• How have your skills in writing, critical thinking, or information literacy (like using databases and the online library) changed as a result of this course work? Provide at least 1 specific example.
• How will effective writing skills impact your college and career goals?

Are these birth and death models? And if so, what is λn and what is μn?

1. M/M/1 queue with balking: an M/M/1 system except for a customer that finds n

   others in the system upon its arrival will only join the system with probability αn

2. M/M/1/K queuing system: This is a M/M/1 queuing system with finite capacity K,

   where the system can only have K individuals at maximum (arrivals when the system

   is full are turned away)

3. M/M/s queuing system: M/M/1 queuing system, except there are now s servers

   instead of just 1

As consumers, we continually interact and consume brands to satisfy our functional and emotional needs. Applying the theory covered as part of this module to your own experience as consumers,-

Service brands face many challenges because of their unique characteristics. Identify a brand you are familiar with and evaluate how the service brand overcomes these unique challenges .

Moore Housing Contractors

Moore Housing Contractors is negotiating a deal with Countryside Realtors to build six houses in a new development. Countryside wants Moore Contractors to start in late winter or early spring   when the weather begins to moderate and build through the summer into the fall. The summer months are a busy time for the realty company, and it believes it can sell the houses almost as soon as they are ready-sometimes before. The houses all have similar floor plans and are of approximately equal size; only the exteriors are noticeably different. The completion time is so critical for Countryside Realtors that it is insisting a project management network accompany the con­ tractor's bid for the job with an estimate of the completion time for a house. The realtor also needs to be able to plan its offerings and marketing for the summer. The realtor wants each house to be completed within 45 days after it is started. If a house is not completed within this time frame, the realtor wants to be able to charge the contractor a penalty. Mary and Sandy Moore, the president and vice president of Moore Housing Contractors, are concerned about the prospect of a penalty. They want to be confident they can meet the deadline house before entering into any agreement with a penalty involved. (If there is a reasonable likelihood they cannot house within 45 days, they want to increase their bid to potential penalty charges.)

The Moores are experienced homebuilders, so it was not difficult for them to list the activities involved in building a house or to estimate activity times. However, they made estimates conservatively and tended to increase their pessimistic estimates to compensate for the possibility of bad weather and variations in their workforce. Following is a list of the activities for building a house and the activity time estimates:

1. Develop a CPM/PERT network for Moore House Contractors and determine the probability that the contractors can complete a house within 45 days. Does it appear that the Moores might need to increase their bid to compensate for potential penalties?

2. Indicate which project activities Moore Contractors should be particularly diligent to keep on schedule by making sure workers and materials are always available. Also, indicate which activities the company might shift workers from as the need arises.

1. What are the characteristics of a learning organization?

1. A learning organization is skilled at acquiring, transferring and modifying knowledge
2. Culture of organization is relevant to facilitate learning in an organization
3. Both of the above
4. None of the above

Answer:

2. Under Social Network Analysis (SNA), it is analyzed:

1. Money allocated to CoP and spent by CoP
2. Quality of data shared among the CoP members
3. Qualifications of CoP memebrs
4. None of the above

Answer:

3. CIO of a company has asked all the employees in IT department to fill an online form in intranet. In the form, employees enter their main area of work, skills they possess other than related to their main work, and their self-assessment of level (i.e. basic, advanced, etc.) of skills. What is this called as?
4. Data mining
5. Skill mining
6. Corporate memory
7. All of the above

Answer:

4. KM may be implemented through which of the models:

Choose external information as it makes sense to you Create connection between individual knowledge and community knowledge Create knowledge by involving with objects through self-involvement and commitment All of the above

As more people are required to "Shelter in Place", the shortage of certain items such as some food and household items in the grocery stores becomes a problem. Let's focus on 3 items in particular; eggs, bananas and toilet papers. It is safe to assume that the nation's total usage of these items has not changed.

With that assumption in mind

a) How do you justify the shortage in the stores?

b) Assuming you are managing operations for a farm producing and packing eggs for restaurants and catering services (non retail). What changes would you consider in your operations to be able to cope with the potential shift in demand in future?

