Safety and Health Management Issues in the Workplace

Riordan Manufacturing IS Upgrades

February 8, 2006

To compete in the 21st century companies need to be on the leading edge not only with product design and development, but at the cutting edge in business efficiency. To attain this requires the successful 21st century corporation to have computer systems capable of working together, information that can be easily shared within a global business environment, accurate inventory control throughout the manufacturing and distribution process, and the ability to function in a world that never sleeps. After reviewing the IS infrastructure, the Inventory Management practices, and Distribution processes we have come up with a proposal that, with an initial one time capital investment, will place Riordan Manufacturing at the forefront of technology and a model for the rest of the Corporate World.

After reviewing the IT infrastructure at Riordan Manufacturing’s four locations we propose that the Albany and Pontiac facilities replace their current systems with ones that mirror the technology in San Jose and China. This will include a new enterprise level software package that will integrate inventory, billing, manufacturing, ordering, payroll, shipping, and product development. To achieve this goal we have developed a list of hardware requirements for Albany and Pontiac. The hardware requirements for the Albany and Pontiac facilities will include 75 new workstations purchased from Dell, since Riordan already has a relationship with them, the workstations will have minimum requirement of Optiflex 2.6Ghz processor, 512MB of RAM, 60GB Hard drives, and run Windows 2000 operating system. We will also install new CAT 6 Ethernet wiring, new servers, replace the printers, upgrade the internet access with VOIP, replace all network routing hardware, and provide wireless capabilities to the factory floor managers and delivery drivers.

Hardware required Quantity Unit cost Total

Workstations 75 1,500.00 112,500.00

New Printers 6 2,000.00 12,000.00

Tablet PC's 18 2,100.00 37,800.00

Handheld Scanners 40 1,800.00 72,000.00

NAS Servers 2 2,231.85 4,463.70

WIN Exchange Servers 2 1,628.77 3,257.54

WIN Network Servers 2 2,315.04 4,630.08

UNIX Server 1 2,000.00 2,000.00

RAID Array 1 25,000.00 25,000.00

New software package 4 25,000.00 100,000.00

VOIP 2 500.00 1,000.00

Disaster vaults 4 30,000.00 120,000.00

Ethernet cable ft 2000 0.95 1,900.00

Installation tech (hours) 300 150.00 45,000.00

RF ID scanners (factory floor) 4 5,000.00 20,000.00

RF ID scanners (warehouse) 4 5,000.00 20,000.00

RF ID scanners (truck mounted) 40 3,500.00 140,000.00

Crazy Support (month) 12 3,500.00 42,000.00

IS training team (hours) 320 150.00 48,000.00

811,551.32

The Inventory Management and Product Distribution Systems are the other areas we focused on. To compete in the 21st century Riordan needs to track and manage its inventory at a minute by minute rate. To accomplish this we are proposing a redesign of Inventory Management Systems and Riordan’s Product Distribution Systems. This will require a one time capital investment that will reduce; salary overhead, amount of unused stock in warehouse, and the time from customer order to delivery. These improvements will increase factory efficiency, improve the tracking of product from production through delivery, and allow Riordan Manufacturing to have more available capital.

Riordan Manufacturing will see an immediate return on this investment.