Chapter 11 Process Analysis and Resource Utilization - Chapter Review

Bourbon County Court

“Why don’t they buy another copying machine for this office? I waste a lot of valuable time fooling with this machine when I could be preparing my legal cases,” noted Mr. H.C. Morris, as he waited in line. The self-service copying machine was located in a small room immediately outside the entrance of the courtroom. Mr. Morris was the county attorney. He often copied his own papers, as did other lawyers, to keep his legal cases and work confidential. This protected the privacy of his clients as well as his professional and personal ideas about the cases.

He also felt awkward at times standing in line with secretaries, clerks of the court, other attorneys, police officers and sheriffs, building permit inspectors, and the dog warden—all trying, he thought, to see what he was copying. The line for the copying machine often extended out into the hallways of the courthouse.

Mr. Morris mentioned his frustration with the copying machine problem to Judge Hamlet and his summer intern, Dot Gifford. Ms. Gifford was home for the summer and working toward a joint MBA/JD degree from a leading university.

“Mr. Morris, there are ways to find out if that one copying machine is adequate to handle the demand. If you can get the Judge to let me analyze the situation, I think I can help out. We had a similar problem at the law school with word processors and at the business school with student lab microcomputers.”

The next week Judge Hamlet gave Dot the go-ahead to work on the copying machine problem. He asked her to write a management report on the problem with recommendations so he could take it to the Bourbon County Board of Supervisors for their approval. The board faced deficit spending last fiscal year, so the tradeoffs between service and cost must be clearly presented to the board.

Dot’s experience with analyzing similar problems at school helped her know what type of information and data was needed. After several weeks of working on this project, she developed the information contained in Exhibits 11.36, 11.37, and 11.38.

Exhibit 11.36

Bourbon County Court—Customer Arrivals Per Hour (These Data Are Available in the Worksheet Bourbon County Court Case Data in MindTap.)

*A sample of customer arrivals at the copying machine was taken for five consecutive nine-hour work days plus five hours on Saturday for a total of fifty observations. The mean arrival rate is 8.92 arrivals per hour.

Exhibit 11.37

Bourbon County Court—Copying Service Times (These Data Are Available in the Worksheet Bourbon County Court Case Data in MindTap.)

*A sample of customers served at the copying machine was taken for five consecutive nine-hour work days plus five hours on Saturday for a total of fifty observations. The average service time is 0.0917 hours per copying job or 5.499 minutes per job. The equivalent service rate is 10.91 jobs per hour (i.e., ).

Exhibit 11.38

Bourbon County Court—Cost and Customer Mix

*The mix of customers standing in line was collected at the same time as the data in the other case exhibits. Direct wages do include employee benefits but not work opportunity costs or ill-will costs, etc.

Dot was not quite as confident in evaluating this situation as others because the customer mix and associated labor costs seemed more uncertain in the county courthouse. In the law school situation, only secretaries used the word processing terminals; in the business school situation, students were the ones complaining about long waiting times to get on a microcomputer terminal. Moreover, the professor guiding these two past school projects had suggested using queueing models for one project and simulation for the other project. Dot was never clear on how the method of analysis was chosen. Now, she wondered which methodology she should use for the Bourbon County Court situation.

To organize her thinking, Dot listed a few of the questions she needed to address as follows:

1. Assuming a Poisson arrival distribution and an exponential service time distribution, apply queueing models to the case situation and evaluate the results.

2. What are the economics of the situation using queueing model analysis?

3. What are your final recommendations using queueing model analysis.

4. Advanced Question: Do the customer arrival and service empirical (actual) distributions in the case match the theoretical distributions assumed in queueing models?

How does an organization like Blackberry develop new products and how do pricing strategies differ when introducing these new products? Do these strategies change as the product moves through its life cycle and what is the value of test marketing in new product development which can be easier with the use of technology that has affected the development of new products.

To prepare for the examination of financing sources, write a two- to three-page (not including the title and reference pages) Executive Summary for a Business Plan. This process involves the describing the market, describing your capital needs as well as defining and describing your business. This plan should focus on the entrepreneurial idea you identified in BUS 604 (if you have not completed BUS604, please contact your instructor for approval of your entrepreneurial idea). Use the template below to develop your executive summary. You must include a minimum of two scholarly or professional resources to support your summary.