Explain the "shift in demand" and why operations are struggling to cope with it. Provide at least two feedback debating each other's points of view.

Hint: It's not all about hoarding!

Volvo's Indian buses

Volvo’s Indian Buses The Indian bus market has long been dominated by two subsidiaries of major Indian conglomerates: Tata Motors and Ashok Leyland. They made simple coaches on a design that had hardly changed for decades. On top of a basic truck chassis, the two companies bolted a rudimentary coach body. Engines were a meagre 110-120 horsepower (hp), and roared heartily as they hauled their loads up the steep roads. Mounted at the front, the heat from the over-strained engines would pervade the whole bus. Air conditioning was a matter of open windows, through which the dust and noise of the Indian roads would pour. Suspension was oldfashioned, guaranteeing a shaky ride on potholed roads. Bags were typically slung on the top of the bus, where they were easily soiled and at high risk of theft. But at least the buses were cheap, selling to local bus companies at around Rs 1.2m (€15,000, £12,000, $19,500). In 1997, Swedish bus company Volvo entered, with buses priced at Rs 4m, nearly four times as much as local products. Akash Passey, Volvo’s first Indian employee, commissioned a consultancy company to evaluate prospects. The consultancy company recommended that Volvo should not even try. Passey told the Financial Times: ‘My response was simple – I took the report and went to the nearest dustbin and threw it in.’ Passey entered the market in 2001 with the high-priced luxury buses. Passey used the time to develop a distinctive strategy. His product had superior features. Volvo’s standard engines were 240-250 hp and mounted at the back, ensuring a faster and quieter ride. Air conditioning was standard of course. The positioning of the engine and the specific bus design of the chassis meant a roomier interior, plus storage for bags internally. But Plassey realised this would not be enough. He commented to the Financial Times: ‘You had to do a lot of things to break the way business is done normally.’ Volvo offered post-sale maintenance services, increasing the life expectancy of buses from three to ten years, and allowing bus operating companies to dispense with their own expensive maintenance workshops. Free training was given to drivers, so they drove more safely and took more care of their buses. The company advertised the benefits of the buses direct to customers in cinemas, rather than simply promoting them to the bus operators. Faster, smoother and more reliable travel allowed the bus operators to increase their ticket prices for the Volvo buses by 35 per cent. Business people and the middle classes were delighted with the new Volvo services. Speedier, more comfortable journeys allowed them to arrive fresh for meetings and potentially to save the costs of overnight stays. Tata and Ashok Leyland both now produce their own luxury buses, with Mercedes and Isuzu following Volvo into the market. Nonetheless, the phrase ‘taking a Volvo’ has become synonymous with choosing a luxury bus service in India, rather as ‘hoover’ came to refer to any kind of vacuum cleaner. A new state-of-the-art bus factory was opened in Bangalore in 2008 and after further investments in 2012 it doubled the annual capacity to 1,500 buses per year. As Volvo’s most efficient bus factory worldwide it started to export buses to Europe three years later. In 2016, Volvo continued its distinctive strategy and became the first bus company in India to manufacture and sell hybrid buses running on an electric motor and battery as well as diesel.

QUESTIONS- only need question 3 answered*

1. Discuss the Business-Level Strategy pursued by Volvo in the Indian Bus Market, and the resources and competences on which it is based.

2. Critically assess the threats to Volvo’s strategy and how such threats might be countered.

3. Discuss how your experience of travel on public transport informed your answers to questions 1 and 2 above.

Which of the following is more effective: advertising or sales promotions? Which of the two is more tactical, and which is more strategic? Explain.

You are managing a traditional/waterfall project. Your team defined the project metrics, which are on-time, within budget and meeting requirements. The project is continuing and you are doing quite well; remaining on-time, within budget, and meeting requirements. The project is two weeks away from completion and the end product just failed its first quality inspection. Explain how metrics, baselining, and measurements could have helped avoid this from occurring.

Question 1

The operations manager for Fine Foods Distribution has narrowed the search for a new facility to seven communities. Fixed costs (land, buildings and equipment) and variable costs (labour, materials etc) are shown below.

