OMG 322

Please I need feedback in 2 hours....it's urgent.

1. City is a small business that sells and lays sod (rolled strips of grass). The owner has devised a forecasting procedure based on demand history from previous years plus projections of demand in recent weeks. The forecast for the next six weeks, in labor hours of sod laying, is

850 870 950 910 970 870

Currently, City Sod has a staff of sod layers consisting of five crews and 15 laborers. A crew chief lay sod along with the laborers and the direct crew. The owner has decided on the following staffing policies:

a. A two-week backlog will be accumulated before adding staff.

b. Plans are based on a 40-hour workweek; overtime is used only to absorb weather or other delays and employee absence resignations.

c. The ideals crew size is one crew chief and four laborers.

Devise a hiring plan for the first four weeks. In your answer, assume a current backlog of 1,480 labor hours of sod-laying orders. Does City Sod follow a chase demand or level-capacity strategy of production planning? Explain.

2. Manufacturing Aggregate Planning. Manufacturers inc. (MI) currently has a labor force of 10, which can produce 500 units per period. The cost of labor is now $2,400 per period, per employee. The company has a long-standing rule that allows overtime. In addition, the product cannot be subcontracted due to the specialized machinery that MI uses to produce it. As a result, MI can only increase/decrease production by hiring or laying off employees. The cost is $5,000 to lay off an employee. Inventory-carrying costs are $100 per unit remaining at the end of each period. The inventory level at the beginning of period 1 is 300 units. The forecast demand in each of the 3 periods is given in the table below.

Period 1 Period 2 Period 3 Period 4

Aggregate demand 720 610 500 410

a. compute the costs of chase strategy

b. compute the costs for a level strategy

c. compare the two strategies

3. A furnace thermostat has a constant failure rate of one failure per 25 months and a mean time to repair of four hours.

a. What is the thermostat reliability after 12 months? after 24 months? or after 36 months?

b. what is the availability?

c. should a design team try to streamline the repair process to reduce the MTTR?. Explain.

Does the location of the furnace matter?