case study memo paper

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Case Study: KALCH Distribution Company (KDC )

Overview

KDC is a regional transportation and distribution company in operation for over 60 years. The company

serves major cities in the Mid -Atlantic region. They are headquartered in Wilmington , Delaware and

have a staff of 400 employees including truck drivers. The re are 6 distribution terminals (Philadelphia

PA, Baltimore MD, New York City, Washington DC, Newark NJ and Wilmington DE) for consolidating

freight , and 100 delivery vehicles includin g 20 tractor/semi -trailer units, 40 box trucks and 40 panel

vans.

The company operates in a highly competitive business environment. Growth has been stagnant

because of a slow economy. John, the president of the company, would like to see growth at 5% per

year. He would also like to see expenses cut by 5% to help fund new initiatives. Current reven ue is about

$39 million a year with profit running at 4 %.

To familiarize yourself with commonly -used shipping terms in the freight industry, visit this site and refer

to it as you read the case study and assignments :

http://www.shipnorthamerica.com/htmfiles/gloss ary/gloss_shipterms.html

Current Business Operations

KDC operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Sales personnel (12 people , two per terminal ) visit

prospective customers to outline company capability, services provided and costs. When a customer

decides to use KDC they call the dispatch office with shipment information. Usually they FAX a copy of

the bill (s) of lading to a terminal with information such as origin, destination, product description,

weight and number of packages.

A dispatcher at a termina l makes a list of freight pickups and sends a truck to get the freight. To do this

they use the routing system to determine the sequence of pickups by zip code. They use local maps

within a zip code to map out the specific order of pickups since there may be several in a zip code area.

They have a performance goal of 98% of freight picked up within 24 hours of availability.

A driver follows the dispatch order for pickups. Many of the drivers complain that the pickup order is not

efficient. When they pick up an order they sign for receipt and either load the freight or guide the

customer’s forklift operators to arrange it properly in the truck.

After freight is picked up it is brought to the terminal where it is unloaded and sorted by destination. A

dispatche r then prepares a delivery ticket (again using the routing system ) that is used to load a truck in

the proper sequence for delivery. Some trucks take freight from one terminal to another while others

make local deliveries. About half of a terminal’s space is used on any given night. Dispatchers have a

goal to turn freight around in the terminal overnight for next day delivery .

When freight is sent out for delivery, the driver follows the delivery tic ket order . Often they are held up

at a delivery destination by traffic or by lack of available unloading space. This can cause the driver to be 11/30 /2016 2

late trying to make the day’s deliveries. Sometimes they get to a destination and the facility is closed

and the y bring the freight back to the terminal for delivery the next day. It is unloaded and re-sorted by

destination. The dispatchers then add it to the next day’s delivery ticket s.

The major freight volumes are between New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore (abo ut 70% of total

volume) . Trucks run at about 70% of capacity between terminals overall. Local delivery volume is

heaviest in New York, followed by Baltimore and then Philadelphia. Local delivery trucks operate at

about 80% full while pickups fill about ha lf of the vehicles space. Some customers pick up and/or drop

freight at a terminal with their own equipment.

Truck drivers communicate with the dispatchers using two -way commercial radios. Some also carry

personal cell phones and use them if the radio is out of range. A few drivers also carry GPS devices to

help locate addresses. In general the drivers are content with the company. Pay and benefits are good

and they get overtime pay when deliveries run late. Complaints are few and mostly center around eith er

the sequence of pickup and delivery of shipments or vehicle maintenance.

The fleet is maintained at the main Wilmington maintenance shop and at a smaller shop in Washington.

Either one can handle minor maintenance and preventative work. Only Wilmington can perform major

engine and transmission work . Overall the fleet is in good operating condition. All vehicles are on a

preventative maintenance schedule which places them out of service two days a month, usually on

weekends. Maintenance scheduling is a ch allenge because it can interfere with the steady flow of

shipments both between terminals and for local delivery. There are no “extra” vehicles in the fleet.

Administration

The company m anagement team consists of the P resident, Vice President of Operations , Chief Financial

Officer (CFO), Chief Information Officer (CIO), Sales Manager, and a Fleet Manager who is in charge of

maintenance and safety. They meet weekly to discuss opportunities and issues and to plan for the

future. Except for the CIO, the manage ment team has been in place for many years

The president of the company just hired its first Ch ief Information Officer (CIO ), Leona , after the

previous IT Director retired. She comes from a nearby manufacturer who is also a major customer. At

that company she was Deputy CIO and primarily responsible for network operations and security.

At a recent meeting the management team decided to change the strategic plan for the business in

order to meet growth and cost goals. They highlight ed three new strategies they want to employ to

increase profitability and grow the business. First, they desire to provide warehousing services for

customers who want to reduce delivery time to their customers by having product available locally .

