W6 Case Study question from Pages 504-505 and 537-539 (Assignment File attached)

Running head: CASE STUDY QUESTIONS 1

CASE STUDY QUESTIONS 7

Case study questions

Name

Institution

Introduction

The CARE International is known to be a humanitarian organization which offers relief help to regions that are experiencing natural disasters like hurricanes and earthquakes. This paper will focus on answering the case study questions on diverse issues.

1. What were the main challenges encountered by CARE International before they created their warehouse prepositioning model

The challenges faced by CARE international are such as transportation issues, absence of agility, limited aptitude to gather supplies both locally and internationally (Gay, 2015). There is a challenge of the previous means of transportation utilized by vendors which is slow and also very unreliable as well as the cost of relief resources is very high.

2. How does the objective function relate to the organization's need to improve relief services to affected areas?

The objective function need to minimize the time used to respond to natural occurrences as well as transport reliefs to the affected area. The objective function is connected to the need of agency providing shipping relief services to the affected region at minimal response time.

3. Conduct online research and suggest at least three other applications or types of software that could handle the magnitude of variable and constraints CARE International used in their MIP model.

There are three software that can be incorporated to handle constraints Care International utilizes for Mixed-integer programming ideal which are “Mathematical Programming Language (AMPL), Gurobi, and Statistical Analysis System (SAS) (De & Mok, 2016).” These are tools that assist the organization in solving the linear and the quadratic optimization.

4. Elaborate on some benefits CARE International stands to gain from implementing their pre-positioning model on a large scale in future

Warehouse pre-positioning model has some advantages that it offers to CARE International such as they facilitate the delivery relief to the affected region, mostly in the time of the disaster occurrence. This model assist in providing relief in the affected region in relatively short period of time which means that the agency will be in a position to save more lives.

Warehouse pre-positioning model

Figure 1: Warehouse pre-positioning model

Application case

1. Describe the problem that a large company such as HP might face in offering many product lines and options.

One problem they might face is the issue of high cost for introducing new products, designing and manufacturing as well as the issue of supply chain complexity. The institution might face issues such as the unexpected increase in operational expenses, reduction in the forecasting accuracy and increase in the inventory costs.

2. Why is there a possible conflict between marketing and operations?

Yes. Marketing and operation department are the pillars of any organization. However, these two have diverse functions that might result to conflicts in an organization. The conflict can arise due to the fact that marketing knows what the market wants while the operation team know how the company achieve targets resulting to conflicting ideas.

3. Summarize your understanding of the models and the algorithms.

The models are used to evaluate fresh products before being introduced include the HP business group, HP modeling group and HP strategy planning group. The team came up with algorithms for prioritizing the old products in a portfolio. This teams also generate improved model as well as algorithms used to solve organization issues faster than the old technologies (Arnette & Zobel, 2019).

4. Perform an online search to find more details of the algorithms.

Revenue coverage optimization tool implemented for HP organization has a role of allowing customers to have quality service as well as increasing the organization revenue. Both the lab and the business groups from this company who came up with the RCO achieved “2009 Franz Edelman Award” which identifies them to offer quality operations study practice.

5. Why would there be a need for such a system in an organization?

This system in an organization is important since it assists the organization in advancing the operational on the focus on the key items by minimizing the complexity of items given to customers (Zineddine, 2015). The organization also utilizes this system in ranking its “Personal System Group offerings based on the relationship between products and orders (Zineddine, 2015).”

6. What benefits did HP derive from implementation of the models?

HP Company benefits since the system reduces the production cost by maximizing the margins and also facilitates customer service and satisfaction. The system assists the organization in advancing efficiency in resource planning and risk management areas.

Conclusion.

The implementation of a new system in the organization is among the most important element for every organization.

References

Arnette, A. N., & Zobel, C. W. (2019). A Risk‐Based Approach to Improving Disaster Relief Asset Pre‐Positioning. Production and Operations Management, 28(2), 457-478.

De Leeuw, S., & Mok, W. Y. (2016). An empirical analysis of humanitarian warehouse locations. Journal of Operations and Supply Chain Management (JOSCM), 9(1), 55-76.

Gay, D. M. (2015). The AMPL modelling language: An aid to formulating and solving optimization problems. In Numerical analysis and optimization (pp. 95-116). Springer, Cham.

Nakazato, J., Tao, Y., Tran, G. K., & Sakaguchi, K. (2019, July). Revenue Model with Multi-Access Edge Computing for Cellular Network Architecture. In 2019 Eleventh International Conference on Ubiquitous and Future Networks (ICUFN) (pp. 21-26). IEEE.

Zineddine, M. (2015). Vulnerabilities and mitigation techniques toning in the cloud: A cost and vulnerabilities coverage optimization approach using Cuckoo Search algorithm with Lévy flights. Computers & Security, 48, 1-18.

Formation of decision making commitee

Determination of alternative locations for the agency`s pre-positioned warehouses

Determination of criteria to be used

Structuring of decision hierarchy

Approve decision hierarchy

construction of comparison matrix and calculation of priority of each criterion

Evaluation of alternative location

selection of optimal location

Approve criteria weights