Information Technology has brought about an entire industry. Many thousands of people now make their living directly in the information Technology world.
Example, Programmers, Systems Managers, Technicians, consultants, Data Processing Staff, Systems Analysts, Network Designers, Network Managers , Web Designers and Technical Authors. Every Week Thousands of Computer-Related jobs are advertised. There are never enough people with the right skills to satisfy the demand. New Industries have been created as a result of computer technology. For Example Mobile Telephones would not be possible without the databases which keep track of where users are.
Automatic cash Machines rely on online checks to validate requests. Many companies have arisen because of the Internet. Many traditional jobs such as construction have disappeared. There is less demand for manual labour. Many old skills are not needed any more.
Another example is typesetters who used to set out newspapers were skilled and highly paid, but this process has been replaced by Desktop Publishing. This allows much faster typesetting and transmission of copy between offices. Some Factory workers have been replaced by robots. Production line robots are more accurate than humans, they do not need to take breaks or go onsrtrike and are consistent in their quality of work, but have caused people to lose their jobs.
Most jobs have altered as a result of computers. Such as Shop assistants scan bar codes, secertaries use office software and police use databases to track criminals and check on drivers and cars. Computer-realated jobs changes very rapidly. It skills get out of date very quickly. Few people expect to have jobs for life.
There are skill shortages because firms have to regulary train newcomers, training is expensive. Firms that do not invest in training often lose staff to those that do. Traning is itself big business. Traning often costs more than the computer system and network that is designed to support.
Computers and computer communications have made working from home a possibility. This is sometimes called teleworking. The advantages of teleworking are less travel this reduces the environmental costs of communting and the personal stress and loss of time caused by a daily trip to work, working hours to suit the individual to make personal life easier , You can work anywhere u want And there is savings on expensive office space. The disadvantages of tele working is less social contact so you won’t be able to come up with many ideas, a suitable room has to be found at home and the likelihood of interruptions from the family.
Also readthedescription of computerIct is Increasingly used by all workers , workers in genal, and particularly those in office jobs, are being required to spend more and more of their working day using computers. This is because computers can increase the amount of work done. This makes businesses more Productive and so more competitive.
Computers can do the boring, repetitive work and leave employees to do the intersting jobs. How ever it’s expensive to keep investing in the latestand more efficient technology and it takes time and money to retrain staff. There may be job losses as computers replace people for some tasks. Continued use of computers can cause health problems. When the computers in the supermarket crash the checkout tills come to a stand still and if the crash lasts for any length of time you have to leave your trolleys and leave the store and walk out of the shop empty handed. One reason why the checkout tills cannot process the goods in the trolley is that non of the goods are marked with a price.
The barcode needs to be read in order to obtain the price of the goods from the computer. Computer also control stock levels and process customer payments at the tills, There are 3 different types of checkout tills POS terminal. , EPOS terminal. , EFTPOS terminal. Supermarket checkout tills are quite sophisticated with laser scanners to read the bar codes. All goods found on the shelves in supermarkets are labelled with bar codes.
A bar code is a series of black and white lines of different thickness and represent a 13 digit number. A bar code can be read with a hand-held scanner or a laser scanner at the checkout. an ordinary checkout till is called a point of sale (POS) terminal. The barcode can tell us four different things about the product. These are The first two numbers tells us what country the product comes from.
The next five numbers tell us who the manufacturer is. The next five numbers tell us what the product is. The last number tells us that the barcode has been read correctly. The scanner emits a beam of light that reflects off the barcode.
The white lines reflect light strongly while the black line reflect less strongly. These variation in reflection are picked up by senses in the scanner and converted in to a digital signal. Barcodes are cheap to produce. The supermarket computer holds a database containing information on all the products sold in the store.
As the item is scanned, the barcode number is passed to the computer where a search is made of the database. When the item is received by the checkout, it is printed on to the customers receipt. Having too little stock can cause problems for the store as customers could shop in other stores to get food not available in the supermarket. It is often the manager’s job to decide the amount of stock to hold in the store.
The manager will also know how often new deliveries can be made and will have estimates of the numbers of customers likely to visit the store each day. The barcode helps keep track on the amount of items leaving the store. This can help work out the amount of stock in the store. Keeping a careful check on the amount of stock in a supermarket is very important.
The data base gives information on what to order. Details of special offers such as ‘ Buy One Get One Free’ are stored on the computer, so when the barcode is scanned, the offer appears automatically. The tills in a supermarket are on a Local Area Network(LAN). The Local Area Network is connected to Wide Area Network(WAN) so data can be passed to suppliers bank accounts Tesco were the first supermarket to introduce loyalty cards . Customers are given points when hey spend so much on their shopping.
At the end of the year they are given money off at the store depending on how man points they have collected. These are available to customers with loyalty cards. Loyalty Card holders can scan the products when they take them off the shelves. These goods can then be packed into bags and boxes in the trolley. Some supermarkets are spending millions of pounds on buying mainframe computers.
These computers have got tera bytes (1 million Mega bytes). These mainframe computers store a profile of the customers buying habits to help keep track of who’s buying what. One of the problems with shopping is that when the customers get to the checkout they have to unload the goods from the trolley and put them on the conveyor belt to be scanned, they then have to load their shopping in to bags and put them back in to the trolley. The self scanning scheme is a trust scheme and occasionally customers may have to have all or part of their shopping rescanned at the skill as a security check.
When a customer leaves the supermarket, the hand-held scanner is passed to the cashier. The data held in the scanner is downloaded and an itemised till receipt is printed. Many of large supermarket chains have internet shopping. When the programme is run it is connected to the stores computer.
The customer chooses what they want to buy. The customers then send the order to the supermarket. When the supermarket has collected all the goods from the stores shelves, a van takes the goods from the store to the customers house. When shopping online with a supermarket, products are highlighted that are brought regularly by the customer to help them decide what to buy. When an order is made, the details are passed on to the supermarket’s computer, it is then paid for by the customer’s credit or debit card.
A suitable delivery time is then made. When the supermarket receives the data, the products are taken from the shelves and packed in to boxes and then loaded in to a van.
