Question

ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND SMALL BUSINESSES

QUESTION 1 (30)

“Sales volume is argued to be a key factor in whether a business becomes a sustainable enterprise” With this in mind, conduct a viability study for the production of ice to be sold in plastic packs in your immediate and surrounding area, demonstrating whether this idea may lead to viable enterprise.

QUESTION 2 (20)

Given the viability of the proposed venture in question 1), craft a business plan that amongst other things, will help you manage your business and help you to source financing for it.

QUESTION 3 (10)

Maintaining the correct inventory levels is noted as one of the biggest challenges facing manufacturing/production. Given that the production of ice is not immune to such a challenge, discuss a control process that will help you ensure that the inventory levels required for the operation discussed in question 1) are kept at the correct level.

Answer 1

A.1. The place where we are living is an extremely hot temperature and humid weather, ice is considered a necessity product for the local juice parlors and ice-cream parlor. Due to extremely harsh and humid weather storage cost becomes much high and the ice tends to melt up much faster. Thereby using plastic packs to sell ice is a problem solver for all the overheads and wastage of ice. The ice would retain for much more time in the cold storage it would bring down further production costs as well. Thereby it is an excellent plan of action to use plastics for selling ice.

A.2. The local ice-cream parlors, milkshake companies, and perishable item seller could be a major source of sales for their product especially in an area having a humid harsh climate. Producing ice in cold storage is inevitable but afterward getting out of the cold storage to the desired customer needs protection from being melted which plastic would come to aid. A major source of funding can be banks as it is a straight-forward plan without any risks as well as it can be angel investors or personal funding as well as a crowdfunding platform.

A.3. Talking about the inventory operations cold storage is inevitable but the question arises after the ice is being carried out from the storage to the customers we need airtight plastic which would ensure a lasting tenure for the ice to be reached directly to the consumer. The customer would place their order and after that, the ice would be directly reaching to the customers in a sealed tight plastic which would make their ice much more intact and ready to be used also our wastage of ice can be reduced as the melting proportion can be reduced.