Second, t hey want to improve the percent of loaded miles in their fleet to reduce costs by coordinating

the pickup and delivery of freight at the same time in the same geographic area . Third, they want to

track the whereabouts of freight both in the terminals and o n the trucks to provide customers with

accurate delivery dates and times . 11/30 /2016 3

In addition, the management team wants to ensure that the company remains in compliance with all

applicable federal and state regulations. The ones they are most concerned about are : (1) the Sarbanes

Oxley financial audit and reporting requirements; (2) a new federal requirement to conduct a vehicle

safety check every 10,000; and (3) a Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration ( FMCSA ) reporting

requirement on the number hours per day for each driver (or max per week, etc.). The CFO has been

charged with the overall project. He has asked Leona to help with this effort by modernizing information

systems to support the new strategies. She has decided her first step is to update the IT strategic plan to

link to the new strategies in the corporate plan. Second, she wants to engage her customers in a

proactive way to first, identify and prioritize I T projects that will help meet the new goals , and then

develop a set of requirements for ea ch project . Third, she wants to decide on the best approach to

modernize the information systems that will meet requirements at a reasonable cost , and for this she

will need to make some changes to the IT organization .

Technology

KDC is using a mix of olde r technology products for finance and accounting, route optimization, freight

tracking and fleet maintenance. There are several projects already in the IT portfolio competing for

resources. The CIO sees a major challenge in balancing available funding, IT staff workload and project

prioritization. The project nearest completion is the adoption of the Accurate Financials System to

replace the aging finance and accounting system. It will be completed in six months. There are two other

projects under way, one for management reporting and one for a mobile application that sales staff can

use to show potential customers information on the fleet, distribution services available and freight

rates, including a comparison to the competition.

Th e route optimization and freight tracking system is very important to the operations manager and

dispatchers. The current system allows the input of freight origin and destination information. This is

taken from a bill of lading which contains a plethora of specific informati on. When the dispatchers enter

the origins and destinations into the system they are grouped by zip code. The dispatchers then decide

which zip codes will be loaded in a truck and in what sequence for delivery. This takes several hours at

night to accompli sh and must be done as quickly as possible so trucks can be loaded and sent out in the

morning for delivery. Arranging shipment sequence within a zip code is done by locating each address

on a map and entering it into the system in the best order. Pickups are handled in a similar manner.

The fleet maintenance system contains information on each vehicle in the fleet. It includes all vehicle

specifications, a summary of all repairs, a preventive maintenance schedule and an inventory of parts on

hand. This inf ormation is entered by accounting clerks, mechanics, purchasing clerks and anyone else

who has time to do data entry. It is not as time consuming as the routing system but it contains

information critical to fleet reliability . The greatest challenge is sch eduling preventative maintenance

since it requires vehicles to be down for two days. The dispatchers do not want the equipment taken out

of service because it causes planning headaches. The relationship between dispatchers and

maintenance personnel is stra ined.

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IT Organization

When Leona was hired as CIO last month she took a close look at the current staffing . The IT staff

consists of 22 people, seven of whom are programmers. The programmers are charged with all systems

development and integration work fo r the company. They have three projects in their current portfolio.

The ir skill sets include SQL , .Net and C+ programming, and Web design.

There are six helpdesk personnel who support the six distribution terminals (one at each terminal) . The

remaining staff includes 2 network engineers, a financial systems specialist (an expert in Accurate

Financials) , a computer security expert, two shift supervisors and the CIO and her two personal

assistants.

The IT staff supports multiple locations. At the Wilmin gton headquarter s/terminal there are 15 servers

(they contain all software and data ; one stores a backup copy of the data) and 30 PCs for accounting,

marketing, IT, administration and management. T he t erminal operations office has 5 PCs for dispatchers,

on e for the maintenance office, one for parts and one for drivers in the driver lounge. The other 5

terminals have 10 PCs each and connect to headquarters by a virtual private network ( VPN ).

IT Portfolio

Accurate Financials - This new system will replace the current finance and accounting system. It is an off -

the -shelf product that requires the owner to make modifications to interface with other systems they

may own. Two programmers are working on the project. One is setting up the database and loading the

sof tware on servers. The other is learning about the system in order to write an interface with the

routing system . A representative of Accurate will train the accounting staff in its use . This will take about

two weeks.

Management Reporting System - Senior management wanted to know financial information on a daily

basis. Two programmers have been working on a system to compile the data in a format they can use.

They plan to extract information from Accurate Financials when it is ready but for now ha ve focused on

the current system. They will be done in two months.

Mobile Marketing App - The marketing manager asked for an app that sales staff could use to show

potential customers information. This would include things like fleet photos and specificatio ns; pictures

of the six terminals and information about the distribution services KDC can provide; and a comparison

of their costs using sample shipments with rates from competitors compared to KDC costs. A

programmer and the web designer are working on th e project. It will take two more months to

complete.

The current design and development process is best described by the way it worked in the selection and

integration of Accurate Financials. The CFO asked the (former) CIO to develop a new finance and

acco unting system. The CIO interviewed large, respected companies and, after comparing their

capability to the current system, chose Accurate Financials. Two programmers were assigned and an 11/30 /2016 5

Accurate Financials specialist was hired to work between IT and the f inance office. The CIO receives

progress reports every two weeks .

