MGMT 3620 Critical Thinking
Problem Solving Report Assignment
Background: Often management may present a problem to us in the form of a question or a request. We need to be prepared to respond with analysis and recommendations clearly communicated in the form of a problem solving report for problems that require some analysis.
Assignment: We will use the data and scenario of the Southwestern University Case Study found in chapter 6, page 239 of Principles of Operations Management by Heizer, Render, and Munson, 10th edition.
You are to write a problem solving report in direct format (after brief intro, the recommendations come first) addressing President Wisner's request(s) found in the text. Your report should include the following:
• Clear prioritized recommendation summary.
• A Pareto analysis of the numerical survey data, focusing on the C-F grades including the graph and brief analysis.
• At least one recommendation for making future surveys more useful.
• A Pareto analysis of the open-ended comments with graph and brief analysis.
• A cause-and-effect diagram of some related problem with diagram and brief analysis.
• A Word document with the two Pareto charts and Cause and Effect Diagrams embedded in the appropriate places as jpeg files.
A separate Excel file containing your spreadsheets. Files should be namedyourlastnamefirstinitialWriting3 (for me that would look like bullingtonkWriting3).
Be careful about making sweeping recommendations. For instance, I would hesitate to recommend (that's a Southern way of saying there is no way I would do this) installing skyboxes when I do not know (a) how much they cost or (b) how many people are willing to invest.
However, I might recommend that we find the answers to questions (a) and (b),but just because someone brought it up does not mean that it necessarily rises to the level of further investigation.
A model format for the report will be provided, but you may begin working on the assignment.