Michelin is considering going ‘‘lights-out’’ in the mixing area of the business that operates 24/7. Currently, personnel with a loaded cost of \($600,000\) per year are used to manually weigh real rubber, synthetic rubber, carbon black, oils, and other components prior to manual insertion in a Banbary mixer that provides a homogeneous blend of rubber for making tires (rubber products). New technology is available that has the reliability and consistency desired to equal or exceed the quality of blend now achieved manually. It requires an investment of \($2.5\) million, with \($110,000\) per year operational costs and will replace all the manual effort described above. The planning horizon is 8 years, and there will be a \($300,000\) salvage value at that time for the new technology. Marginal taxes are 40 percent, and the after-tax MARR is 10 percent.

a. Determine the annual cost of purchasing the new technology.

b. Determine the annual cost of continuing with the manual mixing.

c. Determine the amount of the investment in new technology that would make the two alternatives equivalent.