The following scenario represents two decision making challenges for small business.

You are required to analyze the information provided and make recommendations

based on numeric analyses you conduct. Please note:

1. Your recommendations are based on the information provided so NO

ASSUMPTION IS REQUIRED OR ACCEPTED.

2. In offering your solution, you must show how you arrive at your decision so

YOU MUST SHOW ALL YOUR WORK (what method you used, where you got

the numbers from and why you used them).

3. Giving answers without showing how your arrived at them would not receive

any credit.

Holiday Baskets

Holidays Baskets is a small company that receives and delivers orders of nut baskets

around Christmas times. The founder and president of the company, Helen Hemkey,

needs you to help her with a couple of concerns she has been having lately.

The operations of Holiday Baskets are rather straight forward as they only take

orders for 4-nut (walnut, cashew, almond peanut) baskets, and they always have

these nuts in stock. Helen receives the orders, picks the nuts in quantities ordered,

places them in a bags. She then puts the bags and the shipping labels in bins and

sends them to the basketing workshop. In the workshop her four employees (Dianne,

Nancy, Sue and Mariam) basket them, place the shipping labels on the baskets and

place them on the pick-up table to be delivered to the customers by a courier

company.

There are three tables in the workshop. Dianne makes her bäsket independently on the first table. Nancy and sue jointly work at the second table and share the wor (some part of basket is completed by Nancy and then Sue finishes the basket).

Mariam makes her basket independently on the third table.

Helen has built a reputation for the quality of baskets she sells to customers (the

nuts are presentably sectioned and do not mix) so she does not want to have more

than two percent of prepared baskets disarrayed (nut sections are disorderly mixed)

before they are sent to the customers. She has recorded the error rates of all her

employees and found that only 6% of the baskets her employees prepare might be

disarrayed (nut sections are disorderly mixed).

Concern 1: Would Helen be able to maintain her desired quality reputation? [15

marks

Helen is also very adamant about timely delivery of her baskets to the customers. As

she strives to have next-day delivery, she uses different courier companies to deliver

the completed baskets. She always asks the available courier to come and pick the

completed basket from the pick-up table for delivery to the customer the next day. A

typical single courier company has a 80% probability of delivering the basket the

next day.

Concern 2: How many courier companies, each carrying an identical set of orders,

must Helen use in order for her to have 99% confidence that the orders reach her

customers the next day? [15 marks]

 

Answer rating: 100% (QA)

STEP 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 2 Assumption 2 Solution 3 Concern 1 3 Concern 2 7 Conclusion 10 References11 STEP 2 Introduction In this paper I will provide the solution for two decision making ... View the full answer