Question 1 20 pts
(TCO A) Your small services company has failed to meet current production standards in the current facility after the first two years of a three-year lease. As the operations manager, you are being held accountable for not controlling costs and failing to meet desired efficiency and productivity goals. The goal is to determine what action to take in the future to improve the situation and to improve output or consider outsourcing the operation overseas.
i. What criteria should have been used in the decision-making process that could have avoided the current situation?
ii. Describe the eight elements for effective decision making used in a rational decision-making approach, and describe how it could have been applied foreseeing this potential crisis.
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Question 2 20 pts
(TCO A) Understanding fundamental and means objectives are important to decision analysis and decision making. You are evaluating providing your sales team with upgraded smart phones to use when traveling on business and are looking at several different alternatives.
i. Identify the fundamental objectives.
ii. How would those objectives be used in the decision-making process?
iii. Identify the means objectives.
iv. How would the means objectives be used in the decision-making process?
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Question 3 50 pts
(TCO A) Robin Griffith, Business Manager for Clark Investments, is considering three new office locations. In trying to decide which location is the best overall for the company, Robin has concluded that three criteria are important in this decision. First, of course, is to have a location in close proximity to key corporate customers. This objective is most important, twice as important as each of the other two criteria. The second criterion is to have a location with excellent tenant satisfaction. The third criterion is for the facility to have additional space to expand into. The second and third criteria are equally important.
Here is a summary of each of the locations:
1) Shady Pines: 7 corporate accounts within five miles; scored an 80 satisfied/highly satisfied in recent tenant satisfaction poll; 1,000 additional square feet available in the event of a need to expand further.
2) Via Angelina: 5 corporate accounts within five miles; scored an 85 satisfied/highly satisfied in recent tenant satisfaction poll; 2,000 additional square feet available in the event of a need to expand further.
3) The Mercado: 4 corporate accounts within five miles; scored a 75 satisfied/highly satisfied in recent tenant satisfaction poll; no additional space available.
(a) What is Robin’s problem or opportunity in this situation?
(b) What is the overall objective for Robin’s decision? What are the fundamental objectives that support the overall objective?
(c) What are Robin’s alternatives for this decision situation?
(d) Evaluate this decision situation using tradeoffs or a weighted scoring model. Based on that analysis, to which location should Robin select?
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Question 4 20 pts
(TCO B) Utilizing intuitive thinking in today’s business environment is a must according to research and practical experience.
i. Why is intuition important to managers today, and how reliable is it in decision making?
ii. Develop three approaches for improving one’s intuition to enable better decision making.
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