TABLE OF CONTENT

1.0     INTRODUCTION                                                                  2

2.0     THE PROPOSED INFORMATION SYSTEM                     4

          2.1     User Interface Design                                      6

         

3.0     ONLINE ORDERING SYSTEM                                           10

          3.1     System Interface                                                11

          3.2     User Interface                                                     11

          3.3     Hardware Interfaces                                       11

          3.3     Software Interfaces                                        12

          3.4     Communication Interface                             12

          3.5     Memory Constraint                                          12

          3.6     Site adaptation requirements                    12

          3.7     Assumption and constraint                          12

4.0     SYSTEM FUNCIONALITY                                                  13

5.0     STRATEGIC PLANNING                                                     14

          5.1     User Requirement                                              14

                   5.1.1  Functional Requirements                    14

                   5.1.2  Non-functional Requirement            15

          5.2     Sytem Requiremens                                            15

                   5.2.1  Software Requirements                        15

                   5.2.2  Hardware Requirements                      15

          5.3     Planning

                   5.3.1  Time Scheduling                                        16

5.3.2      Budget                                                            17

5.4        Process Model                                                      17

6.0     CONCLUSIONS                                                                    18
INTRODUCTION

Thumbkin House Restaurant (THR) is a western cuisine restaurant and halal family restaurant chain in Malaysia. The chain is operated by THR Restaurants Sdn Bhd, a company incorporated in Malaysia, which was established in June 2000.

Thumbkin House Restaurant serves what it calls "east meet west cuisine" and original western dishes.

With the successful growth of THR in their domestic markets, they plan to spread the culture of the Malaysian way of life into the internet market. Their slogan is "when east meets west".

This paper proposed on the additional design of a restaurant Information System (IS) that could be used to improve the day-to-day operation at Thumbkin House Restaurant. The main purpose of the system is to track food items stock level so that there will never be "out of stock" problems and also to adopt online ordering to reach more customers via food delivery service.

The overall goal of the project was to create an application where both utility and usability are addressed. In particular, the software should be easy to navigate and use while providing basic restaurant management and security features.

In the experience of the authors, the existing Information System software while having reasonable utility features geared towards tracking money and profits, seem to have a significant lack where intuitiveness and usability are concerned. The Information system software has weak or non-existent real-time capabilities, and in some cases, functionality needed for day to day operations are only available for certain functions. This results in the undesirable situation where food stock level cannot be detected. These problems may have resulted from the system lack of domain knowledge or from a lack of user involvement in the design process.

The propose Information System includes creating and deleting orders, adding and removing items from an order and closing orders. Orders should also be stored in the database to be used to calculate total sales. Inventory management includes adding new products, deleting products and updating products and resources.

The software is responsible for a number of other functions. Menu items must be added, edited, and deleted from the menu item database. Items that can be ordered must be able to be added and removed from an order. All employees must be able to clock in and clock out. Servers must be able to do what all employees do as well as take orders.

Reports that should be generated include sales reports showing sales by food category and the total sales from the start of the day. Orders should also be stored in the database to be used to calculate total sales.

The non-functional requirements of the project included creating an intuitive, simple application that performs consistently. To achieve these goals the project should make menus effortlessly navigable and group user interface (UI) components in a manner that makes them easy to find. In addition, it was the opinion of the development team that giving each employee the appropriate level of access to resources was imperative for usability and security.

2.0       THE PROPOSED INFORMATION SYSTEM

While it is acknowledged that design is not always rational and while we do not expect any silver bullet, in our experience, software design becomes better with practice and experience. For this proposal, the design of the software included both architectural and subsystem design. The architecture of software defines the major software subsystems and the dependencies and interrelationships among subsystems. Architectural styles define a vocabulary for different classes of architectures. Examples of well-known architectural styles include pipe-and-filter, shared repository and event driven. In this course, each software development team was required to design the software using two architectural. The architectural styles chosen by the restaurant management team were the three-tiered layered architectural style and the shared-repository style.

The shared repository architectural style is shown in Figure 4. The design shows five major subsystems interacting with a shared data store. While this design is ideal for data driven applications that share a common database schema, it constraints the evolution of the database as well as the data formats on the individual subsystems. A layered architecture is shown in Figure 2.

            2.1       User Interface Design

Because of the nature of the proposal, an intuitive graphical user interface was required. The user interface design in Figure 4 is the JAVA Swing equivalent of the earlier design. There are a few alterations that had to be made. The buttons on the far right side on each screen have been removed and put onto a single menu accessible after login. On the first screen visible to the user we have removed all buttons except the sign in button. The functionality that was originally on this particular screen has been moved to subsequent menus and screens. In addition, we have added the clock functionality to every screen in the program so that no matter which screen an employee is viewing, he or she will be able to keep track of time.

The next screen (Figure 5) is where the employee can choose which tasks he or she wants to do. Options that appear grayed out are not available for the user that has logged in. Managers have all options, servers have all options except the management button, and finally normal employee are only granted access to system to log in and log out. All orders that are currently “owned” by this particular employee are listed in the list above the “add” and “edit” buttons. Below are three screenshots that show this.

