MBA PROGRAMME

Management Information Systems (Field Base Assignment)

MBSA-21012

BY

(Group - Diamond)

1.) Ms. Chamalki P.K.Nimasha 10013047

2.) Mr. Dhevindra R.P.A.Arjun 10014519

3.) Mr. L. Upeka Lakmal 10013145

4) Mr. Hewage, A H Vishva S. 10013134

5) Mr. Kulathunga, Sachintha D A 10021567

NATIONAL SCHOOL OF BUSINESS MANAGEMENT

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 Acknowledgment

Our first sincere appreciation goes to Dr. Ruwan Wickramarachchi who encouraged and guided

us to do this assignment successfully. We offer our special thanks to MAS Bodyline team for

their valuable support given. And also we owe a deep debt of gratitude to our beloved parents

for giving full support for the success of this report.

THANK YOU.

GROUP 4.

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 Table of Contents

Chapter 01 Introduction to the MAS Body line 04 - 06

Chapter 02 Key Business Process of the MAS Bodyline 07 - 09

Chapter 03 Existing Information Systems at MAS Bodyline 10 - 11

Chapter 04 Information systems that could be introduced 12 - 15

Chapter 05 Discussion and Conclusion 16 - 18

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 Chapter 1
Introduction to the organization

BODYLINE (PVT) Ltd.

Bodyline was incorporated in 1993 as a three way joint venture between MAST - US, Triumph
- Germany and MAS Holdings – Sri Lanka with each holding 1/3rd of equity capital through
their affiliated Companies. MAS holdings is Sri Lanka leading apparel exporter with 34
companies in all over the country and more than 40 thousand employees working under MAS
flag. MAST industries is joined to bodyline with the responsibility of take orders and find new
market opportunities and maintain customer base for the bodyline products. Triumph has more
than 120years of history for the apparel industry. They bring their technical knowledge for the
bodyline group.

Partner Original Role Current Status

Providing Acting collaboratively in other projects (e.g.
Mast Industries Inc.,
marketing supply
USA
support chain) as well

Apart from technical support Triumph brings

Triumph International,
Technical arm 5%
Germany
of Bodyline’s business at present

MAS Holdings, Sri Local operational In addition MAS provides technical support
Lanka partner and brings business through MDS

Table 1.1 Bodyline Partnerships

Currently Bodyline is the biggest and best apparel company in the south Asian region. Bodyline
has five production plants. BPL plant No. 01, located in Horana has a total headcount of 4816
and is a fully fledged SBU with core functions including merchandising, raw material
procurement, cutting and sewing. Bodyline plant No. 2 and IFI were started in 1999. Bodyline
plant # 03 was stated in 2012 and it is located in Matugama. It is a pure sewing plant with
limited support services available on site. It has a total headcount of 3500. The support services
including finance, HR, IT and administration are all centralized at Bodyline Plant 01. There are
more than 14,000 thousand of workers are working at bodyline group.

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As of May 2018 Body line employs total of 550 staff. These staff includes both permanent
cadre and contract based (temporary/ fixed-term), Staff involve throughout the organizational
activities from the high level planning to the transactional level activities. Organizations ability
to accomplish its vision, mission, objectives and goals are depends on performance of its staff.
As a result organizations need to take strategic decisions when hiring staff for key positions.

Majority of the bodyline executive level employees should have some related degree or
professional qualification regarding apparel industry. Recruiting team is giving their first
priority for textile engineers. Firms spend large amount of money, effort and time in the
recruitment and training process expecting employees to perform better in their job role. Once
recruited, staff expected to perform at their best to meet organizational goals and objectives.

