Quiz 3B: Name ___________________________________ UT EID ______________________

1. What is EDI? How does it improve the efficiency of supply chain management?

EDI is “electronic data interchange.”

In business EDI is used for a variety of documents, such as purchase orders and invoices, all types of documents concerning shipping, payment, import/export information, and more recently all types of documents associated with supply chain management. Prior to EDI, a major inefficiency in business paperwork processes was that documents were being transferred back and forth between paper and electronics between firms. Electronic form within the firm and paper to communicate to other firms. EDI eliminates labor cost of handling all the paper and is faster and more accurate. This can facilitate just in time inventory in production.

2. What is CAD? B. What is the relationship to Moore’s Law C. Give an example how CAD in improves efficiency of the design process.

CAD is “computer assisted design.”

The first CAD program was a mechanical drafting program created by GM in the 60s. It cost $1.2M and required a mainframe. As computer power has constantly increased due to Moore's law, CAD/CAE software has gravitated to PCs with a corresponding decrease in cost. The improvement in graphics in CAD/CAE parallels the general improvement in computer graphics as computers have become more and more powerful.

Some design processes simply would not be feasible without software/computer assistance. For example, suppose you were going to lay out an IC with 1B (US billion) electronic components by hand and it only took you 1 second to draw the component on paper by hand. It would take you 2,777,778 hours or 317 years to complete the task. Yes, you could have a 1000 person design team, but think about the coordination problems to produce an error free design.

Prevent Murphy's Law: All departments in the firm will have the most current design. Before computer stored designs, each department might have a different version creating opportunities for Murphy's law to occur.

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