This question has two parts; be sure to answer both. First, describe the four parts of a system. Next, imagine that you own a one-person business. You create beautiful, elaborate wedding cakes (for which you charge a large sum of money). What are the components of your wedding cake business system?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

—The four parts of a system are (1) inputs—the people, money, information, equipment, and materials required to produce an organization's goods or services; (2) transformation processes—the organization's capabilities in management, internal processes, and technology that are applied to converting inputs into outputs; (3) outputs—the products, services, profits, losses, employee satisfaction or discontent, and the like that are produced by the organization; and (4) feedback—the information about the reaction of the environment to the outputs that affects the inputs. Are the customers buying or not buying the product?

In your wedding cake business, the inputs are the flour, cream, sugar, and fillings that you use to make your product. The transformational process is what we would call cooking (mixing ingredients, baking the cake), but it also includes creative elements like creating decorations from fondant and assembling the entire cake into an edifice that will stand up and not fall apart. Your output is, of course, the wedding cakes themselves. Your feedback will often come in the form of compliments from the happy bride and groom about how delicious the cake was—or complaints from the unhappy bride and groom about how dry, tasteless, and ugly the cake was (in which case, you won't be in business for much longer).