The Queen Mary 2 and Partner

            The Queen Mary 2 (QM2) is the largest and most expensive cruise ship ever built. It includes five swimming pools, a planetarium, a two-story theater that seats 1,000, a casino, a gym, luxurious kennels, a nursery staffed with British nannies, and the largest ballroom, library and wine collection at sea. Of all its amenities, the one considered most valuable to the crew and management and key to the functioning of the vessel is the integrated network and information system accessible in every cabin.

            The $800 million QM2, constructed in the shipyard at Chantiers del’ Atlantique, France, and owned by Miami- based Cunard Line Ltd., made her maiden voyage in early 2004. Passengers in each of her 1,310 cabins had access to digital entertainment such as on-demand movies and interactive television. Each cabin is also wired with Internet access and network services. For example, passengers use the network to make shore excursion reservations and dinner plans. Upon checking in, passengers are presented with a plastic bar-coded card. The card is used while on board to make purchases, which are then billed to the customer’s account. It is also swiped as guests leave and return to the ship to track passenger location. The ship’s massive data network brings order where there once was chaos. Ship managers can run reports showing which passengers are on board, how many will be attending the morning exercise class, and which entrée was most popular at last night’s dinner. The network and database are backed up by redundant systems that automatically take over if the primary system fails.

            The information system, called the Ship Partner, is used to track security, billing, telephone service, onboard television, and other operations. It was designed by Discovery Travel Systems LP (DTS). John Broughan, president of DTS, says that the IT needs of cruise ship operators differ from those of typical hotel property management companies, so specialized systems had to be created to better serve cruise companies. The Queen Mary 2 provides yet another example of how information systems assist with management functions, providing valuable information and offering services to customers.

 Critical Thinking Questions

1. 1. What conveniences does The Ship Partner information system provide to passengers of the Queen Mary 2? What entertainment services could be made available to passengers through this digital network?

The information system of Queen Mary 2, so called THE SHIP PARTNER enables passengers in each cabin to have an access to digital entertainment such as on-demand movies and interactive television. Since, the cabin is also wired with Internet access and network services, passengers can use the network to make shore excursion reservations and dinner plans.

2.             2. How does The Ship Partner information system assist ship managers with their duties and responsibilities?

            Bundled with the information system is the plastic bar-coded card. Through this, the ship’s massive data network brings order where there once was chaos.

Moreover, this plastic bar-coded card help the ship managers to manage and run reports showing those passengers being on board on the ship and not. Also, it counts how many customers will be attending the morning exercise class, and which entrée was most popular at last night’s dinner

3.                             3. How does The Ship Partner information system assist Cunard in competing in the travel industry? What other travel & leisure industries would benefit from a system like The Ship Partner?

            Since Queen Mary 2 is the largest and most expensive cruise ship ever built many business enthusiasts would be very interested on to how and what is with this ship that makes it most expensive. They will sooner discover about its accommodations and different articles of trade offered to their customers or passengers and this will be a great entrance of presenting the information system that helps the management for this ship distinctive and effectual to every aspect of its operations. This will also persist to the curiosity of whom or which company has ever been to a brilliant idea of making this ship unique. Through that discovery it will assist Cunard to be very competitive in travel industry by making an edge of their vessel from the other.

            By then THE SHIP PARTNER ought to be operational for other travel & leisure activity such as cruise, field trips and seminars and most especially in engine-driven flying vehicle.

4.                               4. Why is it important for the Ship Partner to have a backup system? How would a system wide failure affect the functioning of the ship?

            For all type of information system, back up   is very essential.  Towards The Ship Partner, the important of having a backup system is very useful when there is a primary system failure. Because if such things happen this will affect the various operation of the Queen Mary 2 since all of its process somehow depend on the existence of that system. This will affect not only their daily commodities for their passengers but also for passenger authentication. Going over with the discussion, system failure might be conducive for pirates. Metaphorically, showing those possibilities that it would be difficult for the ship management to recognize which among all on board people are authenticated personnel and not.

