SYSTEM ANALYSIS AND DESIGN- CS 403

A PROJECT PROPOSAL
FOR THE
INVENTORY CONTROL SYSTEM

Team Name:
Team Members:

 SIMANT PUROHIT
 BART MICZEK
 AKSHAY THIRKATEH
 BOB FAIGAO
 Introduction

Our proposed project is a real time implementation of an inventory control system for an on-site
corporate restaurant management and catering company. One such company is Guckenheimer
(www.guckenheimer.com) which builds, staffs, and upkeeps corporate kitchens as well as
provides catering services to corporate companies. This project is specific in that it applies to the
dining domain of restaurants, but is flexible enough to be applied to many different kitchens and
restaurants. In the case of Guckenheimer, they can use the software in their kitchens across the
nation. The scope of this project will primarily focus on Guckenheimer’s kitchen and inventory
located at the Groupon Chicago Office.

Currently at Groupons kitchen, and the food industry in general, restaurant staff and managers
are forced to keep track of inventory by hand. This means that they must count what they have
sold and what they have left at the end of each day. They must also fill out order forms to be sent
to vendors so that they can restock their inventory in preparation for the next week. This wastes
valuable man hours and is a rather simple task to automate using our software.

We propose a solution to this issue by developing software that keeps track of inventory in the
“back of house”, or kitchen, and updates it according to daily sales. Each food item is linked to
respective resources (or ingredients) and as each product is sold the ingredients utilized in
making that product are also utilized. These changes in inventory are kept track of through
utilizing a database.

We propose to keep track of each and every ingredient by dynamically linking it to the product
and as a result create a dependent relationship to that product. At a specific time period (typically
the end of the week); if the inventory is below the threshold level, order forms to the specific
vendors are generated in order to restock the required items for the next week. The project also
makes smart predictions on required inventory for the following week based upon the predicted
climate and possible occasions or events that may influence near future sales. At the end of the
week, the software takes into account all threshold levels, predictions, and other factors to
generate an order form, which after being verified by the manager is sent out to the vendors.
 The Purpose of the Project
A case study at ‘Guckenheimer’ (an on-site corporate restaurant management and catering
company) cited issues regarding a basic resources requirement list that has to be maintained
manually by the staff. To keep track of their inventory levels they have to calculate a list of the
groceries utilized during a course of time, calculate and analyze the requirements for the future,
and place their next order to the vendors if needed. This process takes up a lot of time and
human effort, and is also prone to human error.

This poses a problem of a situation that the staff at ‘Guckenheimer,’ as well as many other
restaurants faces. It takes up a lot of time to manually keep track of sales and place correct orders
to vendors, wasting useful labor in trivial works. A product which would assist in tackling the
above mentioned problems would prove to be fruitful to clients such as ‘Guckenheimer’ and
similar enterprises as this product would help convert the unproductive time to something more
useful, by removing the unnecessary error prone complications and efforts.

Goals of the Project

The project aims at providing an efficient interface to the restaurants for managing their grocery
inventory based on each item sold. The basic idea involved here is that each item is linked to its
atomic ingredients which are stored in a database. At the end of each day, the system analyzes
the total sale of menu items and proportionately deducts appropriate amount from the resource
database. Then it compares the current available resources with the threshold level of each
ingredient. If it finds that certain ingredients are below the threshold, it will generate a purchase
order for those item(s) and send it to the manager (admin) for approval.

We also propose to include a special feature “Prediction”. This feature keeps track of any
upcoming occasions, climatic changes and special events that may influence inventory needs for
the upcoming week. The system will then predict the required resources for these events based
on previously accumulated information/knowledge. It will now generate an updated purchase
order in accordance with the predictions.

The product also aims to keep track of the shelf life of resources. If any resource nears the end of
its shelf life, it would intimate to the manager (admin) the details of the quantity that is near its
expiration date. The restaurant must function efficiently, the groceries must be tracked correctly,
timely orders must be sent out to the vendors, and the inventory must be maintained and updated
at all times.
 The Domain
This proposed project aims at inventory control in the restaurant and catering Industry. Such a
large domain would result in an equally as large scope of development. As a result we narrow
our software down to our case study of an outlet of Guckenheimer concentrating only on the
basic resources utilized in inventory control of the outlet. Although the software will be
developed keeping in mind the needs of Guckenheimer and available data at first, then applying
it to the larger domain of the entire restaurant industry can be achieved with ease.

Our target domain is full of software to track sales of food items, but lacks in this area of
inventory management. Our software can be scaled from large corporate dinings all the way to
small privately-owned restaurants. It is also fairly domain specific: the database runs off recipes
which generate the necessary ingredients. It also updates the inventory based off of the sale of
those recipes. This requirement focuses our product to our domain and makes it more appealing
to those looking for a solution to this specific problem.

The Client
The client can vary from private restaurant owners to corporate restaurant management
companies, such as Guckenheimer (www.guckenheimer.com). A corporate restaurant
management company that starts up, staffs, and oversees the everyday workings of a corporate
restaurant, such as the one in the Groupon Chicago office. As stated above, while our product
can be applied to the entire domain of the restaurant and catering business, focusing on a specific
business provides us with more precise and consistent data. A company such as Guckenheimer
would be an ideal client, as they staff multiple corporate kitchens across the nation, including
kitchens for Groupon and even Google. A large scale company such as this this can apply our
software to each and every kitchen, cutting down costs on a very large scale.

Our software will allow our client to customize the database to suit the needs of each kitchen
individually. They can vary in recipes, vendors from which they order their products, and
threshold levels. This provides a uniform product that can be customized at a smaller scale. Our
client would need to purchase multiple licenses, or more likely a corporate subscription that
would allow them to use the software in multiple kitchens. We would also offer single use
licenses to appeal to restaurants that only need to manage a single inventory of goods.
 User of the product

The main users of the product would be kitchen management and staff. The management would
approve the orders that would be sent out, provide vendor information, upload recipes, and set
threshold levels. Many of these tasks, such as the information regarding vendors, recipes, and
threshold levels would need to be set only once. Of course, the option to add, remove, or update
this data would be implemented as well. Once this initial step has been taken, our software will
require nothing more than a weekly approval for the orders being sent out, minimizing the work
that management has to complete in order to insure the correct amount of inventory is available.

Kitchen staff would be responsible for updating the amount of product sold at the end of the day.
Each day, the register prints out the products sold and the quantity of each product sold. Instead
of manually subtracting that amount from the inventory, they input the amounts sold into our
software which will do the number crunching for them. This data is also stored into the
“predictions” feature for future use.
Existing Applications:

Hardware Requirements:
Processor - Intel Dual-core processor, 2.0 GHz or higher

RAM - Minimum 2 GB of RAM

Network interface chip

Hard Drive - 500 GB

Software Requirements

Operating System: Windows XP or higher.

Front End: VB.NET (Visual Studio 2010)

Back End: Microsoft Access 2010

References
List any reference book you referred for writing your project proposal.