Market return system for the Maliban milk products (Pvt.) Ltd.

Abstract

Maliban Milk Products (Private) Limited (founded in 1997), is a subsidiary ofthe Maliban Group ofCompanies, and as at date, it is the second market leader in the relevant industry in Sri Lanka. While the management was ambitious of pushing it towards a higher market segment, it was simultaneously constrained with issues over obtaining reliable and accurate data for more informed and enlightened decision making for achieving its goals. The main constraint was market returns that stood at 7% of total sales. Apart from the loss caused thereby to the company, the management was conscious of its added negative impacts in causing end-user dissatisfaction and distrust that could greatly hinder management’s efforts to further boost sales. From the inception, Maliban Milk has never had a proper effective system for recording and monitoring especially market returns. This frustrated the management’s efforts to ascertain and address issues pertaining to high rate of returns. Maliban Milk depended on its installed Infor System 21 as its ERP Application. Although this was further supplemented with MS Excel based worksheets and manual paper based records maintained separately by Finance and Quality Assurance Departments, they failed to provide the management requirements for reliable information; so much so, that the identical query posed at two different times for detailed breakdowns ofmarket returns involving comparisons and combinations sometimes yielded highly diverse results! It was in this backdrop that the management finally decided to discard its existing market returns monitoring systems and get the correct type of Application that would be an exact fit to catering to its total requirements of accurate and reliable information expeditiously. Several options embracing different models, modules and prototypes were examined at depth not only for efficiency and accuracy, but also for financial and related economic costs involved in installation and maintenance including scope for accommodating changes as and when necessary in the foreseeable future. Finally, a Maliban Milk Market Return System with a graphical user interface was installed and is now fully operative (along with Infor System 21) yielding satisfactory results up to now in catering to total requirements of data and information not only for head office, but also for Distributors/Customers too. u This new system implemented not only retrieves data inputs from the System 21 application, but also updates outputs into that System. This application works on the Java programming language. Therefore Unified Modeling Language was used for system analysis and design. It is capable of being viewed by the Quality Assurance and Finance departments, and also this furnishes a variety ofreports to Company Management. All relevant aspects and angles pertaining to the above matters are covered in this Project Report in greater detail including a separate chapter on what appears to remain to be done for the future.