Reference no: EM132294430

Assignment  - Dress Hideout

Overview

For this individual assignment, you will use skills acquired through practical laboratory exercises to automate a business process, and to visualize the impact of the automation. You should use Microsoft Excel (or equivalent open-source software) for this assessment task.

Important: This assignment specification is generated just for you. Do not distribute this specification. If your personal specification is made publicly available online, academic misconduct charges may be applied.

Scenario details

Dress Hideout is a small clothing manufacturer, specializing in creating custom, one-of-a-kind dresses. They exclusively sell their product through their online store. Dress Hideout is run by a team of three staff members: Abraham, Belle, and Celia. Abraham and Belle work together to manufacture dresses. Celia manages orders, sales and delivery.

Task 1 - Costs of operating the business

Using Excel, create a spreadsheet called operating_costs.xlsx that calculates the projected annual outgoing costs of running Dress Hideout.

Your spreadsheet should be configured such that the working hours, hourly rates, and fixed and utility costs can be varied easily.

Document your findings in your ePortfolio page (approximately 100 words).

Manufacturing dresses

Dress Hideout receive requests through their online store, and Celia responds with a quote, after consulting with a member of the manufacturing team. If the customer confirms their order, Abraham and Belle manufacture the ordered products, and Celia organizes delivery. Currently, the process for generating a quote is entirely subjective, based on the requested material and dress size. Staff members quote an amount based on their personal experience.

For several months, staff have been keeping track of the quote date, material, size, quote amount, and manufacturing cost for each order in a spreadsheet. As each product is hand-made, the manufacturing cost may vary between similar orders. If a quote was not accepted by the customer, then manufacturing cost is not included. This spreadsheet is available for download on Moodle.

Task 2 - Order information

Using Excel, process the history of orders spreadsheet and use appropriate charts to visualize:

How some aspect of quoting or manufacturing has changed over time; and

How the quote amount differed for each staff member.

You will need to find a way to use Excel to associate each quote with a staff member.

Describe your approach and your findings in your ePortfolio (approximately 250-400 words), and attach the Excel file to your page.

Task 3 - Price consistency

Using Excel, analyse the historical data you have available, and create a spreadsheet that allows a member of the Dress Hideout team to enter the dress material and size, and gives a quote amount. Ensure that you include enough text and formatting to make your spreadsheet usable by a member of the Dress Hideout team (or by a University lecturer).

You may base your quote amount either on historical averages, or to ensure that Dress Hideout makes a profit.

Validate your quoting approach by applying your formula to historical data.

Justify your approach in your ePortfolio (approximately 150 words), and attach your Excel file to your  ePortfolio.

Task 4 - Process improvement

Extend your spreadsheet page from task 3 to automate the above processes, allowing a member of the team to enter the dress material and size, and in addition to the quote amount indicate whether to start manufacturing immediately.

It is up to you do determine how to determine which items are popular. Justify your approach in your ePortfolio (approximately 150 words), and attach your Excel file to your ePortfolio.

Optional task 5

Reimplement Tasks 1, 3 and 4 using either Python or HTML+JavaScript.

Write a brief overview of how to run your solution, and attach a zip file containing your code to your ePortfolio page.

There are no partial marks awarded for this bonus task - you must complete all features to attain the bonus marks.

It is possible to attain full marks for this assignment without completing this challenge task.