QUESTIONS
1. Tom Taylor, the sales manager, was told by his superior, Carl Bauer, to take an
order from a new customer for a batch of products. Both Tom and Carl knew that
the products ordered would only partially meet the customer’s requirements. But
Carl insisted that the order was too valuable to lose. What should Tom do?
2. Nancy Bush, the plant manager, needs to decide whether to make or buy a component
for the company’s core product. She would like the advice of her production
supervisors, since they must implement her decision. However, she fears that the
supervisors will be biased toward making the component in-house, as they tend
to favor retaining more work for their people. What should Nancy do?
3. Student A, in order to graduate on February 4, works hard to fnish her master of
engineering report by the due date of January 8. She is planning to return to her
home country immediately thereafter and get married. If she graduates on June
10, the next available graduation date, she will have to pay a tuition fee to keep her
student status active for one more semester. That would be a substantial fnancial
burden for her.
Her advisor, Professor B, is hesitant to accept the report as presented. The
report includes a major marketing activity designed by Student A to promote the
new service package of a local company. Because of logistics, this major marketing
activity is scheduled to take place on January 20. No customer feedback data,
which are required to demonstrate the value brought about by the report, are
available before January 8. Professor B cannot bend the rules to pass the report
without these data.
Put your innovation hat on and recommend a way to resolve this confict.
4. The engineering manager of Company A proposes to install an automated barcode
scanner costing $4000. He estimates that he can save about 100 hours of labor
time per month, as products can now be scanned much faster. He reasons that at
the wage rate of $15 per hour, the beneft for using the automated bar-code scanner
is $1500 per month, and the scanner can be paid back in 2.67 months.
As the president of Company A, do you agree or disagree with the way he computes
the cost–beneft ratio? Why or why not?
5. The new millennium imposes a number of challenges on business managers, who
are different from engineering managers and technology managers. Name a few
such challenges.
6. In the literature, it is generally said that innovations in the service sectors are lagging
behind those in the manufacturing sectors. Explain why this might indeed
be so.
7. There have been a number of articles in the business literature proclaiming the
potentially large contributions that data mining could make to the service sectors.
Show an example in which the application of data mining had actually made a
difference to a service company