To appreciate and motivate their work, organizations provide benefits and rewards. These
motivations are expected to enhance employees working capacity while making them satisfy
and motivate for better performances. Basically staff level employees have been recruited from
internally. Those employees should be six months of training period. During their training
period they should be participated bodyline adventures, Body line MOS training and finally IT
department has been given basic IT training which regards MS office and other related software

Vision

Our vision is to be the number 1 preferred partner of the world‟s leading brands of intimates,
with a turnover of US$ 100 million by year 2020. Note : Company was able to achieve this target
in year 2018

Mission

Bodyline’s mission is to provide the world’s leading brands of intimates with reliable and innovative
order to deliver solutions by, Leveraging Lean manufacturing, in order to provide the customer
flexibility whilst being cost competitive, and Developing and motivating people at all levels and
empowering them, ensuring growth opportunities for the firm as well as for them, and Being a socially
responsible company to the community and environment, showing concern and fair play to all, whilst
ensuring rewards/ returns to all stakeholders.

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Five Force’s Analysis

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 Chapter 2
Key business processes of the organization

As per the latest projections ladies intimates’ (Bra’s & Briefs) consists 87% of Bodyline’s total
turnover in 2017. Bodyline is mainly forecast for the woman’s underwear’s. Victoria’s secret
is the main customer of the bodyline it is contributes to the body line with 55% of overall
production capacity, also Nike, M&S, and Victoria Secret Pink, TIL, Dilereds, Truimp,
Dayleen and Sloggi. MAS design Centre has created their brand which is named as Amanthe.
This model changed in 2003 with the addition of MAS Design (MDS) to the equation. MAS
became an active frontend player which was initially played only by Triumph (Corsina) which
included marketing, sourcing, design and development. MAS took on the responsibility of
filling the capacity of Bodyline with relatively a smaller percentage at the beginning and today
have grown up to 25% of Bodyline’s total turnover. Business that has come through MAS
Design is VSS, VSD, Pink and LB

Product Assortment

Almost 81% of the plant capacity is utilized for manufacturing of Lingerie‟s, under the basic
categories of Bra‟s (78%) and Brief‟s (3%). Other than lingerie‟s, Sportswear and Swimwear
fills the balance part of the capacity in approximate figures of 16% and 3% respectively. The
plant has evolved over the time from handling above products with basic Cut-&-Sew
methodology to highly sophisticated technologies like Flat Bonding, 3D Hemming, Ultrasonic
Welding, Heat Sealing & Pad Printing.

Nature of Business

Bodyline is a manufacturer of ladies foundation apparel and exports 70% of its production to
the up-markets of USA and approximately 27% of the exports are for the EU countries. The
balance capacity of the plant is dedicated for the garments manufactured under the Triumph
label for the domestic market. Design and development, and marketing of the products are
done by Triumph International - Hong Kong, Limited Brands - USA and MAS Design - Sri
Lanka.

Victoria’s Secret

A division of Limited Brands Inc, a Fortune 500 company, being the largest specialty retailers
in the United States, operating 1,100 stores throughout North America.

M&S

Marks & Spencer is a major British retailer, with over 885 stores in more than 40 territories
around the world, over 600 domestic and 285 international. It is the largest clothing retailer in
the United Kingdom.

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Nike

Nike is the largest manufacturer of athletic footwear and apparel worldwide by sales. Nike has
a global reach, with 34% of its total 2008 revenue coming from the United States and Europe,
Middle East, Africa accounting for an additional 30%. Nike is on the cutting edge of technology
on high quality performance apparel.

Sloggi

In 1979, Sloggi products were introduced to the market by the well-known underwear
manufacturer, Triumph International.

Triumph

Triumph International is an international underwear manufacturer, founded in Heubach,

Württemberg, Germany in 1886. The first foreign subsidiary was established in Zurzach,
Switzerland which has become the company‟s headquarters. The multinational manufacturing
and marketing organization operates in 120 countries around the world.

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Key Divisions

Body line Private Limited structured into 3 main divisions.

