Learning Outcome:

1. Demonstrate an understanding of how global competitive environments are changing supply chain management and logistics practice.

2. Apply essential elements of core logistic and supply chain management principles.

3. Analyze and identify challenges and issues pertaining to logistical processes.

Assignment Workload:

This assignment is an individual assignment.

Critical Thinking

The global marketplace has witnessed an increased pressure from customers and competitors in manufacturing as well as service sector (Basu, 2001; George, 2002). Due to the rapidly changing global marketplace only those companies will be able to survive that will deliver products of good quality at cheaper rate and to achieve their goal companies try to improve performance by focusing on cost cutting, increasing productivity levels, quality and guaranteeing deliveries in order to satisfy customers (Raouf, 1994).

Increased global competition leads the industry to increasing efficiency by means of economies of scale and internal specialization so as to meet market conditions in terms of flexibility, delivery performance and quality (Yamashina, 1995). The changes in the present competitive business environment are characterized by profound competition on the supply side and keen indecisive in customer requirements on the demand side. These changes have left their distinctive marks on the different aspect of the manufacturing organizations (Gomes et al., 2006). With this increasing global economy, cost effective manufacturing has become a requirement to remain competitive.

To meet all the challenges organizations try to introduce different manufacturing and supply techniques. Management of organizations devotes its efforts to reduce the manufacturing costs and to improve the quality of product. To achieve this goal, different manufacturing and supply techniques have been employed. The last quarter of the 20th century witnessed the adoption of world-class, lean and integrated manufacturing strategies that have drastically changed the way manufacturing firm’s leads to improvement of manufacturing performance (Fullerton and McWatters, 2002).

Consult chapter 7 of your text book or secondary available data on internet and answer the following questions.

Question:

1. Why Companies adopted Lean Thinking and JIT model?
2. Discuss major types of Waste, companies has to keep in mind during production.
3. Assess the reasons for using lean thinking (suitable examples), what are the benefits from Suppliers to end users?
4. Due to COVID 19 emergency do you think agile supply chain is the right concept in this kind of situation? Give reason with example.

The Answer should be within 4- 5 pages.

The Answer must follow the outline points below:

• Lean Thinking and JIT Concept
• Agile Supply chain
• Their Main functions
• Reasons with suitable Examples
• Reference

Ans 1:

Ans 2:

Ans 3:

Ans 4:

National Survey of Family Growth 1982-2010

The National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) provides nationally representative estimates and trends for infertility, surgical sterilization, and fertility among U.S. women and men aged 15-44. The NSFG survey has been administered since 1973, and its latest round in 2006-2010 consisted of 22,682 interviews. Infertility was defined as a lack of pregnancy in the 12 months prior to the survey despite having had unprotected sexual intercourse in each of those months with the same husband or partner. Women were classified as surgically sterile if they had an unreversed sterilizing operation, for example, a tubal sterilization or hysterectomy. Presumed fertile women were based on the residual category of those who did not meet the definitions for surgically sterile or infertile.

1. Using these data and your knowledge, make a testable hypothesis about some aspect of infertility, fertility, or surgical sterilization using the above mentioned data. Identify and count the cases of infertility depending upon age, education, percent of poverty level in the year 2006-2010. Also compare the groups like surgical sterile, infertile and presume fertile. Clearly defined exposure groups, a specific outcome and a stated direction between the exposure and outcome in the years mentioned.

This question requires the use of the Excel file ‘Assignment 3 Data’ found on ACORN. In the file, you will find the annual returns for Enbridge Inc. (ENB) and the S&P/TSX Composite Index (which we will use for the market portfolio). All parts of this question are to be done in Excel with your results printed and submitted with the other questions in this assignment.

1. Use the data for each of ENB and the S&P/TSX Composite Index to find the historical 95% confidence interval of each. [10 points]

2. Plot the returns of the market against the returns of ENB. Add a trendline to the graph and determine the beta of the stock from your trendline. [5 points]

3. Determine the variance and average annual return of the market portfolio. [3 points]

4. Determine the correlation coefficient between the market portfolio and ENB. [3 points]

5. What is the calculated beta for ENB using the information derived from parts a, c, and d? How does this compare with your answer to part b? [2 points]

6. The current Government of Canada Benchmark 10 Year Bond Yield (which will be our risk-free rate) is 1.61%. What is the required return on ENB stock according to the CAPM? [2 points]

Maggie bought a house which was quite a dump in 1989 for $75,000. She fixed it up with paint and wallpaper but in 1996 she did a major renovation which cost $50,000. In 1993, she bought a dump of a cottage for $35,000 because it was both on a lake and near some good cross-country ski trails. She winterized it immediately for $10,000. Over time, the dumpy cottage has become quite attractive with the addition of a new roof, siding, windows and doors all of which cost $15,000 in 1995. In addition, she is fond of landscaping and has created quite a beautiful garden. I might add that Maggie has only $40,000 in RRSPs since she prefers to sink her money into her living space.

