Define Porter's competitive forces model and explain how it works. Include a description of the five competitive forces in this discussion, giving examples.

A company employs plumbers to service, repair and replace pipes and other fittings for customers throughout the country. These plumbers are based at different locations. Four requests for service have been received and the company finds that four plumbers are available. The distances each of the plumbers is from the various customers are given in the following table. The company wishes to assign plumbers to customers to minimise the total distance to be travelled.

1. Using the Hungarian (manual) method, determine the optimal assignment of plumbers to customers in order to minimize the total distance travelled. Indicate this overall distance and show all working.                                                                              [12 marks]
2. Write an LP formulation that could be used to solve this problem with the relevant LP software packages.       [13 marks]

[TOTAL 25 MARKS]

QUESTION 4

A manufacturer of car transmissions wants to develop a cost estimate for a customer’s order for 25 transmissions. It is estimated that the first transmission will take 100 hours of shop time and an 80% learning curve is expected. Using the learning curve tables:-

1. How many labour-hours should the 25^th transmission require?                                 [5 marks]
2. How many labour-hours should the whole order for 25 transmission require?    [5 marks]
3. If the labour hour rate is $50 per hour and the pricing policy of the company is to double the labour costs of the order, what is the customer price for each transmission?     [6 marks]
4. Total Quality Management (TQM) can be an excellent quality management technique if properly implemente Discuss the obstacles associated with the implementation of TQM. [9 marks]

The rights of consumers have been violated on numerous occasions by many businesses, both in Jamaica and in the wider global space.

The Consumer Affairs Commission is one of several government agencies established to protect consumers and educate them about their rights.

Required:

Provide a robust discussion on the basic rights of a consumers and state how it can assist this group in making better decisions.                   

In examining and analyzing the challenges faced by companies engaging in the global arena, there are political and social factors that could determine the successes or failures of such companies. With this in mind, discuss four (4) factors that characterise Social and Political Pressures of doing business abroad

Solve the LP relaxation of the following binary linear program and report the optimal solution as well as the optimal objective function value for the LP relaxation.

Maximize 10X₁ + 18X₂ + 17X₃ + 5X₄ + 3X₅ + 11X₆

Subject to: 7X₁ + 8X₂ + 11X₃ + 6X₄ + 4X₅ + 6X₆ <= 15

X₁ , X₂ , X₃ ,X₄ ,X₅ ,X₆ are all binary values

Based on what we have all been experiencing due to the COVID-19 Global Pandemic, describe two things that we have learned about our global business environment and /or make two predictions about what you think will happen in our global business environment as a result of the pandemic.

The CEO of Fullbrix Dana Alcar (a 20-year veteran of Supply chain business frameworks) has given all powers to the running of the company to five Senior Vice-Presidents. Fullbrix is a Satellite spare parts provider that has four key clients. The company employs 200 employees and has a management team of 27. With five Senior Vice-Presidents running the company and running it well, the Board of Directors have begun an investigation on what the CEO is doing with her time. Initial investigations found that the CEO was building a broader base to support an alternative structure than the four key clients the company serves. The alternative would be 14 other companies that provide the same revenue as the present 4 companies. The 10-member Board of Directors are 50/50 split on their decision. One group wants to fire the present CEO and replace her with one of the Senior Vice Presidents and the other wants to keep things as they are.

20. Using terms discussed in class, can Dana Alcar’s leadership qualities help her to succeed in the long run?

21. Using terms discussed in class, how do you think it would be possible to convince the 5 Board Members to stop their petition to remove the CEO?

22. What can Dana Alcar do to create a convincing case to the Board of Directors to keep her on?

ANSWER FOR THE FOLLOWING BRAND APPLE AND ITS PRODUCTS SPECIFIALLY THE :LATEST IPHONE

1. This product specifically... Who is the target market?
   1. Demographic:
   2. Geographic:
   3. psychographic
2. Subculture References:
   1. Ethnic / African American / Hispanics / Asian American / Native American / Asian Indian / Arab Americans
      1. Religious subcultures
3. Values of this target market?

. Describe social loafing. What can be done in an educational and a workplace setting to minimize social loafing?

Pilgrim Bank (A): Customer Profitability

How much do profits vary across customers?

Are online customers more profitable than offline customers?

What is the role of customer demographics in comparing online and offline profitability?

What is your recommendation to the senior management team in terms of Pilgrim Bank’s online channel pricing strategy?

Should the bank charge fees, offer rebates, or do nothing in regards to pricing for online channel use? Why?

Detroit Symetrix conducted several tests in Group decision making. In one scenario they conducted a video and then used question and answer data to facilitate decision making by identifying the problems and generating a score for the solutions. Some groups helped in preventing the discussion being dominated by a single person and hence, allow the silent members, who are quite shy, to speak out their ideas in the group. The objective to bring up key issues in the presence of senior management and even the CEO cabinet remained but received much opposition, argument and even denial of evidences placed forth. Conflicts among the group members by enabling everyone to pen down his/her thoughts about the problem and later discuss it with the entire group did reach to the consensus solution. One of the main advantages of junior level staff and middle managers to provide an equal opportunity to speak out their minds and write down their ideas and discuss with the group members.

14. Provide three examples why you would think this is a good thing for organization.

15. Provide three examples why you think this could have a negative impact to the organization.

16. If you were the CEO of the organization how would you structure these kinds of sessions?

DETOMEHR Inc has a structure that aligns its people and resources first to Human Resources and then to its Consulting Platform. The company has placed a lot of effort into the design of their organization based on the belief that the design has a great impact on the organization's functioning and efficiency. It has three core services: Analytics, Engineering and Defense Services. There is one unique fact about the three core services. While Analytics (brings in $50M) and Engineering ($75M) placements are conducted with Human Resources taking the lead in qualifications and employee capability assessments, Defense Services ($150M) are 100% controlled by 3 of the 23 partners in the company.

17. Where do you think problems can develop in the organization under such an organization structure?

18. What are the advantages of such a structure?

19. What do you think one of a few problems the CEO of DETOMEHR Inc will have to confront as he/she manages the company.

Discuss at least three ways of first recognizing and three ways of managing cultural differences on global projects.

Final Scenario

You're a recent graduate of Champlain College and landed a great job in New York as a junior financial analyst for Chuck Schwable, a leading investment firm whose name bears no resemblance to a well known investment firm. Schwable has recently been hired by Giggle, a leading tech giant, to provide some capital budgeting recommendations for a major building project in downtown Manhattan. This is it...it's your big chance to make a great first impression and show off the skills you gained in your MGMT 240 finance class.

The senior financial analyst in your office asks you to provide a general synopsis of three common capital budgeting techniques: payback analysis, discounted cash flows analysis, and throughput analysis. Your synopsis will be presented to a small group of very important Giggle stakeholders who know nothing about capital budgeting.

For your synopsis (use fictitious data, if applicable):

1. Describe each technique and how it pertains to making capital budgeting decisions
2. Explain the benefits each technique has

please example with numbers