I) Customer Service Department

Customer Service department mainly separated for 3 sub departments,

i) Customer supporting Service :-

Customer service department have been given their involvement handling customer base.
Confirm order quantities and styles also giving and approving sample.

ii) Purchasing:-

Purchasing department ensure the material for the given orders.

iii) Central Planning :-

Central planning department is involving setting the given orders with right time in order to
meet customer delivery dates.Both BPL I,II,III and IFI

II) Production Department

Bodyline production department has following major departments,

 Nike Sewing area

 Cutting and MQA area
 VS division.
 Swimwear division
 Other Supporting Departments

III) Services Department

Shared services are group of departments within the organization. These departments include
HR, Finance, P&A, IT, and R&D divisions. The main objective of Shared Services is to support
to be offer right products with right quality in right time.

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 Chapter 3
Existing Information Systems

MAS Body line is having currently the following systems for the support of their process

I) SAP:

SAP is main ERP system of the company, its functioning all the business process of the
organization,

II) FASTREACT:

Fastreact is the main Planning information system of the company, all the members of Planning
Department are working though the fastreact in several functions,

III) E Leave:

All the Employees are requesting Leave though this system

IV) E Manual :

Currently all the employees are mark their attendance though the Finger print machine, if
someone missed to record it there is a system to update their attendance though the E manual
system,

V) Vehicle Requisition :

Company has regular transport system to workers for their normal working times but if
someone want request a vehicle for specific time or venue it should be request under Vehicle
requesting system.

VI) T20 :

This is the main HR system of the company two evaluate the each and every performance of
the employees,

VII) KOT:

As per the day today schedule company providing lunch and breakfast but if someone need
additionally foods they should request it thought the this system,

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 VIII) OTMS :

If someone going to work by taking additional hours those employee need to take prior
approval from the plant GM by requesting this system,

IX) E Andon:

This system monitor: “how quick issue are solving)

X) BM Dashboard :

Business Meeting Dash board is one of the main forum of the communicate the plant main
update regarding Production , HR and all

XI) Courier Approval System:

Normally raw materials are receiving though the SEA or AIR, but if we want to take material
early by fast tracking the delivery path, we need this system,

XII) E Downtime:

There lot of reasons to affecting the normalize plan. So this system shows the reasons

XIII) OTP dashboard:

OTP means - On time performance – this system helps to record the Dept . Error ad few
things

XIV) Shop flor:

Shop flow system help to Team member to upload the target out put

XV) Production E Kanban –

This is basically link with the production rhythm, production input requesting as per the latest
WIP.

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 Chapter 4
Information systems that could be introduced

Functional Activities to face the future Opportunities and Challenges by MAS Bodyline

 Planning to anticipate and respond to volatile and disruptive environmental changes.

 Build strategic plans of actions.

 Avoid taking action that is doomed to failure from the beginning, for reasons beyond
the control.

 Help to adapt quickly to the realities of the new environment.

 Having a position in competitive market place.

 Create the brand that will propel products ahead.

 Knowing potential investment areas and invest in the right time.

 Having strategic options such as entering a new market or launching new products.

There are three strategies which can be introduced. They are as follows,

A. Information Management Strategy

B. Information Technology Strategy

C. Information System Strategy

A) Information Management Strategy

It determines the long term information requirement of the organization and is concerned with
acquiring, storing and making available information. It helps to achieve quicker decisions and
to satisfy information needs across the organization whilst ensuring easy access to information.
Proactive approach in making efficient organization process can be seen under this.

B) Information Technology Strategy

Defines the specific system requirements of the hardware, software, operating systems and
backup facilities. This would be the system of infrastructure that the information system
operates upon.

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 C) Information System Strategy

This concerns on which information is stored and made available. Control procedures should
be in place to ensure relevant information is being produced for the users and not redundant
information.

1. Transaction Processing System

The Information System used in MAS Bodyline is to capture source data about entity
transactions. The output of this system is more useful for planning purposes and as an audit
rate. Management helps in decision making and takes on a proactive approach provides useful
Information. For decision making and information systems inputs data is soughed from
transaction processing system’s control and processed further to generate “Standardized reports
and material.”