In July 2006, Maggie lost her job and received $60,000 in severance pay. She put as much as she could into her RRSP (included in the $40,000 above) and put the rest in GICs to help finance her plan. Maggie had been taking courses for several years to become a Master Gardener.

When she lost her job, she decided to live out her dream of having a gardening business where she would design gardens for others with cottages near her and maintain them if they needed it because they mostly come to their cottages on the weekend to relax. In the winter, she will keep the lanes clear (with her snow blower) and check up on the cottages now and again. She gave her corporate clothes to her friend Kate with the proviso that she could stay with her when she comes to the City (which won’t be often because she is very fed up).

When she lost her job, she immediately started renting out the house for $1,600 a month plus utilities. She still has to pay the $2,400 a year taxes and maintenance but figures the house will be her retirement fund. When she started renting out the house, it immediately ceased to be her principal residence – her cottage is now her principal residence. In July 2006, her house was worth $300,000 and the cottage is worth $140,000.

Questions:

a.     Maggie’s house increases in value at about 3% a year from 2006 and she sells it in 2017. How much is her taxable capital gain on the house ignoring real estate commissions?

b.    Maggie’s cottage also increases 3% a year in value. If she also sells it in 2017 in order to buy a bed and breakfast, how much is her taxable capital gain?

Please Use your keyboard (Don't use handwriting)

MGT 322

I need new and unique answers, please. (Use your own words, don't copy and paste)

Critical Thinking

The global marketplace has witnessed an increased pressure from customers and competitors in manufacturing as well as service sector (Basu, 2001; George, 2002). Due to the rapidly changing global marketplace only those companies will be able to survive that will deliver products of good quality at cheaper rate and to achieve their goal companies try to improve performance by focusing on cost cutting, increasing productivity levels, quality and guaranteeing deliveries in order to satisfy customers (Raouf, 1994).

Increased global competition leads the industry to increasing efficiency by means of economies of scale and internal specialization so as to meet market conditions in terms of flexibility, delivery performance and quality (Yamashina, 1995). The changes in the present competitive business environment are characterized by profound competition on the supply side and keen indecisive in customer requirements on the demand side. These changes have left their distinctive marks on the different aspect of the manufacturing organizations (Gomes et al., 2006). With this increasing global economy, cost effective manufacturing has become a requirement to remain competitive.

To meet all the challenges organizations try to introduce different manufacturing and supply techniques. Management of organizations devotes its efforts to reduce the manufacturing costs and to improve the quality of product. To achieve this goal, different manufacturing and supply techniques have been employed. The last quarter of the 20th century witnessed the adoption of world-class, lean and integrated manufacturing strategies that have drastically changed the way manufacturing firm’s leads to improvement of manufacturing performance (Fullerton and McWatters, 2002).

Consult chapter 7 of your text book or secondary available data on internet and answer the following questions.

Question:

1. Why Companies adopted Lean Thinking and JIT model?
2. Discuss major types of Waste, companies has to keep in mind during production.
3. Assess the reasons for using lean thinking (suitable examples), what are the benefits from Suppliers to end users?
4. Due to COVID 19 emergency do you think agile supply chain is the right concept in this kind of situation? Give reason with example.

The Answer should be within 4- 5 pages.

The Answer must follow the outline points below:

• Lean Thinking and JIT Concept
• Agile Supply chain
• Their Main functions
• Reasons with suitable Examples
• Reference

II. Show all of your work in each question. In parts (d), (e), and (g) make sure to set up your null and alternative hypotheses and write your conclusions. Also, please round your numbers to 2 decimal points. Write legibly and neatly. III. You can use p-value approach or critical-value approach in writing the conclusions of your hypotheses. A large firm employing tens of thousands of workers has been accused of discriminating against its female managers. The accusation is based on a random sample of 40 managers. The mean annual salary of the 20 female managers is $79,500 while the mean annual salary of the 20 male managers is $103,250. The president of the firm points out that the company has a strict policy of equal pay for equal work and that the difference may be due to other variables. Accordingly, he found and recorded the number of years of education and the number of years of experience for each of the 40 managers in the sample. Also recorded are the salary and gender (1 = female and 0 = male). The data are in attached Excel document. The president wanted to know whether a regression analysis would shed some light on the issue. Use Microsoft Excel to run a regression of annual salary on years of education, years of experience, and gender and round up numbers in your regression results to 2 decimal points. Please use the level of significance of 10 percent (i.e. α = 0.10). On the basis of your Excel results answer following questions. (1 pts.) a. Write down the estimated regression equation.

