BUSI 5423 - Minor Project 2 - Decision Analytic Practicum

Part 1.

Deciding on a document safe

Frisco Property Management is a hypothetical company that manages a large number rental properties in the northern suburbs of Dallas. The company is outfitting a new administrative office and needs to select a safe to store important documents. In working with their sales rep from Dallas Safe Company, they have been presented with the following 4 options:

Brand	Cost	Fire Rating	Capacity	Lock Quality
Superior Safe	$1,200	4 hours	12 cubic feet	High (80)
Haddon Safe	$1,000	3 hours	10 cubic feet	Medium (50)
Ft. Knox Safe	$1,600	6 hours	12 cubic feet	Very high (100)
Safeco Safe	$800	2 hours	9 cubic feet	Low (20)
Smart Safe	$1,000	4 hours	9 cubic feet	High (80)

Note that relative rank values for the subjective attribute of lock quality have been assigned.

The manager responsible for the decision has assigned the following rank values to each attribute:

1. Fire rating (longest to shortest)
2. Lock quality (highest to lowest)
3. Cost (least expensive to most expensive)
4. Capacity (highest to lowest)

Questions:

1. Using SMARTER, compute the aggregate benefit score for each option
2. By taking into account the cost of each safe, determine which safe lies on the efficient frontier. Explain the significance of this term.
3. SMARTER is based on the "principle of heroic approximation." Explain how this principle applies to your analysis of the problem and discuss whether you think it is appropriate.
4. Fire rating is particularly important if the safe contains paper documents that could suffer irreparable loss if destroyed or waterlogged in the event of a fire. Suppose, however, that the building had a top-of-the-line dry chemical fire suppression system. If the Fire Rating were changed to the least important criteria, how would your recommendation change?