The Executive Summary must include:

Company Background
Here you will provide some information about your company and its primary objective. This information is designed to give your target audience an idea of the services or products that your company provides. This section should be two to three paragraphs.

Describe the background of the company. Be sure to address the following questions: What is the company’s principle objective? Where is the company located? When was it founded?

Describe the uniqueness of idea: Is the idea an opportunity?

Business/Product or Service
Describe your product or service in greater detail. If multiple products or services are offered, describe them in the order of significance. This section should be one to two paragraphs.

Explicitly, what products or services does your organization offer?

What is the order of significance of the products or services?

What is the product or service’s stage (introductory, growth, maturity)?

(Note: If your company is new, it would be introductory; if it’s ongoing but looking to expand, it will be in the growth phase. If your product or service has reached maturity, it indicates market saturation, and you are seeking funds to change or alter your product to remain competitive.)

What are your future plans to further develop your product or service?

Protectability of idea: Is a patent needed?

The Market
Define and describe your market (i.e. athletic apparel, consulting services, business software, and restaurant equipment). You will need to do research and justify to your perspective investors that your product or service is meeting a need that is currently missing in the industry. You need to establish this justification by describing the gaps in the industry and how your product or service closes those gaps. This section should be your largest section because it requires research; three to nine paragraphs.

What is the current size of the market?

How much of the current market size can you capture (i.e. what percent)?

Does your business have current customers or customers that have expressed interest in your product or service? (This is optional but beneficial if there are customers)

Capital Requirements
Discuss your financial requirements and plan in this section. You will need to provide a clear description about required finances and how your company plans on using funds. It’s always best to overestimate by 30% to cover the cost of areas initially missed.

Financial requirements: Are the financial requirements consistent with the business opportunity and targeted market?

Funding: Is the idea worthy of external funding; what external funding source are you considering (bootstrapping, angels, venture capital, bank financing, etc.)? How will you use the money?

Prem Narayan, a graduate student in engineering, to market a radical new speaker he had designed for automobile sound systems, founded Acoustic Concepts, Inc. Prem established the company’s headquarters into rented quarters in a nearby industrial park. He hired a receptionist, an accountant, a sales manager, and a small sales staff to sell the speakers to retail stores. Prem asked his accountant, Bob Luchinni, to prepare several cost-volume-profit analyses, using the information shown below.

Sales price for one speaker set................................................... $250 Variable manufacturing cost for each speaker set (direct
materials) ................................................................................... $150 Fixed expenses per month (rent, salaries of receptionist, sales

people, accountant, and Prem)................................................... $35,000 Number of speaker sets sold per month..................................... 400

Based on the above information, how many stereo speaker sets will need to be sold for Acoustic Concepts, Inc., to break even for one month?

Based on the above information, how many stereo speaker sets will need to be sold for Acoustic Concepts, Inc., to earn a $1,000 profit for one month?

What will be the net income or net loss for one month if 400 speaker sets are sold? How about if 425 speakers are sold?

The sales manager feels that a $10,000 increase in monthly advertising will increase monthly sales by $30,000. Would you recommend increasing the advertising budget?

Prem and other management personnel are considering the use of higher-quality components, which would increase variable costs by $10 per speaker. However, the sales manager predicts that the higher overall quality would increase sales to 480 speaker sets per month. Should the higher quality components be used?

The sales manager believes that by reducing the selling price of speakers by $20, and also by increasing the advertising budget by $15,000 per month, that sales will increase to 600 speaker sets per month. Should the changes be made?

The sales manager would like to place the sales staff on a commission basis of $15 per speaker sold, rather than on flat salaries that now total $6,000 per month. The sales manager is confident that the change will increase monthly sales to 460 speaker sets per month. Should the change be made?

Suppose Acoustic Concepts has an opportunity to make a bulk sale of 150 speakers to a wholesaler, if an acceptable price can be worked out. The sale would not disturb the company’s regular sales, nor would if affect fixed operating costs per month. What price should be quoted to the wholesaler if Acoustic Concepts wants to increase its monthly profits by $3,000?

