ITECH1100 Processes and Automation
ITECH1100 Processes and Automation
ITECH1100 Processes and Automation
You should use Microsoft Excel (or equivalent open-source software) for this assessment task.
Important: This assignment specification is generated just for you, 30385848. Do not distribute this
specification. If your personal specification is made publicly available online, academic misconduct charges
may be applied.
Assessment Details
For this assignment, you will complete the following set of tasks using Excel, and create a report to describe
your work.
Ensure you submit Excel files created for ALL tasks, along with your report. You may use an ePortfolio, a
Word document or a PDF for your report submission.
Scenario details
The following scenario is fictional, and not based on any real veterinary clinic. It is also highly simplified, and should not be used
as a basis for a real business management system.
Supreme Veterinary Care is a small veterinary clinic, working with domestic companion animals. Mostly
they work with dogs, cats, and smaller animals such as hamsters and rabbits.
Supreme Veterinary Care is run by a team of two veterinarians, Anne and Bhavneet, and one administrative
staff member, Caesar.
Most of the time, team members work the following shifts at Supreme Veterinary Care:
Costs
Anne, as the most experienced veterinarian, costs $50 per hour to employ.
These rates take into account other costs related to employment, you don't need to add any additional
offsets.
All staff are also entitled to four weeks of paid annual leave, during which casual replacements are
required at a cost of $54 per hour for the veterinarians and $35 per hour for Caesar.
During these four weeks, Anne, Bhavneet, and Caesar continue to be paid.
Fixed costs such as permits, rent, and insurance are $18000 per year, and monthly utility costs (such as
electricity and gas) are $460 per month.
Using Excel, create a spreadsheet called operating_costs.xlsx that calculates the projected annual outgoing
costs of running Supreme Veterinary Care. Only include the above expenses.
Your spreadsheet should be configured such that the working hours, hourly rates, and annual and monthly
costs can be varied easily.
After building the spreadsheet, use it to answer the following questions in your report:
What is the projection of total costs for the next year, including labour, annual, and monthly costs?
How much income does Supreme Veterinary Care need per month to cover the above costs?
What is the projection of labour costs only for the next year, if both veterinarians were to cost $50 per
hour, but the clinic closed on Wednesday?
History data
When customers attend Supreme Veterinary Care, they have a consultation with whichever veterinarian is
available that day.
In order to improve their business processes, Caesar has been keeping records of each consultation for
several months in a spreadsheet.
This data includes a date, the consultation type, the animal type, the expenses incurred (such as
tests, protective equipment, and so on) and the price charged.
Using Excel, process the history spreadsheet and use any appropriate charts to visualize:
How some aspect of the business has changed over time (for example, prices, expenses, types of
consultation, frequency of each animal, etc); and
How some consultations differ between veterinarians.
You will need to find a way to use Excel to associate each consultation with a staff member.
Describe your approach and your findings in your report (approximately 250-400 words).
Include your visualizations as images. Be sure to use appropriate titles and labels.
For vaccinations and check-ups, the team would like to standardize costs, so that the price for each is
fixed for animals of the same type.
Using Excel, analyse the historical data you have available, and create a spreadsheet that allows Caesar
to enter the animal type and consultation type, and gives a quote amount for vaccinations and check-
ups.
Ensure that your spreadsheet is usable - it should be simple and include appropriate text and formatting to
make your spreadsheet easy to use by a member of the Supreme Veterinary Care team (or by a University
lecturer).
Describe and justify your approach, including how you tested your solution, in your report
(approximately 150 words).
Using BPMN swimlane diagrams, show how the spreadsheet you created in Task 3 can be applied to
improve the processes at Supreme Veterinary Care.
Optional task 5
There are no partial marks awarded for this bonus task - you must complete all features to attain the
bonus marks.
It is possible to attain full marks for this assignment without completing this challenge task.
Further details
Assignment support
This assignment is supported by the first 8 lectures and labs. Work on the assignment should be spread
over several weeks after the relevant lab has been mastered.
Submission
All files should be submitted to Moodle by the due date and time. Check with your tutor as to whether a
hard copy is required in addition to the electronic submission.
Marking Criteria/Rubric
Refer to the attached marking guide.
Feedback
Feedback will be supplied through Moodle. Authoritative marks will be published through fdlMarks
Plagiarism
Plagiarism is the presentation of the expressed thought or work of another person as though it is one's own
without properly acknowledging that person. You must not allow other students to copy your work and must
take care to safeguard against this happening. More information about the plagiarism policy and procedure
for the university can be found at
http://federation.edu.au/students/learning-and-study/online-help-with/plagiarism.
Total: 15