Fairfax futon, inc. (ffi) has 10 locations along the east coast with the main warehouse in fredericksburg, va and prides themselves on quality products and knowledgeable sales staff. ffi sells to individuals looking to purchase one futon as well as corporations looking to purchase several futons.
when a customer decides to place an order, they phone or come to the store and a salesclerk enters the sale into the system to update the sales order transaction file. most sales are made to customers who have previously made product inquiries, if not, the new customer will need to be added to the system when the order is taken. ffi sales people may lower the list price with manager approval during the sales process and customers have 30 days to return goods.
a warehouse worker in fredericksburg, va picks the goods from one order at a time based on a daily check of the system for open orders. the warehouse worker updates the pick goods transaction file and prints 2 copies of a pick ticket which is a heavy duty sticker with a pick number and description of the order. out of stock items will be tagged with a new pick ticket at a later date. picked futons are reviewed by a warehouse manager who places one pick ticket on an item in each order and forwards those goods, along to shipping. the other pick ticket is filed by date in the warehouse.
a shipping employee receives the tagged goods and keys the information into the system to update the shipping transaction file and print a shipping label. each shipment goes directly to a customer's address because the store locations do not have any extra space capacity. shipping procedures require all tagged items from an order be shipped the next day using a third party carrier. an electronic shipping log is maintained by the shipping clerk and viewable to all store locations to aid in customer inquiry. an electronic copy of the shipping log is sent to billing.
upon electronic notification of shipping, a billing clerk charges the customer account for 50% of total charges. the remaining 50% will be billed in 30 days. the billing policy is standard and applies to all customers. a cashier records customer collections received into ffi's main checking account. in order to improve internal controls, ffi maintains a separate payroll cash account. an ar clerk manages past due accounts.
required:
conceptual model: draw an rea model with cardinalities for the operating events, agents and resources in the sales/collection process described above. use crows feet notation for cardinalities.