Guidelines regarding the “Diverse Industries International” Case
Please follow the case report format suggested on pages 2-3 of your syllabus which is reproduced here for your convenience:
Case Report Format:
Generally the case report format could be: (1) 1-page Executive Summary; (2) Brief company /business background and problem statement; (3) list of operations challenges or symptoms, primary and/or secondary, and the analyses and discussions of these challenges; (4) modeling solutions or alternative solutions along with analyses of their pros and cons; (5) your recommendation, and its basic reasoning /justifications. Typically the main case report (1)-(5) is expected to be a maximum of 7-10 double-spaced pages for undergraduate students, but limited to a maximum of 15 pages for graduate students. A technical appendix, if any, could also be attached after the main report. [This is relatively simple case, so I don’t expect a long report.]
We recommend following this format for your case report.
-20% of the case grade is for adhering to a format similar to this (or better) in your case report
-80% of the case grade will be based on the contents in terms of correctness of your results and the clarity of your interpretations / discussions / recommendations.
Hints about major questions you want to address in the case (mostly in sections 3 or 4):
-What aspects of the production tasks, such as production volume, unit product cost / price, product function / features, quality (consistency), and service, etc., are likely the most important to Diverse Industries International (DII) when manufacturing and packaging the automatic dishwasher gel?
-How are the current manufacturing process and the new proposed process different from each other? Please draw the flowcharts for these 2 processes by noting the maximum capacity, the human resources and the operation required at each stage. An example format is attached in the next page, so you could copy and paste some textboxes there to create your own flowchart diagram.
-What are the potential incremental costs and benefits (measurable and non-measurable yet) of the new proposed process? For the measurable parts, please quantify.
-Given these costs and benefits, how many years (or months) will it take DII to payback the cost of investment in the new process? [i.e., to begin to profit from the proposed change?]
-Would the new process increase or decrease the production capacity? What would be the potential business value for the change in production capacity?
Example (Simple) Process Flowchart
Process Flow / Present Max Capacity / Resource Required / Operation Description/ N/A / One person / Pick up materials from warehouse and deliver to line
/ “No problem in unpacking and sorting all materials” / 2 laborers / …
/ 100 parts / hour / 2 skilled machinists / …
/ 90 parts / hour / 3 skilled machinists / …