Decision Science Exam

Mr. Mortals a mostly manual sand mining operation near the banks of the ganglia River in W for over 14 years. 10 years ago his daughter Phyllis, a M grad, joined the business with the objective of upgrading the operation and started analysing the company's production with a View to develop strategies to make the business more viable. As shown in the table below she collected data on the yearly sale for 80-pound bags of sand for that the last 10 years. YEAR SALE OF SALE OF SAND SAND (1000's of BAGS) (1000's of BAGS) 4 6 4 5 10 8 a) Develop a 4-year moving average to forecast sales. 6 marks b) Estimate the forecasted sales using a 4 period weighted moving average in which sales in the most recent year is given a weight of 3, 2 for the next most recent and sales for the other two years are each given a weight of l. 3 marks c) Conduct the error analysis on 1a and lb above using Mean Absolute Deviation 10 marks d) Which method do you think is better and why? 4 marks e) Assuming the forecast for year 1 is 5000 bags. Use exponential smoothing with a smoothing constant of 0.4 to forecast demand for sand for the 10 years and conduct the error analysis using MAD. 12 marks f) Of all the forecasting done above 1,514 year moving average, weighted moving average and exponential smoothing; which is the preferred method and why 3 marks 3) Mr. mmld Phyllis that if the forecast for the 11\"\" year is more than 1 1,000 bags he will buy a conveyor machine, which would reduce manual labour. Using the preferred method, state if mwll be buying the conveyor machine and why. 7 marks