1. Show all of your work in each question. In parts (d), (e), and (g) make sure to set up your null and alternative hypotheses and write your conclusions. Also, please round your numbers to 2 decimal points. Write legibly and neatly.
2. You can use p-value approach or critical-value approach in writing the conclusions of your hypotheses.

A large firm employing tens of thousands of workers has been accused of discriminating against its

female managers. The accusation is based on a random sample of 40 managers. The mean annual salary of the 20 female managers is $79,500 while the mean annual salary of the 20 male managers is $103,250. The president of the firm points out that the company has a strict policy of equal pay for equal work and that the difference may be due to other variables. Accordingly, he found and recorded the number of years of education and the number of years of experience for each of the 40 managers in the sample. Also recorded are the salary and gender (1 = female and 0 = male). The data are in attached Excel document. The president wanted to know whether a regression analysis would shed some light on the issue.

Use Microsoft Excel to run a regression of annual salary on years of education, years of experience, and gender and round up numbers in your regression results to 2 decimal points. Please use the level of significance of 10 percent (i.e. α = 0.10). On the basis of your Excel results answer following questions.

. At 10 percent level of significance, determine whether each explanatory variable

makes a contribution to the regression model. Show your work.     

AVOIDING PAYING TAXES—CHEATING THE GOVERNMENT

Very few people talk about wanting to pay taxes—for most citizens in most countries it is a natural inclination to avoid paying taxes, particularly when people object to the way the government spends the tax dollars on activities and programs which are contrary to the personal beliefs of individual citizens. Yet most students reading this textbook, and in a college or university course in Canada where this course is being taught, are the beneficiary of tax dollars in the context of how the government collects personal income tax and corporate tax and uses that money to subsidize educational costs—costs such as the building, the salary of the professor, the transportation system that gets you to class etc.

Sometimes national and regional governments operate in areas where there are not enough medium and large-sized companies paying corporate tax—therefore the government has a difficult time obtaining tax revenue to provide educational and health care services to the citizens. When the government does not have the means to collect enough taxes it has to make choices and often one of the primary ways governments cut costs is to cut education funding—meaning cuts to the number of teachers and cuts to facilities, technology, and other things necessary for students to obtain an education.

Recently (in 2012 and 2013), a number of leading American IT companies, such as Apple and Google, have been harshly criticized for using various strategies to avoid paying taxes in the United States, for example by outsourcing, offshoring, and listing income under foreign subsidiaries. The irony of the situation is bitter since both Apple and Google produce products and services that make it easier for students to carry out their studies, yet by avoiding paying millions in tax, these actions deprive the government of tax dollars that could be used to fund education.

Tax avoidance is not limited to the United States. In May 2013, The Economist magazine²¹ reported that “Google came under fire from British politicians, one of whom publicly accused the Internet giant of using unethical methods to avoid paying its fair share of tax.” In the United States, the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations reported that “between 2009 and 2012 Apple avoided paying tax in America on at least $74 billion of profits by setting up subsidiaries in Ireland that had no purpose other than to ensure these profits were shielded from tax.”

Questions

1. Tax avoidance has been a hot topic in the United States, has it become a topic in Canada as well? Research some news stories to see if you can find some Canadian companies criticized for avoiding Canadian taxes.

2. The national government in Canada is now making more stringent efforts to collect tax from companies paying late, or not paying the full amount. Searching online, can you find out what the government is doing to recover money owed?

Also, many studies of unethical behaviour in a business setting have concluded that business people sometimes do not realize they are behaving unethically, primarily because they simply fail to ask, “Is this decision or action ethical?”²⁰ Instead, they apply a straightforward business evaluation to what they perceive to be a business decision, forgetting that the decision may also have an important ethical dimension.

