether the enterprise works on plan. If OK, production planning
moves to plan next week and to release the next week schedule. If NOT OK, they implement changes
through the whole supply chain.

Based on the annual production plan, once a week, the production planning process establishes a
production schedule. Based on the schedule, a dispatching process in the Production Department
launches work orders, so that the production line starts working to consume materials and release
products.

2. Research and Development (R&D) Department

The Research and Development (R&D) Department consists of 3 laboratories, which work on
different research directions. All laboratories are in City 1. Each laboratory has its own warehouse
part and office part, where the research process is held.

R&D Department continuously runs research projects, publishes research outcomes, and applies
for funding based on their work. For each research project, they design project plan and have
weekly sessions to analyze the progress.

3. Supply Chain and Logistics (SC&L) Department

The Supply Chain & Logistics Department of FT-Corp works with the following warehouses:

 Central warehouses (one for each city)

 Laboratory warehouses
 Production warehouses (one for each city)
The Supply Chain & Logistics Department has 2 key tasks: supporting a minimum stock for production
and providing research projects.

Support for a minimum stock for production is a complex process of supplying production units with
all the necessary materials and equipment for continuous pharmaceutical production. The
organization of pharmaceutical production requires a huge amount of various goods, the terms and
conditions of delivery of which vary from several days (for consumables, such as syringes, shoe
covers, bathrobes) to several months (for various components for equipment and special reagents).
Standard process of materials supply is as follows:

1. At the beginning of each quarter, the head of each production unit receives information
automatically about the sales plan for the next quarter using the add-ons of the corporate
information system (part of the corporate ERP system). Using the stock analysis function,
which is a service provided by the corporate ERP system, the head of each production unit
prepares and submits a list of materials that will be needed for production in the next
quarter.
2. The list of materials with the quantity is transferred to managers of supply chain department.
3. Using sales orders management, stock analysis, and minimal stock counting services provided
by the corporate ERP system, the responsible manager of the supply chain department
analyzes the current warehouse balance and current needs. S/He generates orders to
suppliers using the purchase orders generation service provided by the corporate ERP
system.
4. After the materials from the suppliers are received by the warehouse employee using the
purchase orders management service provided by the corporate ERP system, the purchasing
manager monitors the availability of materials for production on a daily basis in the system
using the stock analysis function provided by the corporate ERP system. S/He reserves them
in the warehouse as soon as the Production Order for the next week appears, which is an
information available through the production execution service provided by the corporate
ERP system.
Providing research projects relies on a standard process as follows:

1. Product definition: the research division creates new products according to defined research
projects.
2. Product engineering: the research division draws up a document in the system with the list of
materials/components/consumables that are necessary for the initiated research project.
The document also indicates the name of the project. The document is transmitted to the
Finance Department.
3. The Finance Department first determines the budget of the list of materials and then
negotiates this budget with the research division.
4. After the budget has been agreed, the list of materials goes to the supply chain and logistics
department. At the same time, the document also specifies the deadline for each material
for which its availability is necessary so that the project does not stop.
5. If the procurement manager finds that delivery is not possible within these time limits, s/he
contacts the head of the research laboratory.
6. The purchasing manager draws up the supply chain in the system (since it is prohibited to
buy directly to the warehouse of the research unit, it is necessary to create a route by which
the order will move between the company's warehouses to the laboratory).
 7. The purchasing manager places an order for a supplier at a central material warehouse,
where all orders from suppliers arrive.
8. After orders arrive at the central warehouse, the purchasing manager contacts storekeepers
involved in the supply chain. After that, the warehouse staff must perform movements
between the warehouses to the warehouse of the research unit in accordance with the
logistics chain laid out in 5.
9. As soon as the materials arrived at the laboratory's warehouse, the need is considered
closed.
4. Finance and Accounting (F&A) Department
Finance and Accounting (F&A) Department Offices are located in City 1. The FA department has two
main functions:

 Providing accounting process and formation of financial statements

 Negotiation of purchase orders for Supply chain and logistics department

5. Sales Department
The Sales Department offices of “FT-Corp” are located in the two cities where the end products are
manufactured.

At the end of each year (before the beginning of a new year), using the corporate information
system, the Sales Department creates an Annual Sales Plan. Based on that, the Sales Department
creates a Baseline Production Plan for the new year. This Baseline Production Plan goes to the
negotiation process with the Production Department. If the Production Department has any
propositions to change the Production Plan, the Sales Plan can be changed accordingly,
automatically. When the Production plan is negotiated and Sales plan is adjusted based on it, sales
managers start working with distributors on sales orders to cover the negotiated plan.

