Guidelines:

• This is an individual assignment and therefore what you submit must be your own work. Note the University’s material regarding Cheating, Plagiarism and Third Party Assistance.

•   The Assignment is marked out of 100 and is worth 8% of the coursework mark.

•   The assignment has a total of 4 tasks. Complete all the tasks and note the 10 marks available for producing a professional technical business report.

•    You may find some EXCEL spreadsheets from the Lab exercises useful as templates for some of the calculations and for creating the graphs required in the tasks.

•   The raw data tables are also available in a separate EXCEL file on CANVAS.

•    Answer  each  task  clearly  in  a   labelled  section   using   paragraph  style  and  format   it professionally. Your submission is essentially a business report; you may use bullet points where applicable.

•   The word limit is indicated for each question; do NOT repeat the questions. Also do not paste your copied EXCEL views as ‘Tables’; those should all be pasted into the report as an ‘Image’ .

•    Your submission should consist of one MS WORD file professionally formatted according to the standard template provided on CANVAS  | Assignments. Up to 10 Marks are available against these requirements for excellent formatting.

•   The  assignment  has  to  be  submitted  electronically  to  Turnitin  via  your  course  CANVAS assessment before 11:59pm on Friday 19 May 2023. The file to be submitted must be named “Assign2_yourUPI.docx” . No additional hardcopy submission is required.

•    Late assignments will receive a 10 mark penalty per (part or full) day late if you have not been granted an extension of time. Final deadline for accepting late submissions is 11:59pm on Sunday 21 May 2023.

Professional Report Writing 10 marks

Learning Objective:

Well written, correctly referenced, and properly formatted reports are essential in all business environments. In reports for operations management issues, you often also need to present information in tables or graphs. Hence it is crucial that you can also apply professional formatting to a technical report in a Microsoft WORD document.

Your document is in essence a  business  report and as such  must  be formatted according to the template provided on CANVAS for Assignment 1 and Case Study Report. A good technical report has select smaller tables or graphs within the report body (where in the report the information presented in the table or graph is explained) with large tables or EXCEL images containing all the background information (full workings) belong to the appendix.

If you find that your Microsoft WORD 2016 formatting skills are not sufficient, please refer to the Word 2016 for Dummies book provided through CANVAS  | Reading Lists. You find this and links to more referencing  information via  CANVAS  |  Modules  |  Getting started  | Additional  Library  Resources webpage.

Note: Don’t leave your file submission to the last moment to avoid ending up with a late submission and the associated late penalty. The Turnitin dropbox via CANVAS will be available long before the deadline and you can re-submit up to the actual deadline if you discover a mistake after you submitted early.

1. Capacity Planning 25 marks

Learning Objective:

The purpose of this part of the assignment is to assess your understanding of how spreadsheets can be used for capacity planning, and the role that it plays in different types oforganisations.

Capacity Planning for Always Healthy:

Always Healthy manufactures a variety of medical products such as vaccines, injections, and medicines. They own a subsidiary company that employs specialist nurses who run flu vaccination pop-up clinics at Community Centres and at large companies across the Greater Auckland region.

Always Healthy faces variable  demand for this flu vaccination service. They  have  prepared the following  annual forecast of service  units for the  demand they  expect each  month for the  next calendar year for the flu vaccination pop-up clinics. Assume, the company will employ 60 specialist vaccination nurses before Month 1.

The management of Always Healthy needs to decide for the next year how many specialist vaccination nurses to hire and fire at the start of each month, based on the following demand forecast:

Table 1

Assume that one nurse working for one month can provide a total of 10 vaccination service units during that period. Each nurse is paid $4100 per month and can work up to 175 hours/month. Only at the beginning of each month nurses can be hired or fired; no part-time employment is possible. Hiring each nurse costs $3900 and firing each nurse costs $7250.

a) Develop the least-cost plan that fully satisfies the forecast demand. Present this plan to the management of Always Healthy in a report that summarises your findings, your capacity plans, and gives a detailed recommendation based on your findings.

b)   The manager has also asked you to discuss in the report the following questions:

•   How much money does the company save using this plan rather than a level capacity plan (also fully satisfying demand)? Show you calculation details (reasoning) to support (explain)

your answer.

•  What TWO methods could the company feasibly use in order to smooth demand? Which ONE of those would you recommend here and why?

•   Reworking your least-cost plan – what savings could be made if the company outsourced the HR function which would half the cost for hiring and firing of specialist vaccination nurses? What drawbacks would need to be considered in this specific business situation?

(Word limit: approximately 200 words)

Include images of your Excel workings in the report.

2. Optimisation with spreadsheets 25 marks

Learning Objective:

The purpose of this part of the assignment is to assess your understanding of how spreadsheets can be used in optimisation to find a lowest cost answer to a common operations problem. You must also be able to demonstrate the ability to adjust the spreadsheet to account for changes in situations and understand how to analyse a changing situation.

Optimising transportation for Always Healthy:

Currently, Always Healthy operates THREE factories (Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch). One of the items they are making is a special diabetes test kit which they supply to healthcare retail outlets around New Zealand via 9 distribution centres (DCs). Table 2 shows the amount of weekly demand at each DC. Table 3 contains information about the weekly supply capacity from each factory. Table 4 shows shipping costs for Always Healthy between each factory and the 9 DCs.

Table 2

Table 3

Table 5

Table 4

a)    Using this information, find the lowest total cost for Always Healthy to meet the demand for diabetes test kit in the DCs using the three factories.

Report to management on the total cost for the shipping and present in a table how many units from each factory are allocated to be shipped to each DC.

b)   Assume that Always Healthy plans to  close their  Christchurch factory  (Factory  3). All  of the capacity is shifted to the other factories. Table 5 lists the new levels of capacity at each factory.   Report on the new total cost for the shipping and present in a table how many units of the diabetes test kit from each factory are now allocated to be shipped to each DC.

(Word limit: approximately 100 words)

Include images of your Excel workings in the report.

3. Process Control 20 marks

Learning Objective:

The purpose of this part of the assignment is to assess your understanding of process control tools and their role in an organisation.

Process Control Charts for Always Healthy:

The performance of front desk staff at the Always Healthy office was assessed. Six receptionists were selected and the customer service they provided was observed seven times. The activities that the receptionists were performing were identified and the times (in seconds) to service a customer were recorded as noted below.