Question Four

Eric Aboagye was a 29-year-old math teacher at Ako Basic School in Pru District. He empathized with his students and was devoted to their success. A colleague described Aboagye as a “star teacher” and a “very hard worker, who will go the extra mile.” Aboagye was a teacher when Mary Afenya was Pru District’s school superintendent. Afenya set accountability measures for the Pru District school district and created performance objectives for the schools. Teacher evaluations were linked to students’ performance on standardized tests. Schools whose students did not make appropriate progress toward the standardized test goals received escalating sanctions that culminated in replacement of teachers and other staff, and restructuring or closing of the school. Ako Basic School had been classified as “a school in need of improvement” for the previous five years. Unless 58 percent of students passed the math portion of the standardized test and 67 percent passed the language arts portion, Ako Basic School could be closed down. Its students would be separated and bussed across town to different schools. Aboagye pushed his students to work harder than they ever had in preparing for the test. But he knew that it would be very difficult for many of them to pass. Mr. Mensah, the new principal of Ako Basic School, had heard that teachers in the elementary schools that fed into Ako had changed their students’ answers on the standardized tests under the guise of erasing stray pencil marks. Mr. Mensah asked Aboagye and other teachers to do the same. Aboagye found the exams of students who needed to get a few more questions right in order to pass. He changed their answers. If he did not change their scores, Aboagye feared that his students would lapse into “why try” attitudes. They would lose their neighborhood school and the community that had developed within it. Thanks to Aboagye and other teachers, students of Ako did better than ever on the standardized tests. Salomey, a former student at Ako at the time, recalled, “Everyone was jumping up and down,” after a teacher announced the school had met the requirements. The same process of changing answers continued at Ako for about five years. In the fifth year, nine other teachers were helping Aboagye change answers. Later in that year, the investigation unit of the Ghana Education Service (GES) visited Ako and other Pru District schools. The results of the investigation showed that, teachers and administrators at 20 schools had cheated in the manner that Aboagye had. Also, 78 teachers who had confessed or been accused of cheating were placed on administrative leave, including Aboagye. Later, Aboagye’ employment was terminated. (All characters used in the case are hypothetical)

1. In this case study, indicate and explain two benefits and three disadvantages of falsifying the results (make reference to relevant ethical theories and/or approaches).

2. Do you think cheating can ever be ethically justifiable? Why or why not (Explain three reasons – make reference to relevant ethical approaches)?

Zynga, located in San Francisco, California, had become a dominant player in the online gaming field, almost entirely through the use of social media platforms. The company name was established by the founder and original CEO, Mark Pincus, to pay tribute to his late beloved pet bulldog, named Zinga. Although this seems whimsical, Zynga had quickly become a powerful company. To exemplify Zynga’s prominence, Facebook was reported to have earned roughly 12 percent of its 2011 revenue from the operations of Zynga’s virtual merchandise sales. On the basis of this success, Zynga had gone public in December of 2011.

Zynga had been a dominant force, but had lost market share in recent years due to the absence of a new and innovative product pipeline. Lack of new product-driven growth had led to uneven revenues, with significant losses – over $108 million in 2016. Even though Zynga had released some new mobile games, which accounted for 73 percent of the company’s revenue in 2015, this was not enough to reverse declines from the existing product lineup.

Zynga’s long term viability may be at risk because of questionable decision making. Many of Zynga’s competitors, and even some partners, had been displeased with the company’s actions and had shown it in the form of litigation. Agincourt, a plaintiff of a lawsuit brought against Zynga, was quoted as saying, “Zynga’s remarkable growth has not been driven by its own ingenuity. Rather it has been widely reported that Zynga’s business model is to copy creative ideas and game designs from other game developers and then use its market power to bulldoze the games’ originators.” Zynga had been accused of copyright infringement, breach of written contract, and, internally, had a reputation for a risk-averse company culture that failed to reward innovation and creativity. Regarding its users, complaint resolution consisted of email-only support, and there was concern that customer information was not being properly protected against unauthorized access.

To make matters worse, Zynga had had four CEO changes since 2013, with the most recent one, Frank Gibeau from Electronic Arts, installed in March of 2016, now expected to turn the company around. Although Zynga had once been a dominant force on Facebook, by 2016 it had failed to surface in the top 5 virtual-gaming rankings, with users increasingly choosing to play King Company’s Candy Crush Saga and others.

As Zynga looks to the future, where will its next big hit come from? With all the criticism aimed at Zynga’s past behavior, will the company continue on the path it has become notorious for and reap further accusations of imitating its competitors’ games and putting customers potentially at risk? Or will Zynga change its approach, gain a reputation for intellectual integrity and begin creating true one-of-a-kind games—showing its capa­bilities as a leader in the industry rather than a follower?

1. Does the organization have positive personal and professional relationships among employees and alliance partners?