Develop

a preliminary report

in memo format

for your supervisor, Elizabeth

Burke.

Refer to the $$business report format$$ document in DB for an example report format.

The

report should be no more than $3$ pages long.

To complete the report answer the questions posed below $(1$

$-$

$3)$ after reading the case facts

and

meeting with Elizabeth Burke$$s representative,

Prof.

McAllister, to clear up

any ambiguity about

the scope and purpose of the project you may have.

Performance L

awn Equipment

$,$ headquartered in St$.$ Louis, Missouri, is a privately

$-$

owned

designer and producer of traditional lawn mowers used by homeowners. PLE provides most of

the products to dealerships, which, in turn, sell directly to end users. PLE employs $1,660$ p

eople

across the United States

$.$ About half the workforce is based in St$.$ Louis; the remainder is split

among their manufacturing plants.

In the United States, the focus of sales is on the eastern seaboard, California, the Southeast, and

the south

$-$

central s

tates, which have the greatest concentration of customers. Annual sales are

approximately $$180$ million.

Your team is part of a special department within PLE tasked with using data analytics to provide

useful insights to the company$$s management team.

Elizabeth

has generated a dataset containing

a random sample of employee data.

This dataset is saved as an excel file named

$$PLE$\_$Employee$\_$Data.$$

She has tasked you with

using this

data

to determine

whether PLE is a

good company to work for, and what the co

mpany could do to improve employee

productivity

$.$

The first step in this process is developing a meaningful project.

Answer

the

questions below

in the form of a preliminary report for Elizabeth.

$1.$

What is your understanding of the problem you are trying to so

lve?

Before answering this

question, make sure you meet with Prof. McAllister to probe a bit further about what the

company is hoping to achieve with this project.

$2.$

Develop three specific questions you would like to address with your project, given your

u

nderstanding of the problem your team is trying to solve. Describe how each question

addresses the overall problem.

$3.$

Identify the KPIs from the dataset you could use to answer each of your specific questions.

Describe how you could use these KPIs to answer your specific questions. Also, identify the

variable type of each KPI $($discrete$,$ continuous, categorical, ordinal, etc.$).$

Evaluate the

reliability and validity of these variables. What additional data might

you need to address

your specific questions $($e$.$g$.$ employee sales data, employee product assembly error rates,

average employee satisfaction by industry, etc.$)$

and where might you source these data

$($accounting department, industry trade group, operations de

partment, etc.$)$