ELIJAH KOKI

STUDENT REG. NO: R0723933A

MIDLANDS STATE UNIVERSITY

BACHELOR OF COMPUTER SIENCE

SEMESTER 4 YEAR 2012

HCS 401

Chloride Zimbabwe Battery Manufacturing Intelligent Resource Planning

System(IRPS)
 CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

1.1 INTRODUCTION

The following chapter seeks to introduce a viable Intelligent Resource

Planning(IRP) solution to the Information System impedance that Chloride
Zimbabwe is facing. It is not an end to the company’s problems but seeks to be
a building block, as well as to mitigate threats in arriving to a full solution.

In this chapter, the author explains the relevant background of the company in
focus as well as its operations, its vision and mission statement. The chapter
will provide a statement of the problem to be addressed in detail and an outline
of the objectives to the design is then presented. Furthermore, the chapter will
also highlight the significance of the solution to the problem. Delimitations and
limitations as well as assumptions to the study are highlighted in the hypothesis
and a justification to the solution system will be provided in light to pave way
for the following chapters. Finally a conclusion to the chapter is then presented.

1.2 BACKGROUND

1.2.1 BACKGROUND OF ORGANISATION

Chloride is the leading manufacturer of lead acid, automotive batteries sold

under the premium Exide brand. We currently enjoy 60% of the local market
whilst exporting our batteries into the region, which includes Zambia, South
Africa and Malawi.

Chloride are the main suppliers of motive power and standby batteries in
Zimbabwe supplying the mining sector, telecommunications sector, ZESA and
backup systems for hospitals, hotels, etc.
Solar Express

Solar Express, a division of Chloride Zimbabwe, began its operations in 2007.

Our core business is to ensure that productivity for the different sectors of the
economy is not affected by the non availability of electricity. The company
offers customized energy power back up solutions up to 600kva. Solar Express
is committed to addressing global warming issues, reducing emissions and
saving energy. Our back up solutions provide for uninterrupted power supplies
to the following sectors:
 Agriculture (Poultry)
 Tourism
 Mining
 Telecommunications
 Banking and finance
 City councils (traffic lights and street lighting
 Manufacturing, and
 Wholesale and retail.
 1.2.1 Chloride Zimbabwe Organogram

General Manager

Production Transport Inventory Finance Human Resource

manager manager manager manager manager

Purchases Fleet manager Sales

Public
department department
relations

Distribution Truck
management maintenance

I.T
Administrator

Internal
audit
I.T Support
Team

Fig 1.1 Organisational Structure

1.2.2 OUR VISION

To be masters in creating energy for life.

1.2.3 OUR MISSION

To deliver power solution communications through committed teams

that foster business growth.

OUR VALUES

 Teamwork
 Respect
 Mastery
 Communication
 Commitment.

1.3 DESCRIPTION OF THE CURRENT SYSTEM

The current system is the a manual process were when ever manufacturing of
battery is to be embarked the Production Manager sends an email to the
different battery manufacture supervisor. The email will contain the following:

 Amount of battery to be produced according to type e.g. 255, 222 etc.

 The name of the supervisor and designation.
 Time for the meeting to discuss the steps and procedures of the
manufacturing process.
 Time frame to finish the manufacturing process.

The supervisor will then respond to the email via an email with the following
response:

 Quantity of raw materials to be accompish the manufacturing process.

 Labour requirements.
 Issues like water and electricity capacity
 Whether if the target is achievable in the spaculated time.

The production team (Production Manager and supervisors) will then sit down
in a meeting to plan the resources that will be needed to produce the amount of
battery production.
The current system has the following problems:

 There is no streamlining processes and workflows since they is no single

integrated system.
 Redundant data entry and processes and in other hand it doesn’t shares
information across the department well in time thus the current system is
time consuming.
 There is no established uniform processes that are based on recognized
best business practices
 Workflow and efficiency is bad since there is no single integration.
 High inventory costs resulting from bad planning, tracking and
forecasting of requirements
 Turn collections slow based on bad visibility into accounts and fewer
billing and/or delivery errors
 High in vendor pricing by taking poor insights on quantity breaks and
tracking vendor performance
 Track actual costs of activities and perform activity based costing is a
difficult process using the current system.

1.4 AIM

1.5 OBJECTIVES

For Chloride Zimbabwe the ERP will work the following manner:

 To allow capturing of different raw materials which are labour ,water e.t.c

 A communication link will be established among departments that

depend on each other .for example if battery A is dependent of battery B
then B will be notified earlier.

 To provide a clear analysis of the amount of raw materials required to

produce a certain amount of batteries (this is done before production
begins).

 To build a secure system that will use access levels to log into the system
  To produce ad-hoc reports that help management to make long and short
term decisions

1.5 1 Advantages of a ERP for Chloride Zimbabwe

1. Complete visibility into all the important processes across various production

departments of an organization (especially for senior management personnel).

