QUESTION PAPER

ENGINEERING FACULTY
Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering

COURSE: BTECH: Engineering: Industrial

SUBJECT: Information Systems 4: INF400S

DATE: 25th May 2015

TIME: 180 Minutes

TOTAL: 100 marks = 100%

FINAL TEST

EXAMINER: W. K. Ng’etich ___________ 16 March 2015

Signature Date

INTERNAL
MODERATOR: B Morar ___________ 20 March 2015
Signature Date

EXTERNAL
MODERATOR: Edu Aggenbach ___________ 24 March 2015
Signature Date

INSTRUCTIONS TO CANDIDATES
1. Answer all questions.
2. Hand in question paper with your answer book(s).
Page 1 of 3 25 May 2015 FINAL (TEST3)

QUESTION 1

Answer the following:

(a) Explain what information systems are highlighting its variation from a
‘management information system’ (MIS). (2)

(b) Illustrate the four traditional MIS systems showing their management level
structure. (2)

(c) In contrast to question 1 (b), list the new type of information system in
existence. (4)

(d) Discuss the 21st century rational of IS systems in today’s organisations.

(6)

(e) Discuss the following;

1) The importance and application of Michael Porter’s Value Chain within IS

to improve organisational performance. (6)

2) Motivate how changes in the way we do business today has necessitated

the need for business process reengineering (BPR) as a way forward.
(10)

(f) In ten summarised points, contrast between traditional business process

management and current business process redesign / reengineering. (10)

[40]

QUESTION 2

Answer the following:

(a) Business process management (BPR) came to be as a result six fundamental

transformational eras. Give a detailed account of these periods. (6)

(b) Industrial engineering (IE) has in the present day applied the capabilities of
information technology (IT) by integrating business processes and workflow
with IT in an effort to improve the way work is done today. Discuss the
following in relations to IE and IT symbiosis.
Page 2 of 3 25 May 2015 FINAL (TEST3)
1) Discuss how Kurstedt’s management systems model has achieved this.
(10)

2) Describe with examples, any four considerations that influence the

use/need of BPR. (4)

3) Discuss the five chronological steps demonstrating how BPR, and IE

integration may be applied in the redesigning / designing of an
organisation / business process. (5)

[25]

QUESTION 3

Answer the following:

(a) Discuss the reasons why Business process management suffered two
limitations how business process redesign / reengineering resolved this.
(4)

(b) BPR in information systems, works on the premise of ‘managing the process’
within organisations as opposed to managing functions. Give six detailed
justifications of the benefits of this. (6)

(c) BPR devised five critical generic process design factors necessary in the
developmental stage of organisational process design / redesign. Give a
detailed outline of these design factors. (5)

(d) Discuss the following statements in relations to BPR and organisational

process design.

1) “Process capability is a necessity for organisations intending to adopt a

BPR exercise.” (2)

2) “According to BPR, organisations fall under 3 types of processes.” (3)

[20]
Page 3 of 3 25 May 2015 FINAL (TEST3)

QUESTION 4

Answer the following:

(a) Describe briefly the correlation between business strategy and BPR. (5)

(b) Discuss five comprehensive reasons why traditional financial measures are
insufficient in today’s performance measurement of organisations. (5)

(c) “When process redesign has been undertaken in the past, it was typically
done with the objective of simply "rationalizing" the process i.e. eliminating
obvious bottlenecks & inefficiencies, without any particular business vision or
context in mind. An example is where industrial engineering adopted
Taylorism - "work simplification". The need to move from task to task
rationalization to redesign of entire processes with a specific business vision
and related process redesign objectives in mind was needed.”

BPR is a systematic process, and follows a sequence of purposeful steps.

With this in mind, briefly discuss two optional approaches one would first
have to consider when identifying which process to start a redesign. (5)

[15]

TOTAL: [100]