Question 1: Analyzing a existing OM technique:

Find out one scholarly journal article reporting on one or more of the given methods: business or predictive analytics, dashboards, decision support systems and supply chain management.

A) What is the problem, opportunity, or challenge addressed in the article?

B) What is the solution, idea, approach and so on recommended or implemented in the article?

C) How does this help operations? Is the problem, opportunity or challenge resolved completely or partially?

D) What are the takeaways from the article?

E) In particular, what are the limitations of the method?

Be sure to define the terms that you use, beginning with the technique that you select.

Question 2: Applying OM technique(s) to your organization

Find out in your organization an aspect of the operational process which could benefit from use of one or more of the given techniques: business or predictive analytics, dashboards, decision support systems and supply chain management.

A) What is the problem, opportunity, or challenge to be addressed?

B) What technique(s) would be suitable to help mitigate the problem? Why?

C) What would be the areas which present challenges in the approach (example: culture, cost, technology complexity and so on).

Be sure to define the terms which you use, starting with the method that you choose.

Question 3: Recommending a low-cost customer service employee daily assignment schedule

To the extent permitted by local law, each Acme Home Improvements store, including Acme Mexico City, is open from 7 am - 11 pm every day.

Acme Mexico City advance planners in North Carolina have provided the given table, which recognizes the minimum number of customer service employees estimated to be required on the floor of the store each hour of a typical work day:

In the interest of cost control, the planners have as well imposed a not-to-exceed maximum of 30 customer service employees on the floor at any time.

Full-time customer service employees at AMC work a 9 hour shift (8 hours of work plus a 1 hour meal break) either from 7 am to 4 pm or from 2 pm to 11 pm. Workers on the 7-4 shift are assigned an hour-long lunch break at either 11 am or 12 noon. Workers on the 2-11 shifts are assigned an hour-long dinner break at either 5 pm or 6 pm.

Part-time customer service employees work four consecutive hours per day and their shifts can start any hour between 7 am and 7 pm.

By corporate policy, which is consistent with Mexican labor law, the company limits the hours worked by part-time customer service employees to 50% of the day's total scheduled hours.

Part-time customer service employees earn $500 per day, and full-time customer service employees earn $1100 per day in salary and benefits (here, $ = Moneda Nacional, that is, the Mexican peso).

Acme operations analysts working in North Carolina, working with the AMC advance planners, have used integer linear programming, a significant tool employed by operations managers, to propose in accordance with the foregoing factors, an employee assignment schedule for a typical day. Their proposed schedule is the given item in Course Content.

Assignment Tasks:

Each student recommends to the AMC store manager, who is not familiar with integer linear programming, a customer service employee daily assignment schedule for the Acme Mexico City which includes the following:

A) An executive summary with the key results.

B) An employee assignment schedule for a typical day which minimizes personnel costs by using the operations analyst's schedule modified as by the qualitative factors, if any, that you find out are relevant.

C) A discussion of underlying assumptions and of your selected qualitative factors.

D) A further discussion of how non-typical days might influence the schedule.

E) Optionally, and for extra points to be determined by your section professor, a sensitivity analysis which shows how relaxation of the 50% constraint on the hours worked by part-time customer service employees might influence the daily personnel costs.