QSO $510$ Final Project Guidelines and Rubric

Overview

The final project for this course is the creation of a statistical analysis report.

Each day, management professionals are faced with multiple decisions affecting various aspects of the operation. The ability to use data to drive decisions is an essential skill that is useful in any facet of an operation. The dynamic environment offers daily challenges that require the talents of the operations manager; working in this field is exciting and rewarding.

Throughout the course, you will be engaged in activities that charge you with making decisions regarding inventory management, production capacity, product profitability, equipment effectiveness, and supply chain management. These are just a few of the challenges encountered in the field of management.

The final activity in this course will provide you with the opportunity to demonstrate your ability to apply statistical tools and methods to solve a problem in a given scenario that is often encountered by a manager. Once you have outlined your analysis strategy and analyzed your data, you will then report your data, strategy, and overall decision that addresses the given problem.

The project is divided into two milestones, which will be submitted at various points throughout the course to scaffold learning and ensure quality final submissions. These milestones will be submitted in Modules Three and Seven. The final project is due in Module Nine.

In this assignment, you will demonstrate your mastery of the following course outcomes:

Apply data$-$based strategies in guiding a focused approach for improving operational processes

Determine the appropriate statistical methods for informing valid data$-$driven decision making in professional settings

Utilize a structured approach for data$-$driven decision making for fostering continuous improvement activities

Propose operational improvement recommendations to internal and external stakeholders based on relevant data

Prompt

Management professionals are often relied upon to make decisions regarding operational processes. Those who utilize a data$-$driven, structured approach have a clear advantage over those offering decisions based solely on intuition. Your task is to review the scenario found in your textbook in Chapter $19$ at the end of the "From Learning to Earning" section entitled "Brief Case: Building Models," the supplemental case study document and the accompanying data set outline the appropriate analysis strategy; select a suitable statistical method; and use data analysis to ultimately drive the decision. Once this has been completed, you will be challenged to present your data, data analysis strategy, and overall decision in a concise report, justifying your analysis.

Specifically, the following critical elements must be addressed:

Introduction to the problem:

Provide a concise description of the scenario that you will be analyzing. The following questions might help you describe the scenario: What is the type of organization identified in the scenario? What is the organization$$s history and problem identified in the scenario?

Create an analysis plan to guide your analysis and decision making: In this section you will review the data set to inform the statistical method that will be used. To inform your responses in this section, calculate the central tendency of the dependent variable, develop a histogram of the gift amount and develop scatterplots for the gift amount for each independent variable.

Identify any quantifiable factors that may be affecting the performance of operational processes.

Develop a single sentence problem statement that addresses the given problem in the scenario and contains quantifiable measures.

Propose a strategy that addresses the problem of the organization in the given case study.

Identify statistical methods to collect data:

Identify the appropriate statistical methods that you will use to perform your analysis. What are your statistical assumptions concerning the data that led you to selecting the methods? In other words, why did you select this method for statistical analysis?

Justify why you chose these methods to analyze the data. Be sure to include how these methods will help predict the use of the data in driving decisions using cited evidence.

Data$-$Driven Decisions to determine the appropriate decision for the identified problem:

Outline the process needed to utilize your statistical analysis to reach a decision regarding the given problem.

Explain how data mining is used to develop a solution to the case. In your response, consider the concepts of metadata.

Explain if the problem is a structured or unstructured problem.

Assess how the variables have potential for answering the problem.

Recommend operational improvements to stakeholders after you have completed the calculations:

Demonstrate a data$-$driven calculation that addresses the given problem statement.

Summarize results