Scenario
You?re a VB developer in the IT department for Vitogenetics, a firm
which manufactures and distributes bioengineered pharmaceuticals for
commercial livestock producers The firm?s projected revenue for this
coming year is expected to break $50 million, and growth has exceeded
35% annually for the past 5 years. Vitogenetics has a single
manufacturing facility located 3 miles south of Williamson, NY.
The Logistics Department Head (Vasant Singh) has come to you and asked
if its possible to develop an application which will allow the firm?s
sales representatives a means of estimating an order?s shipping cost
and arrival date.
Vasant has agreed to supply you with the business rules which you will
use to ?embody the intelligence? in your application. You have
committed to develop a prototype version of the application, which
initially will only be used to provide shipping cost estimates for
shipments bound to NAFTA member countries (Mexico, the US, and
Canada). If this prototype application is deemed successful, then
Vasant is likely to fund addition program development so the program
can be scaled up to world-wide distribution routes.
The 2 key requirements are:
1) The ability to predict when a shipment will arrive at its destination, and,
2) The ability to estimate the cost of reliably shipping an order to
any of 7 regions in the NAFTA trade zone, using either truck, rail, or
air shipping companies.
Business Rules
1) Because high temperatures (specifically temperatures above 110 deg
F) can cause rapid degradation in the efficacy of nearly all of
Vitogenetics? products, it?s necessary to ship the products in
refrigerated containers during the warm and hot months in North
America. Therefore, products must be shipped in refrigerated
containers (aka refers) according to the following schedule:
a. Canada (all provinces and territories): July 1st to August 31st
b. Mexico (all states): April 1st to October 31st
c. United States (all states): May 1st to September 30th
2) The Vitogenetics business model is designed so that product
distribution costs are passed directly onto customers. That is, there
is no cost mark up. Vitogenetics has partnered with two carriers in
each of the 3 transportation categories (truck, rail and air) to
secure the lowest, reliable and stable rates possible for a business
of its size.
3) The order arrival date (i.e. at the customer?s address) is
determined by adding average transit times to the order departure
date. Naturally, transit times vary depending on which type of
carrier is selected (truck, rail or air) as shown in Table A. Please
note that the transit times in this table don?t include the time
needed to prep, package and crate an order at the plant. This takes
an additional 24 hrs and is independent of the transportation mode.
Region Avg Transit Time (Days)
Truck / Rail / Air
US East 2 / 3 / 1
US Midwest 3 / 3 / 1
US West Coast 4 / 3 / 1
Mexico North 5 / 5 / 1
Canada East 2 / 3 / 1
Canada Midwest 3 / 4 / 1
Canada West 5 / 5 / 1
Table A: Average Transit Times per Customer Region
The IT department has used data mining tools to examine the relative
costs of the 3 types of carriers. This analysis revealed that
transportation costs for rail and air can be accurately predicted
(within +/-3%) by simply multiplying the trucking cost by a
multiplier. These multipliers are shown in Table B below.
Carrier Cost Multiplier
Dry Container Cost per 100lbs
Of Freight
(Dry Container) Cost Multiplier
Refrigerated
Container (Refer) Cost per 100lbs
of Freight
(Refer)
Truck 1.0 $34 1.5 $51
Rail 0.65 $22.10 1.2 $40.8
Air 2.15 $73.10 3.0 $102
Table B: Carrier Cost Multipliers
Additional Requirements (non-prioritized)
1) Vasant wants the form to be centered on the screen when the program is started.
2) Since the about 40% of the customer base is located in the eastern
US, the program should begin with the following default conditions:
a. Destination = Eastern US
b. Carrier = Truck
c. Departure Date = the current date
d. Shipment Weight = 100 lbs
3) Product shipments are in increments of 10 pounds with the minimum
order being 100 pounds.
4) Ideally, Vasant would like the program to allow users with the
proper permissions to change the cost multipliers and trucking
baseline freight fee, but he?s willing to wait on this feature until
the R2.0 release of the application.
IF THE REQUIREMENTS ARE UNCLEAR, I CAN EMAIL YOU THE WORD DOCUMENT
CONTAINING ALL THE REQUIREMENTS.
THANKS! |