Situation

When Leona was hired, she toured each terminal to see the IT setup and understand local business

operations. It was important to her to know just how each person used the systems. She spent time with

bookkeepers and accountants, dispatchers, drivers and terminal management. Since she came from one

of KDC ’s customers she knew that customers could offer insight into business improvements that would

be good for both companies. She vis ited one large customer in each of the terminal’s area of service to

get feedback on how operations between them and KDC could be improved. Her goal was to see how

she could translate what she learned into systems improvements.

Interestingly the most compl aints came from bookkeepers and accountants. They said the system was

slow and data entry was tedious because accuracy was very important. If they entered wrong

information, it could cause incorrect billing (rates are based on weight and size), improper lo ading (the

wrong zip code could mean sending freight in the wrong direction unless a dispatcher caught the error),

and more. They estimated current accuracy at about 95% but they had no way of knowing for sure.

Further, they complained about financial repo rting and their ability to meet compliance requirements.

Reporting was mostly a manual process and data they needed from the system was not easily accessed.

Most of them had resorted to keeping small ledgers at their desk to track information they knew the y

would need for reporting.

The dispatchers explained that routing wasn’t all that hard, just time consuming. The routing system

grouped all of the shipments by zip code. They would take all of the shipments in a zip code and look at

the weight and size (h ow much cubic space each one needed in a truck), plot them on a map and then

put them in delivery sequence. They thought most trucks left the loading dock full and that that the

drivers made adjustments in delivery sequence when needed. Pickups were a bit more challenging.

Sometimes they sent a truck out just to pick up freight and bring it back to the terminal. Other times

they contacted a driver to ask them to stop at a customer to pick up a shipment while they were making

deliveries. Since they didn’t kn ow exactly how much space was available on the truck this was a hit or

miss situation. Drivers were left to decide if they could make it work.

Drivers were the most outspoken, probably because no one ever asked for their opinion. They were also

the happie st of employees (this might explain why they were non -union). They liked being able to make

decisions on the go and they knew the customers very well. In fact they could call some of them if they

were running late and the customer would stay open so they c ould deliver or pick up a shipment. They

seemed to have favorite customers and often spent extra time with them talking about common

interests. Generally they were good ambassadors for the company.

Terminal managers were under constant pressure. Their ma in goal was to get shipments into and out of

the terminal as quickly as possible. Delivery times were measured and part of their performance plan.

They knew the company had established three new strategies because they were explained in an email

they just got. Leona asked how they might provide warehousing services. Most felt they had extra space 11/30 /2016 6

and could take on some storage but keeping track of the shipments might be a problem. They had to do

this manually and the bookkeepers were the ones to keep the re cords. They felt more bookkeepers

would be needed but they didn’t know how many.

Leona also met with the maintenance and safety staff at the Washington terminal. The maintenance

folks had a large workload and complained that they had a hard time getting eq uipment in the shop for

preventative work. They did not know when equipment would be available until the last minute so

scheduling was always a scramble because they needed to make sure mechanics were available to do

the work. They had a lot of complaints about shifting work hours and the effect it had on their personal

lives.

The safety manager expressed concerns over driver hours of service. There are federal regulations that

limit drivers to 10 hours of driving at a time. Then they need to take an 8 hou r break. The problem was

tracking the driver’s hours to make sure they stayed within the law. Dispatchers tried to help with this

when they scheduled pickups and deliveries but there was no easy way to do it and the results were

often based on best guess. The safety manager who was ultimately responsible for compliance had

drivers turn in their hours each day but this was always after the fact.

Leona ’s customer visits were eye -opening. Most of the customers had automated inventory systems and

could easily track products from raw material to finished goods. They knew exactly what they would ship

and when, usually several days ahead of time. Some custom ers however needed near instantaneous

shipping. They wanted same -day pickup in a lot of cases and fast delivery. In most cases, they were all

able to produce electronic documents such as the bill of lading and email or FAX it to KDC .

During her interview for the CIO position, Leona was told that the previous IT Director had left a good

foundation and that the staff seemed sufficient in number and appeared to be very capable. However,

since KDC is developing its strategies for the future, the staff must b e able to support the business

strategies as well as the IT strategies that Leona would develop. One of the first things Leona did was to

interview each member of her staff. She discovered that the roles and responsibilities tended to overlap

and that mo rale among her staff was very low. Leona also interviewed the senior leadership of KDC and

learned that her staff was not meeting their expectations for service. The help desk was perceived as

being only somewhat competent and took much too long to respo nd to problems. Application

developers were very slow in delivering systems, and when the systems were finally delivered, they did

not reflect what the customers needed or wanted. Network outages occurred too often from the users’

perspective. Finally, the Chief Financial Officer told Leona that the IT costs need to be reduced.

Leona knew she had many challenges. She was determined to identify essential projects and then

prioritize them for management review. The outcomes would affect almost every aspe ct of the

business. Her IT portfolio was about to grow and her organization will need to change to meet the

challenges.