1. For what types of employees or positions do you think management by objectives (MBO) should prove particularly effective? Ineffective?
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 eventual decisions. However, she fears that the supervisors will be biased towards making the component in house, as they tend to favor retaining more work for their people. What should Nancy Bush do?
3. The engineering Manager proposes to install an automated bar code scanner costing $4,000. He estimates that he can save about 100 hours of labor time per month because of its speed. He further reasons that at the wage rate of $15/hour, the benefit of using the scanner is $1,500/month and the scanner can be paid back in 2.67 months. As the president of the company, do you agree or disagree with the way he
4. There are always risks associated with the experimentation of a new manufacturing process or with the entry into a new global market, the risks of failure. How should one decide to proceed or not to proceed with a risky venture? What is the proper level of risks to take?
5. Why is planning said to have “primacy” among the managerial functions?
6. For what types of employees or positions do you think management by objectives (MBO) should prove particularly effective? Ineffective?
7. Sales of a particular product (in thousands of dollars) for the years 2005 through 2008 have been 48, 64, 67, and 83, respectively.
a) What sales would you predict for 2009 using a simple four-year moving average?
(b) What sales would you predict for 2009 using a weighted moving average with weights of 0.50 for the immediate preceding year and 0.30, 0.15, and 0.05 for the three years before that?