Chapter 5, Problem 9QP

Scenario 3 Ben Gibson, the purchasing manager at Coastal Products, was reviewing purchasing expenditures for packaging materials with Jeff Joyner. Ben was particularly disturbed about the amount spent on corrugated boxes purchased from Southeastern Corrugated. Ben said, I dont like the salesman from that company. He comes around here acting like he owns the place. He loves to tell us about his fancy car, house, and vacations. It seems to me he must be making too much money off of us! Jeff responded that he heard Southeastern Corrugated was going to ask for a price increase to cover the rising costs of raw material paper stock. Jeff further stated that Southeastern would probably ask for more than what was justified simply from rising paper stock costs. After the meeting, Ben decided he had heard enough. After all, he prided himself on being a results-oriented manager. There was no way he was going to allow that salesman to keep taking advantage of Coastal Products. Ben called Jeff and told him it was time to rebid the corrugated contract before Southeastern came in with a price increase request. Who did Jeff know that might be interested in the business? Jeff replied he had several companies in mind to include in the bidding process. These companies would surely come in at a lower price, partly because they used lower-grade boxes that would probably work well enough in Coastal Products process. Jeff also explained that these suppliers were not serious contenders for the business. Their purpose was to create competition with the bids. Ben told Jeff to make sure that Southeastern was well aware that these new suppliers were bidding on the contract. He also said to make sure the suppliers knew that price was going to be the determining factor in this quote, because he considered corrugated boxes to be a standard industry item. As the Marketing Manager for Southeastern Corrugated, what would you do upon receiving the request for quotation from Coastal Products?

Lemingtons is trying to determine how many Jean Hudson dresses to order for the spring season. Demand for the dresses is assumed to follow a normal distribution with mean 400 and standard deviation 100. The contract between Jean Hudson and Lemingtons works as follows. At the beginning of the season, Lemingtons reserves x units of capacity. Lemingtons must take delivery for at least 0.8x dresses and can, if desired, take delivery on up to x dresses. Each dress sells for 160 and Hudson charges 50 per dress. If Lemingtons does not take delivery on all x dresses, it owes Hudson a 5 penalty for each unit of reserved capacity that is unused. For example, if Lemingtons orders 450 dresses and demand is for 400 dresses, Lemingtons will receive 400 dresses and owe Jean 400(50) + 50(5). How many units of capacity should Lemingtons reserve to maximize its expected profit?

Assume the demand for a companys drug Wozac during the current year is 50,000, and assume demand will grow at 5% a year. If the company builds a plant that can produce x units of Wozac per year, it will cost 16x. Each unit of Wozac is sold for 3. Each unit of Wozac produced incurs a variable production cost of 0.20. It costs 0.40 per year to operate a unit of capacity. Determine how large a Wozac plant the company should build to maximize its expected profit over the next 10 years.

Futura Company purchases the 79,000 starters that it installs in its standard line of farm tractors from a supplier for the price of $12.60 per unit. Due to a reduction in output, the company now has idle capacity that could be used to produce the starters rather than buying them from an outside supplier. However, the company’s chief engineer is opposed to making the starters because the production cost per unit is $13.30 as shown below:   Per Unit Total Direct materials $ 6.00  Direct labor 3.20  Supervision 1.90 $ 150,100 Depreciation 1.20 $ 94,800 Variable manufacturing overhead 0.40  Rent 0.60 $ 47,400 Total product cost $ 13.30   If Futura decides to make the starters, a supervisor would have to be hired (at a salary of $150,100) to oversee production. However, the company has sufficient idle tools and machinery such that no new equipment would have to be purchased. The rent charge above is based on space utilized in the plant. The total rent on the plant…

HERO Corporation is considering three options for managing its data processing operation: continuing with its own staff, hiring an outside vendor to do the managing (referred to as outsourcing), or using a combination of its own staff and an outside vendor. The cost of the operation depends on future demand. The annual cost of each option (in thousands of pesos) depends on demand as follows:   Demand Demand Demand Staffing Options High Medium Low Own staff 352 325 300 Outsider vendor 450 300 150 Combination 400 325 250   If the decision maker knows nothing about the probabilities of the four states of nature, what is the recommended decision using:i. the optimistic approach and the conservative approach iii. the minimax regret approach iv. the Laplace method

Dave Fletcher, the general manager of North Carolina Engineering Corporation (NCEC), thinks that his firm's engineering services contracted to highway construction firms are directly related to the volume of highway construction business contracted with companies in his geographic area. He wonders if this is really so, and if it is can this information help him plan his operations better by forecasting the quantity of his engineering services required by construction firms in each quarter of the year? The following table presents the sales of his services and total amounts of contracts for highway construction over the last 8 quarters: Quarter Sales of NCEC Services (in $ thousands) Contracts Released (in $ thousands) 1 7 153 2 10 172 3 4 14 9 197 175 9-0-0 where y Dependent Variable and x = Independent Variable. D 5 6 13 11 202 182 7 8 11 16 205 223 a) Using the given data, the least-squares regression equation for predicting the level of demand of NCEC's services is (round your…

Hudson Corporation is considering three options for managing its data processing operation: continuing with its own staff, hiring an outside vendor to do the managing (referred to as outsourcing), or using a combination of its own staff and an outside vendor. The cost of the operation depends on future demand. The annual cost of each option (in thousands of dollars) depends on demand as follows: Demand Staffing Options High Medium Low Own staff 650 650 600 Outside vendor 900 600 300 Combination 800 650 500 If the demand probabilities are 0.2, 0.5, and 0.3, which decision alternative will minimize the expected cost of the data processing operation? What is the expected annual cost associated with that recommendation? Expected annual cost = $fill in the blank 2 Construct a risk profile for the optimal decision in part (a). The input in the box below will not be graded, but may be reviewed and considered by your instructor.

Hudson Corporation is considering three options for managing its data processing operation: continuing with its own staff, hiring an outside vendor to do the managing (referred to as outsourcing), or using a combination of its own staff and an outside vendor. The cost of the operation depends on future demand. The annual cost of each option (in thousands of dollars) depends on demand as follows:     Demand Staffing Options High Medium Low Own staff 600 550 350 Outside vendor 900 650 450 Combination 700 600 400     a. If the demand probabilities are 0.4, 0.25, and 0.35, which decision alternative will minimize the expected cost of the data processing operation? Own Staff What is the expected annual cost associated with that recommendation? If required, round your answer to the nearest thousand of dollars.     Expected annual cost = $  ___________

Round Tree Manor is a hotel that provides two types of rooms with three rental classes: Super Saver, Deluxe, and Business. The profit per night for each type of room and rental class is as follows: Room Туре І Type II Super Saver $30 Rental Class $20 Deluxe $35 I $30 Business Type I rooms do not have high-speed Internet access and are not available for the Business rental class. Round Tree's management makes a forecast of the demand by rental class for each night in the future. A linear programming model developed to maximize profit is used to determine how many reservations to accept for each rental class. The demand forecast for a particular night is 140 rentals in the Super Saver class, 60 rentals in the Deluxe class, and 50 rentals in the Business class. Round Tree has 100 Type I rooms and 120 Type II rooms. $40 (a) Use linear programming to determine how many reservations to accept in each rental class and how the reservations should be allocated to room types. Is the demand by…