2. Automatic and coherent work-flow from one department / function to

another to ensure smooth transition/ completion of processes.

3. A unified and single reporting system to analyze the statistics/ numbers/

status etc in real time, across all the functions / departments.

4. Since ERP is a modular software system for the battery manufacturing, its

possible to implement either a few modules (or) many modules based on the
requirements of an organization. If more modules implemented, the integration
between various departments might be better.

5. Single Database is implemented on the back-end to store all the information

required by the ERP system and that enables centralized storage / back-up of
all enterprise data.

6. ERP systems are more secure as centralized security policies can be applied

to them and all the transactions happening via the ERP systems can be tracked.

7. ERP systems provide visibility and hence enable better/

faster collaboration across all the departments.

8. ERP systems make it easier for order tracking, inventory tracking, revenue

tracking, sales forecasting and related activities.

1.6 HYPOTHESIS

1.6.1 Null Hypothesis:

Chloride Zimbabwe has an option to purchase an off the shelf system from
outside the country. However, given the critical shortage of foreign currency
and system support costs associated with the imported system, it will be very
costly to implement this option.
1.6.2 Alternate Hypothesis:

Chloride Zimbabwe can opt for the adoption of an integrated system that will
address much of the problems currently being experienced by the company. It
will also result in better co-ordination of the ERP and an overall reduction in the
operational costs of the company. Some problems that the system may not
“completely eliminate” (e.g. fraud cases and inaccuracy), will at least be
addressed to such an extent that they can be controlled or will recur with less
frequency than is currently being experienced thereby making it worthwhile and
more beneficial to pursue this option.
In view of these assumptions, the overall decision is to choose the Alternate
hypothesis (H1) in which an integrated system will be developed to address the
current problems.
We therefore propose “To computerize the ERP to produce comprehensively
integrated system aimed at improving service provision, decision making
process as well as tightening security of operations and asserts.To appropriately
implement this proposal we have selected a range of Microsoft based software
tools, databases and other third party and stand alone software tools. These
include:

1.6.1 SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

Dreamweaver CS3 A flexible and simple Rapid Application Development

tool that results produces a rich Graphical User
Interface

Mysql Database A scalable open source database that can easily be net-
worked.

Macromedia A powerful diagramming software suitable for large

Fireworks 8 scale software development software projects

Wampserver This is an open source software to host the system

PHP Middleware A server scripting language which is mainly used in

web development
Apache A powerful web development tool used for application
and
Database communication
1.6.3 Constraints

There are limitations to the development of the system which maybe in or

outside the developers influence.

Time

The developer is not entirely attached to developing the system but also to
address other school modules and school related activities, so given a time
frame of about two months to develop the system is a challenge.

Resources

Unavailability of laptops which are more efficient than desktop is a limitation as

the documentation has to be typed and the actual system developed, that is,
designing and coding.

There is need for extra resources like USB flash drives for convenience.

Finance is also needed for transportation, consultations, printing, spiral binding

and food for undertaking the project.

Faults

The machine being used sometimes show a blue screen so might need to be
formatted and reloaded with operating system before the project can proceed

Electricity shedding has been rampant so causes disruptions as it results in

unnecessary stoppages.
Viruses

These are primarily brought by the use of USB flash drives and can erase files
or disrupt the normal operations of a system and erase documents. It impacts
negatively both on documentation and the system.

Team

The developer of the system is the project leader, analyst, programmer and will
test the system, in other words the developer is a one man team so tasks tend to
be heavy on the developer.

Internet

It is there to aid in downloads of tools like wampserver and other related

objects such as pictures to facilitate the design of the web pages. This has been
limited because the AVU lab could not provide the facility.

NB Despite all the aforementioned constraints, the developer is proud to note

that the project will meet the deadline and obstacles and guarantee the success
of the project.

1.7 JUSTIFICATION

Creating an Intelligent IRP system will generally improve the image of the
organisation and decision making for the management team. With the proposed
system the planning of resources will me much easy and faster and production
of batteries will be of good quality.
From a general perspective, the system will become an integral part of the
organisation, responsible for bringing all the needed information together to
address a problem.

 A computer has the ability to collect, process, sort and summaries data or
information quickly under the guidance of a program that would perform all the
processing.

 Fast sharing and updating of information and flexibility in ad-hoc

reporting.
 Manual processes sometimes are very slow and with the nature of
operations at the above mentioned organisation, there’s need for timely
management of information that are needed for betterment of battery
production at the organisation.
 Information is easy to share through networks.

1.8 CONCLUSION

After having drawn the draft of Chloride Zimbabwe resource planning system
solution, and with the above considerations take into account, the first chapter
of this documentation is complete. The above document paves way, if accepted
for the following chapter in the documentation of developing an (IRP) for
Chloride Zimbabwe.