A large supermarket chain has over 100 stores across the country. Each store is made up of several
departments: greengrocery, frozen foods, general grocery, dairy, meat, delicatessen, bakery and
health/beauty. Each store has approximately 100,000 products on its shelves. Individual products are
known as stock keeping units (SKUs). The SKU numbers are placed on these products using scannable
labels and become the product’s bar code.
About 90,000 of the SKUs come from outside suppliers/manufacturers and have bar codes imprinted
on their packaging.
There are two main locations for business operations within the stores. The first of these is at the cash
registers where customers pay for their purchases. The shop assistant scans the product bar codes into
the Point Of Sale (POS) system to process the sales transactions.
The supermarket sells products online and in local stores.
With online purchases, customers must register online to have a valid credit card and contact information.
The supermarket web service provides the groceries catalogue and shopping cart. Customers can choose
groceries adding to the shopping cart one by one. Once the requested groceries/products and a credit card
are validated, the order records are issued to customers. The local stores’ sales staff will provide the
services to PACK and check the ordered groceries according to the requested time by the customer, so
they’re ready for customers to pick up to suit customers need. The online orders may ask to deliver
customers’ purchases to their homes. The delivery team needs to work out the delivery efficiently.
The second location of the business activities is at the back door where runs the supply chain to support
the products of the supermarket. The supermarket manager is concerned with the logistics of procurement
transactions and selling products while maximising profit.
Procurement is a critical business activity. Effective procurement of products at the right resale price is
obviously important to retailers and distributors. Procurement also has strong bottom-line implications
for any organization that purchase products from suppliers and manufacturers. Procurement officers need
to perform a wide range of activities from negotiating contracts to issuing purchase orders; from shipping
3
notifications to delivery; from warehousing to tracking receipts and authorizing payments. Significant
cost savings opportunities are associated with reducing the number of suppliers and negotiating
agreements with preferred suppliers. The procurement management is frequently checking those most
frequently purchased products and identifying opportunities to negotiate favourable pricing by
consolidating suppliers for single sourcing.
Each store requires to have inventory management. The store managers keep their inventory records and
maintain their inventory at a good level. Efficient inventory management is driven by demand planning.
After the demand is forecasted and the inventory at a low level, the managers order the products and
trace the deliveries from the supermarket warehouse. The inventory’s goal is to obtain the appropriate
quantity of products in the most economical manner.
Profits are obtained by charging the maximum possible for each product while keeping costs associated
with acquisition and other overheads as low as possible. The supermarket finance manager will monitor
the performance of their business operations and allow the business analysis.
To ensure high customer numbers, management needs to carefully consider its pricing and promotions.
Promotions include temporary price reductions, newspapers and other media ads, store displays and
catalogues on store web online weekly. Heavy price reductions are the most effective way to create
substantial increases in the number of products sold. As a result, the visibility of all forms of promotion
is an important part of analysing the business operations of the supermarket.
The supermarket chain has implemented a Frequent Shopper Program to attract loyal customers. The
shoppers can register online or at a local store to receive the frequent shoppers’ cards. They can collect
the points with their membership card for purchases at any store by scanning their frequent shoppers’
cards. More purchases can get more points to obtain more membership benefits. The customer
relationship management sends the membership letters monthly and handles customer’s complaints and
other issues related to customers.
The supermarket finance department needs to process financial related transactions including paying out
to suppliers for procurement transactions, collecting receivables, calculating profile of promotion,
preparing the regular report of profit & loss to management analysis and decision markings.
The supermarket management wants to gain a better understanding of customer buying habits. Managers
want to analyse what products are selling in which stores under what promotional conditions and whether
customers preferred shopping style is at a local store or online shopping. Therefore, an integrated
information system is indispensable to the success of the supermarket.
3 Your Task: (100 marks total)
You need to analyse (as a preliminary to designing) the information system for Supermarket Chain
using the OO methodology. Your tasks encompass the following steps:
I. Requirements Gathering [15 marks]
4
1. Create an owner’s view chart for the new system that you can show to the stakeholders for feedback.
You can make any reasonable assumptions if any details that you think are important and not clearly
mentioned in the case description. If uncertain, consult with the client (via the Further Requirements,
Questions and Clarifications – tutors/lecturer).
[15 marks]
II. Domain Analysis [15 marks]
2. Write domain definitions and, from there, proceed to establish the domain scope for the system and
each subsystem. The following table provides a template for your answer.
Supermarket Chain
Domain Definitions & Scope
Domain Scope Outline
[5 marks]
3. Identify the domain concepts from the domain definition & scopes of the above question 2.
Categorise the concepts into different types such as processes, functions, roles, objects, and business
rules. You need to list them in a domain dictionary table using the following template:
Supermarket Chain
Domain Dictionary
Name Type Description Domain
[10 marks]
5
III. Behavioural Modelling [40 marks]
After completing the domain analysis, you are ready to start use case modelling. Please make sure that
you use the domain concepts identified during the domain analysis activity as the basis for behavioural
modelling.
4. Identify stakeholders of the whole system. List them with descriptions and indicate the candidate
actors using the following table template.
Supermarket Chain
Stakeholders & Actors
Name Description Actors
[5 marks]
5. Create a use case summary for the Supermarket Chain business activities using the template table
below. (At least 6 use cases should be identified in the table.)
Supermarket Chain
Use Case Summary
ID Name Description Actors
[10 marks]
6. Complete a use case template for a use case that relates to online sales order. Use the blank template
below.
Use Case:
ID:
Scope:
Priority:
Summary:
Primary Actor:
Supporting Actors:
Stakeholders:
Generalization:
Include:
Extend:
Precondition:
Trigger:
Normal Flow:
Sub-Flows:
Alternate Flow/ Exceptions:
Post-Condition:
Non-Behavioral Requirements:
Open Issues:
Source:
Author:
6
Revision & Date
[5 marks]
7. Create a use case diagram for the Product sale subsystem(s), complete with “include” and “extend”
where appropriate.
[10 marks]
8. Create an activity diagram for the Product Sale subsystem(s).
[10 marks]
IV. Structural and Dynamic Modelling [30 marks]
After completing the behavioural modelling, you will continue with structural and dynamic modelling.
9. Identify classes for supermarket chain system. List each class, along with responsibilities and the use
cases they are associated with, using the following table templates.
Supermarket Chain
Preliminary Class Candidates
Class Responsibilities Use Cases
▪ ▪
▪ ▪
[10 marks]
10. Create a complete class diagram with associations and multiplicity information for the Product sale
subsystem. Questions: Is there any relationship in this case study that can be described by
aggregation/composition? Are there classes that can be generalized/specialized? Note: Answer the
questions separately for the three diagrams.
[10 marks]
11. Create a sequence diagram for the process of online purchase on Supermarket Web Service