UBC
Shipping
You work with the IT division of the UBC corporation. UBC is building a digital platform to
rationalize and automate its operations. The new platform will manage most of the Company’s functions (sales, shipping, etc.). The
CEO has set up a steering committee and instructed them to begin implementing the new system. You are assigned to model
the Shipping department.
This is what Shipping has sent you.
From: United Box Company Shipping
To: you
Our job is to ship the orders that come from the sales department. The new system will manage the preparation of shipments to
fulfill these orders. A 'shipment' is a container that contains products sent to one customer. Our warehouse employees will
find on their screens the unfulfilled orders with the quantities of items to pack in a shipment. If possible, the system
fills each order with one shipment. Sometimes, however, several shipments are necessary to fulfill a single order.
Thus, the system presents to the employees the ordered quantities and also the quantities to ship.
Before the shipment leaves the dock, an inspector (a UBC employee) with a tablet computer checks what is being
shipped. Essentially, the inspector verifies every line item in each shipment. Found discrepancies are corrected, and
the line item is flagged in the system. Later, managers review reports of which employee packed which item with errors. When
the physical shipment is ready, the system prints out a packing slip (aka packing list - same thing) that travels with the
shipment and describes what is being shipped.
The boxes are shipped to the customer's shipping address. Our policy is that each order has one shipping address. However, a
customer may have several. The system sends an email notification to the customer and to our Account Receivable
department. We need to keep a record of when that happened.
Thanks again for your help in doing all this.
- John Reed, Shipping Manager