2. Enterprise Resource Planning

MAS Bodyline utilizes Information System in the use of ERP systems in the organization in a
wide scale. MAS Bodyline and its parent company and the whole tobacco chain is highly IT
oriented where the whole chain is net worked through an intranet handled by their IT unit based
on Work Schedule, Leave Management, and Payroll Systems.

Basically the Task & Production Schedule, Pro Active Crisis Management Systems, Minimal
Continuation of Normal Operations deals with threat Approaches and disruptions within the
organization.

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Increasing the connectivity between ERP system and Planning System

Most organizations specially make changes to their business processes to adopt to changing
business needs. But very minimal changes been done to the ERP system. The ERP software
will have less adaption due to this practice and use of obsolete best practices employee would
face lots of challenges and there will be resistance creeping up.

Therefore, putting an effort on ERP post evaluation is important to an organization. The post
evaluation of performance would provide benefits such as; helps to find out benefits gathering
areas, provides an overall impact on every operation to increase the productivity, ERP
performance measures aid in competitive trust by helping the top management to obtain and
maintain Key Performance Indicators (KPI), improve integration across functions, Therefore,
by implementing the performance evaluating system and Link with Planning functions will
helps the organization to ensure the success of the entire ERP solution such as, final
documentation, helpdesk and onsite support, continuous training, upgrades, continuous
improvements and also avoid downsizing and staff layoffs.

Increasing the ERP system speed and agility provides benefits not only for the organization, it
also provide benefits for customers, suppliers and other strategic level people as well. The
employees will be satisfied since; the post implementation practices avoid employee
downsizing ad layoffs and make processes easier and simplifier. Post implementation training
is essential for employees within the organization, once the ERP system goes live. Training
given before implementation enables users to gain operational skills only,

The reason for the adoption of ERP in large scale organization is due to the increase in
competition and to gain a competitive advantage over the customers. Most of the leading
manufacturing organizations started connecting ERP systems and planning system for the
expecting more results. Most of the organizations failed to gain the true benefits as expected
and high cost of investment is not justified. Also it takes a while to reap the full benefits
therefore it is critical to have successful better connectivity among the planning system and
ERP system.

Similarly garment manufacturing organizations have adopted the same trend by implementing
new ERP systems by replacing their legacy systems. It seems that garment industries were bit
more successful when adopting the ERP systems than other manufacturing organization in Sri
Lanka.

For the Planning System point of View each year during Sept – Oct, sales and production
budgets are finalized for each customer and plant for the next fiscal year.

Apart from the annual budget, Central Planning team receives projections on weekly basis for
each customer in different excel formats. Then the customer Planner upload data to fast react
using an excel file and passing down to the plant level based on various criteria’s. Thereafter,
Plant planners plan projection at line level and see whether the plants would still open even
after loading all projections or if certain projections exceed the Plant capacities. This exercise
takes place every fortnight. Once the projections are planned, Plant planners indicates the open
or over flow to the respective customer planners.

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Once the projections are Planned, orders will start to realize as confirmed orders. Details are
directly down loaded from SAP to fast react. The same process will repeat over and over where
Customer planners allocate/distribute orders where the projections are planned. Once orders
are passed down to the plant planners, they manually replace the confirmed order with
projection.

There are exceptions to the above where certain customers have an inquiry process where they
request a delivery on ad hock basis.

Customers are working for speed and flexibility from their vendors, at the same time volatility
on the order book hindrances stability of the plans, planners are required to do lot of repetitive
works spending lots of man hours for Planning and re-planning, scenario works, etc. Therefore,
it is essential for the business to consider Automating the planning process and increase the
better connectivity with this main tool where planners can react on such dynamic change with
very short time period.

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 Chapter 05
Discussion and Conclusion

In the Discussion First of all we will see the Advantages and drawbacks of a information
system when newly Implementing

Advantages

1) Managers are able to make quick, timely and informed decisions:

Introducing new IT strategies for the company that helps to the management to make decisions
very quickly is a great advantage. Because of the speed those new systems help to communicate
information between people, with the exact details.