1. Which of the communities can be eliminated from further consideration because they are dominated (both variable and fixed costs are higher) by another community?
2. Plot the total cost curves for all remaining communities on a single graph. Identify on the graph the approximate range over which each community provides the lowest cost.
3. Using locational break-even analysis, calculate the break-even quantities to determine the range over which each community provides the lowest cost.

1. Which stage of the product life cycle best fits/describes men’s shaving products industry? Explain your rationale.

2. Identify and explain 2 strategies that Harry’s shaving company should employ to gain greater adoption of its products in the marketplace.

Manufacturing steel is not a glamorous job. The industry is beset by many problems and more than 40 steel manufacturers have filed for bankruptcy in recent years. Most young employees do not view working at a steel mill as their dream job. Yet, one company distinguished itself from all the rest by remaining profitable for over 130 quarters and by providing an over 350% return on investment (ROI) to shareholders. The company is clearly doing well by every financial metric available and is the most profitable in its industry.

How do they achieve these amazing results? For one thing, every one of Nucor Corporation’s (NYSE: NUE) 12,000 employees acts like an owner of the company. Employees are encouraged to fix the things they see as wrong and have real power on their jobs. When there is a breakdown in a plant, a supervisor does not have to ask employees to work overtime; employees volunteer for it. In fact, the company is famous for its decentralized structure and for pushing authority and responsibility down to lower levels in the hierarchy. Tasks that previously belonged to management are performed by line workers. Management listens to lower level employees and routinely implements their new ideas.

The reward system in place at Nucor is also unique and its employees may be the highest paid steelworkers in the world. In 2005, the average Nucor employee earned $79,000, followed by a $2,000 bonus decided by the company’s annual earnings and $18,000 in the form of profit sharing. At the same time, a large percentage of these earnings are based on performance. People have the opportunity to earn a lot of money if the company is doing well and there is no upward limit to how much they can make. However, they will do much worse than their counterparts in other mills if the company does poorly. Thus, it is to everyone’s advantage to help the company perform well. The same incentive system exists at all levels of the company. The CEO’s pay is clearly tied to corporate performance. The incentive system penalises low performers, while increasing for commitment to the company, as well as to high performance.

Nucor’s formula for success seems simple: Align company goals with employee goals and give employees real power to make things happen. The results seem to work for the company and its employees. Evidence of this successful method, is that the company has one of the lowest employee turnover rates in the industry and remains one of the few remaining non-unionized environments in manufacturing. Nucor is the largest U.S. mini mill and steel scrap recycler.

Adapted

1. Describe some potential problems with closely tying employee pay to company performance.                                     
2. Nucor has one of the lowest turnover rates in the industry. Explain this anomoly of the organization’s employee retention rate, in relation to the otherwise low pay of the steel working industry
3. Suggest a strategy for Nucor had it been in a non-manufacturing environment (e.g., a bank
4. Could Nucor’s employee profit-sharing system work at a much larger company?
   Please justify your response.                                                                       

4. Imagine that the steel industry is taking a major economic hit and Nucor’s profits are way down. Suggest an employee strategy for the company.                            

A human resource information system is an integrated system providing information used by HR management in decision making. For this, write down:

5.1. The information includes in HRIS and the role of these information in human resource planning

5.2. HRIS developing process and its implementation.

Volkswagen’s annual report explains that, “The Volkswagen Group consists of two divisions: the Automotive Division and the Financial Ser- vices Division. The Automotive Division com- prises the Passenger Cars, Commercial Vehicles, and Power Engineering Business Areas.” Does this description sound more like a functional, product, geographic, or customer structure, or some combination of these? Powerpoint Notes: Below Functional structure= Groups personnel and other resources according to the types of work they carry out. Well-suited to centralized decision-making and efficiency through economies of scale and specialization Not well-suited for dynamic environments where decisions must be made quickly and products or services customized Product structure= Work and resources are assigned to departments responsible for activities related to producing and delivering a particular good or service Geographic structure- Departmentalizes the organization according to the location of the customers served or the goods or services produced Customer structure= Departmentalizes the organization according to the type of customer served Combinations=Organizations often combine the basic forms of structures