Mis - Tva

1. How would you classify the operations and management structure of TVA? In particular, does it lean toward centralization or decentralization?

* Yes, the operations and management structure of TVA lean toward centralization. This centralization offended heads of the various business units, largely because they saw it as a loss of control. Scott Woodlee began working at TVA in construction and in 1995 moved into purchasing. By coordinating purchases, he was able to obtain volume discounts. The ideas grew into the Distributor Procurement Partnership Program. A key feature in the system is that most of the same supplies are also need by the local and regional power distributors. The system collects and bids from the vendors and utility companies purchase based on the winning contract. The system makes it easy to order new supplies – without going through a new bidding process each time.

2. How would you classify the management information system at TVA? How has the authority changed between 1991 and 1994?

* In 1991, TVA signed a five-year contract to purchase up to $60 million worth of personal computers and local area network equipment from Concept Automation Inc. of Sterling, Virginia. The bulk of purchases are expected to come from the headquarters in Knowxville, but offices in Huntsville, Alabama, and Chattanooga. The goal is to provide better management data foresters, biologists, and engineers throughout the organization. Overall responsibility for the MIS department technically belonged to a centralized core MIS team. The central MIS team was also accused of being heavily biased in favor of solutions involving centralized programs written in COBOL. It was generally accepted that the MIS team would always advocate a solution they knew best – regardless of the technical merits of the alternatives. As a result, the business units often turned to outside consultants and programmers to create new information systems, bypassing the internal IS...