Homework Two
In Information Systems Analysis & Design, Ned Kock (2007) presents the following
business process of a car-rental company that practices preemptive, predictive car
maintenance:
"The business process example starts with a customer filing a complaint online regarding
problems with a car that the customer supposedly rented in the past. The details of the
complaint filed by the customer are stored in an online file of car rental complaints. The
assistant manager of the rental company then downloads the information about the
complaint using a Web-based computer system called RentalWizard, which automatically
generates a complaint form to be used for internal processing of the complaint. The
assistant manager then places that complaint form in a box for later processing, together
with other complaint forms.
Once every week, the assistant manager of the rental company reviews each complaint
form, using a manual containing several rules for reviewing complaints. Those rules had
been devised so that certain complaints could be filtered out (e.g., complaints not related
to car maintenance problems) before they progressed any further in the business process.
Once the assistant manager is finished reviewing each complaint form, (s)he hand
delivers a reviewed complaint form to the rental company's manager, briefly explaining
why the complaint should proceed in the process.
The rental manager then hand-delivers the reviewed complaint form to the assistant
maintenance manager, again briefly explaining why the complaint should be processed.
The assistant maintenance manager is the main point of contact for the rental company's
manager in the company's maintenance department, which is the organizational unit that
processes reviewed customer complaints.
The assistant maintenance manager then, upon receipt of a reviewed complaint form,
places the form in a box for processing by the quality control specialist. The quality
control specialist is an employee who formerly worked for a software development
company that owns and commercializes a computer system called SmartFleet. The
computer system cost the rental company approximately $800,000. It incorporates
artificial intelligence algorithms that operate on predictive maintenance rules, which are
both used and updated by SmartFleet based on each new complaint processed through the
system and on details about previous maintenance activities. The algorithms allow the
SmartFleet system to create a schedule of predictive maintenance activities (called 'jobs')
that reduces maintenance costs to a minimum while also reducing the likelihood of future
car problems occurring while the cars are with the customers of the car rental company.
The schedule of predictive maintenance jobs generated by SmartFleet is a printed set of
pages (one page per job), organized according to the order of execution prescribed by the
computer system. The quality control specialist then places those pages in a box with
other predictive maintenance jobs. The box is located at the entrance of the workshop
used by the maintenance department.