 C.M.=contribution margin, S.P.=sales price, V.C.=variable cost, F.C.=fixed cost

 C.M. per unit = S.P. per unit – V.C. per unit

 The break even point is the point at which the total contribution margin equals fixed costs.

 Break even units sold = F.C. / C.M. Per unit

 Break even sales dollars = F.C. / C.M. Percentage

 C.M. Percentage = C.M. per unit / S.P. per unit, or C.M. (total) / Sales (total)

Who should you target with new products?
Take a position:
1. Consumer research is critical to new-product development.
or
2. Consumer research may not be all that helpful in new-product development.

Supply: logP= -15.00+1.50 logQ

Demand: logP=5020-0.75 logQ

1. Create a table as shown. The first column contains values of Q from 500 to 10,000, in intervals of 500

2. Plot the supply and demand on the diagram. Label right X and Y axes

New supply: logP=-15.00+1.50 logQ+0.90

1. Create 2 new columns of‘New supply (log P)’ and 'new supply (P) for the new supply

2. Add the new supply curve to the existing diagram. Label the new supply curve

(1)A US based MNC plans to invest in a new project EITHER in US or in Mexico. The new project is expected to take up a quarter of the firm’s total investment fund. The balance of the corporation’s investment is exclusively in an existing US project. The features of the proposed new project are as follows:

                                                          Existing US project US project (new) Mexico project (new)

Expected rate of return E(R) 10% 15% 15%

Standard deviation of E(R) 0.10 0.11 0.12

Correlation of returns from new

project with returns on existing

US project - 0.95 - 0.05

Based on considerations of risk and return, determine the portfolio the MNC should choose if the goal is to generate more stable returns.

The collections library has a class TreeSet (java.util.TreeSet). It is another parameterised class which is an example of a sorted set. That is, elements in this set are kept in order. Construct classes Person and PersonCompator to make the following code successfully compile and run. This method checks if Person objects are correctly ordered by their ages (age is the only attribute of Person). PersonComparator is required to implement interface Comparator (java.util.Comparator). Comparator is another parameterised interface -- parameterization is common in Java.

Set<Person> persons = new TreeSet<Person>(new PersonComparator());

persons.add(new Person(32));
persons.add(new Person(17));
persons.add(new Person(13));
persons.add(new Person(35));

Iterator<Person> iter = persons.iterator();
while (iter.hasNext()) {
  System.out.println(iter.next());
}

According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, the 2015 mean starting salary for new college graduates in health sciences was $51,541. The mean 2015 starting salary for new college graduates in business was $53,901. † Assume that starting salaries are normally distributed and that the standard deviation for starting salaries for new college graduates in health sciences is $11,000. Assume that the standard deviation for starting salaries for new college graduates in business is $17,000.

(a)

What is the probability that a new college graduate in business will earn a starting salary of at least $65,000? (Round your answer to four decimal places.)

(b)

What is the probability that a new college graduate in health sciences will earn a starting salary of at least $65,000? (Round your answer to four decimal places.)

(c)

What is the probability that a new college graduate in health sciences will earn a starting salary less than $46,000? (Round your answer to four decimal places.)

(d)

How much would a new college graduate in business have to earn in dollars in order to have a starting salary higher than 99% of all starting salaries of new college graduates in the health sciences? (Round your answer to the nearest whole number.)

$

Retlaw Corporation (RC) manufactures time-series photographic equipment. It is currently at its target debt–equity ratio of 0.75. It’s considering building a new $40 million manufacturing facility. This new plant is expected to generate after-tax cash flows of $7.6 million in perpetuity. The company raises all equity from outside financing. There are three financing options:

1. A new issue of common stock: The flotation costs of the new common stock would be 9% of the amount raised. The required return on the company’s new equity is 16%.
2. A new issue of 20-year bonds: The flotation costs of the new bonds would be 4% of the proceeds. If the company issues these new bonds at an annual coupon rate of 8.0%, they will sell at par.
3. Increased use of accounts payable financing: Because this financing is part of the company’s ongoing daily business, it has no flotation costs, and the company assigns it a cost that is the same as the overall firm WACC. Management has a target ratio of accounts payable to long-term debt of 0.170. (Assume there is no difference between the pre-tax and after-tax accounts payable cost.)

What is the NPV of the new plant? Assume that RC has a 35% tax rate.