2) Gain a competitive advantage:

Information systems help to absorb new employees because of the speed and convenience.
Differentiating from those competitors helps to win the employee market locally as well as
globally.

3) Efficiency is high:

Due to the inter-related network among all the Operational information functions of the
organization, the company is gaining high efficiency and effectiveness which results in saving
time and utilizing that time to improve other areas in the company.

4) Cost saving:

New system helps the company to reduce cost since there is low labour costs and minimum
documentation cost involved within and around the system. In an overall perspective, it is
definitely cost effective to the organization.

5) Secure information:

In the old method, which is keeping records manually, the confidentiality of the information
was an issue since a lot of people had access to employee personal information. After
establishing the current system, since only a very few people having limited access in to the
system, the confidentiality was in a high standard and the data is more secured.

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Drawbacks

1) Limited access:

Since only a very few people have access in to there is a problem or a slight delay when getting
the required information. Even the common information, which is not confidential, need to be
accessible by a small sub system or else it, is going to be tough when an employee is searching
for another employee’s details.

2) Capital investment:

Investing on an information system is going to be worth the price, but when bearing its cost is
the difficulty for an organization. It should rest in long run, but frequent upgrading costs,
expanding costs and maintenance costs would be troubling an organization as they have to
allocate their budgets.

3) Technology becoming obsolete:

Current ERP system is now older than a decade. So the technology used in the system becomes
obsolete with new technologies coming in. It is pretty hard to manage the system only by
expanding and upgrading. They may have to replace the system with a newer ERP application
with a system.

4) Information becoming more insecure :

In the current information technology scenario and technology becomes more modernized
whilst threats become more complicated. Hacking information from servers and systems are
now very popular threats. International cyber-attacks are now more popular in the world, so a
company may have to upgrade their firewalls rapidly to survive their information.

Conclusion

In Bodyline, they use Management Information Systems as a tool to study people, technology
and organizations and the relationship among them. In a way MIS in bodyline, is a documented
report of the activities that were planned and executed. MIS consist of people, equipment and
procedures to gather, sort, analyses, evaluate and distribute needed, timely and accurate
information automate or support decision making

MIS formats are widely used in Bodyline as a reporting system. Mostly in the production
environment, various information is being collected manually in a pre-designed format from
each process for various purposes. Later this information is entered into the computer to store
and for retrieval and to provide wide access to the management team.

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The purpose of recording is to know actual facts and figures of the shop floor and take decision
based data. Data should be recorded in such a way that intended analysis can be made later.
And most of the users can read and understand information captured in a format. Printed
format, that are used to record primary information are called as MIS formats. An MIS format
may be electronic (spread sheet) and physical form. Generally report is made on spreadsheet
using same format as printed form or it may be slightly different.

All departments use format to record data or make a daily report. Like production report,
quality audit report. Whatever information is transferred from one department to another is
made in pre-designed form. And several other areas such as Finance & accounting, quality
control, Sales & distribution, business forecasting planning & control, Human Resources,
Purchasing, Production and Marketing use MIS as support for their processes.

However there are plenty of advantages when we are using MIS in Bodyline. It helps in higher
speed of retrieving and processing data. And also it helps to minimize information overload.
And it leads to higher accuracy of information. And furthermore it improves personal
efficiency as well.

Furthermore we have identified some limitation when we are using MIS in Bodyline.
Limitations are as follows.

 Implementing and monitoring MIS requires a lot of experience

 The running of MIS programs tends to be relatively costly

 System may become slow and hard to manage because of large amount of data and lack
of technical staff.

And following are the recommendations for improvement in MIS at Bodyline.

 The Management should encourage the effectuation of a mutually interdependent and

balanced MIS where workers and automated systems are handle with due respect

 A well-defined decision making system should be fledged in businesses so as to provide

a viable working environment for MIS

 Business managers must ensure that they employ professional personal who are able to
run both MIS and decision making processes.

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