5 Project Definition

Purpose

This document is an agreement between the project manager and the project board and contains all management agreements needed for managing this project. The Project Initiation Documentation (PID) sets out what and when the project will deliver, who will be involved, and what the budget is. The PID is assembled from a series of other documents, such as the Business Case, various strategies, a description of roles & responsibilities etc.

Background

Solana Valley is a chain of UK mid-range department stores. The company operates 84 department stores in the UK. Solana Valley offers conventional merchandise such as clothes, household items, toys and kitchen and home appliances.

Since a few years there has been an increasing number of complaints from customers about the waiting lines in the stores. These complaints have led customers to shop at other retail stores and Solana Valley management has become increasingly worried about this. Waiting times average 6 minutes 20 seconds at the moment, with peaks of up to 10 minutes on busy days.

Increasing the number of cashiers is an option, but the additional wages would put a heavy burden on the company.

The development of new technologies has created the possibility to reduce waiting times to almost zero at the checkout desks, by the use of RFID technology. RFID stands for “Radio-frequency identification” (RFID) and consists of a small tag that uses wireless radio-frequency electromagnetic fields to transfer data, for the purposes of automatically identifying and tracking tags attached to objects. The tags can be read quickly by a scanner and many items can be scanned almost simultaneously. A customer could pass a check out gate, view all products on screen and finalize card payment in less than one minute.

There is another important benefit of the RFID system. Inventory management will become much easier, faster and cheaper. The store could have a real-life view on the store inventory at any moment. Besides, much information could be collected with the RFID tags about customer behaviour. Which sections does a customer visit? How long does he or she stay?

Besides, when an RFID tag is read, a monitor can display information about the product the customer has in hand. The customer can check stock levels, go to the product website, find accessories, special order a different colour, or any other action that we choose.

Project objectives and desired outcomes

1. Reduced waiting times at check out cash registers 2. Reduced wage costs 3. Reduced costs of inventory management 4. Increased revenues 5. Enhanced quality reputation

Main Products

1. Operational RFID based self checkout system 2. Operational procedure for product tagging 3. RFID based Inventory management system 4. Pilot Set-up 5. Store Configurations 6. Communication Plan (Internal plan and external promotional plan) 7. Human Resource Plan

Project scope

The RFID system will be implemented in all stores, except the Riverton store.

The number of existing check out cash registers will be reduced by this project.

The RFID system will be integrated with the bonus card system.

Exclusions (out of scope)

The Riverton store is not included in this project, as the future of this store in being discussed in the next years strategic plan.