Systems Analysis and Design for Western Book Supply - Case Study

This case study presents a systems analysis and design project focusing on Western Book Supply, a textbook retailing company aiming to enhance its operations. The company currently uses manual methods for sales and inventory management, which are becoming increasingly challenging due to growing sales volumes. The case study outlines two key events: the arrival of books from suppliers and the sale of books to customers. It details the processes involved in ordering, pricing, and shelving books, as well as handling special orders and customer payments. The current system faces issues such as difficulties in tracking stock levels and managing special orders, leading to inefficiencies and increased workload for staff. The proposed computer system aims to address these challenges by automating processes, improving inventory management, and streamlining special order handling, ultimately reducing the workload and enhancing service levels at Western Book Supply.

SYSTEMS ANALYSIS
AND DESIGN

Table of Contents
Event One........................................................................................................................................3
Event Two........................................................................................................................................4
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................5

Event One
Books arrive from a supplier
This event illustrates that the books that have been ordered to the Western Book
Suppliers who is a retailing company situated in large urban area. The company is extremely
specialised in supplying textbooks to students at local universities. The book suppliers are highly
efficient enough to handle large number of special requests. Local universities supply the list of
books for most required subjects. The purchasing manager utilises these lists to order required
stock (Maylawati, Darmalaksana and Ramdhani, 2018). Currently the book store fulfils the
requirement through manual methods of sales and inventories but with the increase in number of
working hours of employees the staff members keep up their current level of services. For
special orders, the manager contacts the suppliers of the appropriate book by telephone; the
supplier supplies the book and provides the supplier the appropriate purchase order number. If
supplier has FAX, the order is sent immediately otherwise it is mailed. Currently they prepare
records on monthly basis in order to report weekly shortages of books. The purchasing manager
uses these reports as an aid in making further purchasing decisions.
Case Diagram
Supplier
General User Book
Store manager
Request for
issue
Search a
book
Request book
from vendor
Maintain record
Supply books
Request payment

Event Two
Books or products has been sold to customers
Once the books have been received within the store, they are placed into the pricing
procedure. The pricing clerk looks up the prices on each and every book on their book list and
attaches the price labels to the books then after that they are placed on the shelves under their
appropriate subject heading if the book is relevant to the subject list. The books that are not
belonging to the any specific subject area are placed in the general sales area. And is the books
are related to the special order, it is given to the sales clerk with a copy of the special purchase
request. The pricing clerk also handles the orders through phones and emails that occur during
time to time (Mohammadzadeh, Babaei and Farsadi, 2018). For customers’ who previously
arranged the credit, the goods are immediately sent to the consumers with an invoice. The
customers that have not been allowed credit are told the value of their purchase and the goods
have been held on the shelves for a certain period of time for the payment to arrive. The sales
clerk are doing their job on shift basis, to each one of them the cash register has been provided.
They start their shift by picking their cash tray from accounting and return the tray at the end of
the shift with a copy of customers receipt.
Supplier Store manager Customer
Received Book
Pricing procedure
Book Listing
Attach price label
Placement of book according to
subject
Goods sold to
customer
Payment
received

REFERENCES
Books and journals
Maylawati, D.S., Darmalaksana, W. and Ramdhani, M.A., 2018. Systematic design of expert
system using unified modelling language. In IOP Conference Series: Materials Science
and Engineering (Vol. 288, No. 1, p. 012047). IOP Publishing.
Mohammadzadeh Shahir, F., Babaei, E. and Farsadi, M., 2018. Analysis and design of voltage‐
lift technique‐based non‐isolated boost dc–dc converter. IET Power Electronics, 11(6).
pp.1083-1091.

1