Distributors store their orders on B2B portal, owned by FT-Corp, and sales managers have to cover
these orders with existing products or analyze the production plan and adjust the delivery date for
the distributors.

6. IT Department
The IT Department of the company “FT-Corp” works in a per-order way with the help of a corporate
portal. Corporate portal is a web-application in which each user has his own page, like a social
network with information about himself, including position, work mail and other information. In
addition to information about themselves, each user can create tasks on the portal related to the use
of the corporate information systems (their functionality is described further). The IT department of
the company is engaged in supporting users on the use of the corporate information system through
the portal. The standard procedure for working with the portal by the contractor (IT department) and
the initiator (any employee of the company) is as follows:

1. The initiator has a question regarding the use of any system functionality / an error has been
detected in the system operation / problems with the system performance / there is a need
for refinement
2. The user creates a task on the portal with a description of the situation (claim 1) and, as an
executor of the task, sets the IT department manager or senior analyst
3. The user sets the task priority (low, medium, high). At the same time, in accordance with the
agreement on the level of internal services, the IT department team should respond to tasks
 with high priority within 2 hours (unsubscribe in the task comment). For tasks with an
average priority - within 4 hours. For tasks with low priority - within 6 hours. Hours are
counted only within the working day.
4. Tasks formed by the employees of the research center of FT-Corp or employees of the
production department automatically receive a high priority, since problems in the
information system directly affect key areas of activity in these departments.
5. After the task on the portal has gone to the IT manager / senior analyst, the task is assessed
within 8 hours and delegated to the IT officer in accordance with its priority, laboriousness,
functional block, within which it was created (question about warehouse, a question on
finance, a question on production, etc.), as well as the availability of staff.
6. The employee responsible for the task works with the initiator until the issue is fully resolved.
After the initiator considers the question closed, the employee sets the actual time spent on
the task and closes the task.
7. The head of the IT department at the end of the month checks the total “closed” number of
hours by each employee of IT department
7. Information technology in use within the company:
FT-Corp has the following systems in use:
 Corporate information system of ERP type.
 Documents management system (DMS) integrated with ERP to negotiate documents and
store their digital copies.
 B2B web-based application to work with distributors. This system is also integrated with ERP,
so that the orders of distributors are automatically generated in ERP, when they are
registered on the web application.
 Web-portal to work with IT-related questions (internal use).
8. Delivrables
At the end of each course session, each team is expected to deliver the following outcomes.

8.1. Séance 1: Cartographie des processus. Utiliser ArchiMate pour

 Provide a cartography of processes of FT-Corp
 Using Archi software, provide a capability map view of FT-Corp
 Using Archi software, provide a Value Stream view of FT-Corp
8.2. Séance 2: Business Process Modeling
Using any BPMV software:
 Draw a high-level production process diagram to represent the sequence of production
planning, dispatching and quality control.
 Provide a detailed description of the production process diagram
 Draw an R&D process diagram to represent research activities of the R&D Department.
 Provide a description of the SC&L Support for a minimum stock process
 Provide a description of the Providing research projects process.
 Suggest a Business Process Functional Decomposition to represent the organization of the
F&A Department
 Suggest a Business Process Model to describe the processes of the Sales Department.
  Provide a description of the IT Department process.

8.3. Séance 3: Data Modeling

 Complete the high-level production process diagram with the required data structures
obtained after each process step, to obtain a detailed production process description that
includes negotiation, assessment, monthly revision, and weekly release of schedules.
 Choose a department and provide an Entity Relation Model (ERM) or an IDEF1X model to
describe data entities and relations between them in such a way to provide a database to
support the management of the activities and workflows of the department
 BONUS WORK (4 extra points in the evaluation !!): develop the database using a software
like MS ACCESS and show some examples of its interfaces, queries and use cases.
8.4. Séance 4: Enterprise Modeling
Using Archi software,
 draw a location diagram to represent the locations of all facilities of FT-Corp (cities,
warehouses, labs, offices, etc.).
 Update the description of the SC&L support for min stock process to include components
and services related to the corporate application layer
 Update the description of the Providing research projects process to include application
components, services, data objects and business objects handled in the above description.
 Update the Business Process Model of the Sales Department to show application
components, services, data objects and business objects shared between processes
 Update the description of the processes of the IT department to include application
components, services, data objects and business objects handled in the IT Department.
 Provide a diagram to describe the components and key functionalities (services) of the ERP
system.