On The Job Training [3rd week]

On the first day of my 3^rd week here in DCInvest, the tasks that I am supposed to do are stack up. I have to do my progress report during my 1^st week and 2^nd week as an OJT. In the morning, I scanned a lot of Tax Certificates, BIR certificates and official receipts then after that, I’ve emailed it to Ms. Maricel M. Jawali using DCGroup email address. The ongoing time is very hectic, while having data encoding about their inventory of company’s computer assets, I have to encode a Certification of Employment for the EV Department on trucking management. Gladly all I have to do is copy of what has been written on the old copy of certification and just change some personal and important information of the new employee. These are name, date of employment, online examination results (the percentages and total), another information is all about its’ new work such as type of work, truck to be use, plate no. and tax certificate no. The next hours, I’ve fax the purchase order of HRD to Office Supplies Depot.
 The 2^nd day, June 14, 2011, I was absent due to adding and dropping of subject. I have to cope up with my behind subject which is Software Engineering. The 3^rd day of my 3^rd week was a bit mess and busy day. In the morning, my co-OJT, Ms. Lovable Lalaine B. Fabela and I we’re assigned to distribute a SUN cellular billings to different department of this company. At first, I find it easy because all we have to do is to give the billings to the assigned personnel for receiving of bills of every department but later on it become very tiring. Since some people listed on the billings are independent, which means they are no longer part of the department’s liabilities so what we have to do is to search all over the company’s premises of where is this person taking his/her office hours. In the afternoon, I was taking in charge to backup all the obligatory files of one of the PC Unit of MONDE-NISSIN dept. After that, Sir Xavier Babatid, who is the IT technician and at the same time our supervisor instructed me to reformat the said PC and install the considered necessary software like QuickBooks Pro, Microsoft Office, Remote Administrator and Team Viewer.

The next 2 days of this week is all about setting up the new arrived 10 Lenovo Idea Pad net books for the employee of Smart Matina. At first we have to install the operating system which is Windows XP and did the partitioning of its hard disk into 80000. Later than that we have installed software for instance, Avira Antivirus Personal, Remote Admin, MS Office 2003, Adobe Reader, Team Viewer V.4, USB Disk Security, Compatibility Pack for MS Office, Google Chrome for browsing the internet and set the power user. At the end of Friday, I did the data encoding for the final re-transmittal of 10 Lenovo Idea Pad net books to Smart Matina.

On The Job Training [2nd week]

This week is all about technical support, troubleshooting and graphics design. Same with last week I also do reformatting some laptops and software installation. There are times also that I am task to do encoding especially when the IT Dept. is doing their inventory regarding on the computers of this company have. Later on, the EV department requested to edit a photo for the Electric vehicle tarpaulin and stickes and I do the honor.
 The tarpaulin was all about advertising their electric vehicle which is a NO GASOLINE POLLUTION vehicle and a tag line of “Sakay na!”. The sticker is for the contact information when buying an electric vehicle. In doing the photo editing I used adobe Photoshop CS4 and I also used CMYK color on it instead of RGB so that when printer out, it’s not pixilated. Nonetheless, I’ve set already the image for tarpaulin, the first is 16” x 47” and the other one is 20cm x 65cm, with the sticker size it was 5” x 16 “. On Saturday, the pictures are being finalized and ready to be printed out.

On The Job Training [first week]

The first week of my on the job training is not that much productive, since I started my duty on Wednesday I only have 4 days to do. As a neophyte, I do first some observations of how this company and the environment evolve inside its premises. As to what I observe, the business transaction of this company is all about distributing different products to malls, groceries and small stores. This involves product name as follows: UFC, MONDE, EUROBAKER, SMART, EV and etc.
 In the part of IT department, people there are not what really those people whose work is to do hard coding. Instead, IT department do database support, technical support and networking like reformatting issued PC’s and laptops of the company to their employees, software installation such as Microsoft Office, Team Viewer, QuickBooks, Adobe Reader, Remote Admin and Antivirus like Avira. These are the software commonly installed to old and new PC’s which are essential to the company’s daily business transactions.  My second day is all about file handling, since the MJ (Mead Johnson) department needs extra help for their accounting process since they are competing with the deadlines, I was task to separate their sales with an official receipt dated October 2010-present from the old sales and it takes a whole day for me to get the job done because it’s not only 10 or 20 stores record to encounter, it is more of what I think. The third day is more on technical issues like troubleshooting on printers, WIFI set-up and one IT technician have discussed to us regarding on the network problem of Euro Baker. With that, my learning from Network Technology 1 and Network Technology 2 are being recalled but still the problem remains unsolved because the server of euro baker provides a static IP address which is, for me, vague to imagine of how the gateway, IP addresses and routers or switches affect each other.

 By the next day, Saturday, is all about troubleshooting. Regarding with the Inventory System which is our project for our whole OJT period in this company, our data gathering is not yet enough to develop a project proposal and feasibility study because we are still waiting for the ongoing inventory that this company is doing.