 

The ordering screen allows a server or manager to create an order by selecting from four lists that represent the four types of food: beverage, appetizer, entrée, or dessert. When the item is selected, pressing the add button below the list adds the item to a fifth list which is the actual customer order. When the screen is exited, the information is stored in the database. All the screens are periodically updated with the current contents of the database.

3.0       ONLINE ORDERING SYSTEM

The Online Sales System is not a part of a large system. It is a standalone web application which will digitalize the current THR Information System processes. It is being claimed by THR Information System that it is very hard to work with existing mean of handling orders which is based on paper. Therefore, it is good for THR Information System to have a digitalized system through which they can search and process orders without hassling through the piles of documents. This will also help the staff to access the information remotely. Thus, the solution to be developed should be a web based application instead of desktop application. The figure 1 depicts a block diagram showing major interconnections of web-based system.

           

3.1       System Interfaces

There are three different types of users who are interacting with the system interface.

·         Customer

·         Account manager

·         Finance manager

Customer of THR shall be able to order, search, track and edit order information, in addition to this he can cancel an order under certain conditions. On the other hand the system shall let “Account Manager” to approve/reject an order, add new suppliers, and products. The “Finance Manager” shall be able to handle financial transactions and logistic support like shipment.

In future the system shall be able to let Shipment Company, bank and supplier to interact directly with the system.

3.1       User Interface

The user interaction with THR will be through the website, initially. In future, according to the business need the company would like to have a mobile software version as well. This interface has to be “user friendly” and intuitive so that the user won’t get lost or gets frustrated. Moreover, the web’s standards concerning graphical user interface will be respected.

3.2       Hardware Interfaces

The hardware recommended is a computer or any other terminal such as PDA, Smartphone, iPhone, iPad, and cellular phone which supports a web browser.

3.3       Software Interfaces

The system must be designed in a way that it can interact with multiple data storage locations. The web interface must be written in a web standard language such as Asp.Net, php, and etc.

3.4       Communication Interface

The THR system should support commonly used web browsers such as Internet Explorer, Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari, Opera and Netscape. More over the system shall provide support for mobile devices such as smartphone, iPhone, and PDAs; and iPad.

3.5       Memory Constrains

No memory constrains were identified.

3.6       Site adaptation requirements

Since the system is not an up gradation of any existing system, therefore there is no adaptation required.

3.7       Assumption and Constrains

The following constrains were identified for THR

·         Internet connection for web server shall be available 24 hours a day and 7 days a week.

·         In case of downtime the communication shall not affect the user.

·         Continuous downtime shall not exceed a day.

·         All the payments are handled by the Bank, which is not the part of the system

·         The system shall support at least 600 users simultaneously.

·         Data encryption shall be used for sensitive data sharing between user and the system.

·         The system shall support its deployment at more than one geographical location, if needed.

·         It should be possible/easy to add new functionality into the system without affecting it

·         The system shall accept customer order in different formats such as in XML, PDF, and JPEG (scanned paper) other than through company’s website

4.0       SYSTEM FUNCTIONALITY

The project features discussed in this proposal are based upon three modules, which are taken into consideration, namely Customer, Account Management and Financial Management. Customer module will help in order booking, order inquiry, payment delivery, shipment information, and etc. Account Management module is responsible for create, viewing, confirming, and changing information related to orders and customer. Whereas the Finance Management will deal with the generation, validation, and confirmation of pro-forma invoice and customer invoice; and will manage customer payments.

5.0       STRATEGIC PLANNING

            5.1       User Requirements

The system will be designed to be user friendly. The user friendly and interactive interfaces design helps to achieve this by enabling customers to easily browse through the menus place orders with just a few clicks and also allows restaurant employees to quickly go through the orders as they are placed and produce the necessary items with minimal delay and confusion. The system will be simple to use.

·         Processor: Intel dual core or above

·         Processor Speed:1.0GHZ or above

·         RAM: 1 GB RAM or above

·         Hard Disk: 20 GB hard disk or above

6.0       CONCLUSIONS

At any point of the day, a computerized management information system can instantly tell you how many of a particular product has been sold today (or last week, or last month) how much money you have in your cash drawer, and how much of that money is profit. Detailed sales reports make it much easier for you to keep the right stock on hand. Track your remaining inventory, spot sales trends, and use historical data to better forecast your needs. Often, the software can alert you to reorder when stocks run low. Many store owners think they know exactly what trends affect them find a couple of surprises once they have this data.

The wrong system, however, can be waste of money and a source of ongoing frustration. Switching from a traditional cash register to a computerized management information system can be difficult- there are many factors to consider and some pitfalls to avoid. However the return on investment and benefits to your business can really make it worth your time and effort. As a result, the need for a computerized management information system cannot be overemphasized.

ATTACHMENT

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