Huffman Trucking Operating Systems

Huffman Trucking Operating Systems

Huffman Trucking is a national trucking firm that was founded in 1936 in Cleveland, Ohio. They provide freight carrier services between the Midwest and the East Coast and have both offices and plants located in Ohio, California, Missouri, and New Jersey.
As one of its goals, Huffman Trucking would like to be the industry leader in using its technology to the maximum efficiencies when providing their customer service and doing their day to day business. They are the first major freight carrier to outsource its information systems support. Their Finance and Accounting System applications are supported by Smith Systems Consulting and are integrated with the Flight Maintenance System and the Enterprise Transportation Application. These systems are tailored to capture the financial and accounting data and information related to the trucking business. Their system also allows them to maintain their customer data along with their historical sales. Marketing is able to make their plans and budgets electronically available to their management and present them as needed at sale meetings. The Sales Department has established a detailed database of its customers that can be shared with other team members. The Human Resource Department uses an HRIS system that was developed by in-house programmers that tracks employees operationally and financially. Smith Consulting has developed a system for Huffman Trucking and recommends that they convert over in order to further standardize their system.

Huffman Trucking currently uses a Novell NetWare and Microsoft Windows based network operating system which provides the communications and routing services necessary to run its business successfully. The systems used at all of the offices are Microsoft Windows based with the Ohio and Missouri offices using Macintosh as well. The Ohio and Missouri offices use Lotus Notes instead of the Microsoft Exchange for their email service. AOL is used as the email server for California and New Jersey.
Huffman Trucking has its current operating systems because it fitted the specific needs of each office and plant involved at the time. They are currently working with Smith Consulting and have certain criterion that has been shared in order to continue to build a successful operating system. In the end, to be successful, Huffman Trucking must be able to fluently communicate and share data across the various facilities as well as with their customers and suppliers. The way that Huffman Trucking is set up is if one of their offices/plants were to go down the other offices/plants would remain operating. The data may no longer be shared among each other until it is up and running again.

References
University of Phoenix, (2005). Huffman Trucking, Retrieved July 19, 2008, from Virtual Organizations: https://ecampus.phoenix.edu/secure/aapd/CIST/VOP/Business/Huffman/IT/HuffmanIT001.htm
Parsons, J., and Oja, D. (2004). New Perspectives on Computer Concepts. Chapter 11. Course Technology.

References: University of Phoenix, (2005). Huffman Trucking, Retrieved July 19, 2008, from Virtual Organizations: https://ecampus.phoenix.edu/secure/aapd/CIST/VOP/Business/Huffman/IT/HuffmanIT001.htm Parsons, J., and Oja, D. (2004). New Perspectives on Computer Concepts. Chapter 11. Course Technology.