UV3857

ORION CONTROLS (B)

Nathan Armstrong’s thinking about the Avion contract had begun to crystallize during his
trip to the Blue Ridge Mountains. Upon returning to the office, however, he was dismayed to
discover two new email messages relating to the contract. The first message was from Richard
Hubble, the president of Gemini Software (Gemini): “Urgent. Please call.” When Armstrong called,
Hubble told him that a crisis had arisen that would force Gemini to delay starting the project for
three months rather than starting it immediately, as previously planned. In light of the new
circumstances, Hubble said he would guarantee that Gemini would complete the project during the
subsequent five months for a fixed price of $160,000, regardless of the resources required.
Armstrong recognized that this “wrinkle” would prevent Orion from benefiting from any savings
associated with the shortcut—assuming it would work—but was pleased that he no longer bore the
risk of the shortcut not working.

The second message was from Alicia Harrington, head of Orion’s engineering division, who
had several things to discuss. First, she indicated that she had just received word that a major project
had been postponed, which would change the timing of Armstrong’s supersmart-valve project.
Armstrong’s project would have to begin immediately. As a result of the postponement, Harrington
asserted that sufficient internal resources could be devoted to the project, so that she could now
guarantee a successful valve redesign over the next three months with the same incremental cost of
$80,000 for outside services.

Harrington also said that she had been discussing the project with her engineering colleagues,
who had raised the issue of precisely what was meant by “modest” and “dramatic” improvement. A
new, not yet widely adopted performance measure for evaluating valve-system performance was
called the Sager scale: a complex function of the control system’s reaction time and the derivative
and integral action of the valve. The SV44A-10 was rated at 522 on the Sager scale, which had a
range of 200 to 800. Harrington proposed that the Sager scale be specified in the contract to measure
performance, and she suggested that any improvement rating above 600 be considered dramatic.

Armstrong took the opportunity to bring up the fact that the rescheduling of the engineering
project meant that Gemini would not be able to begin the software development until after the valve
redesign was completed and asked Harrington if that would be a problem. Harrington responded that

This case was prepared by Professors Dana R. Clyman and Sherwood C. Frey, Jr. It was written as a basis for class
discussion rather than to illustrate effective or ineffective handling of an administrative situation. Copyright  2002 by
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it merely meant they would not know the true performance of the valve until the software was
completed. Nevertheless, she said she would be able to estimate the Sager value of the new valve
based on the software specifications (i.e., without the software itself) once the prototype valve
emerged from the engineering project. Currently, she believed that this “estimated Sager” could be
anywhere between 525 and 700, and she thought that a rating around 625 was most likely. She also
indicated that the “actual Sager,” which would be known only after the software was completed,
would be normally distributed around her estimated-Sager value, with a standard deviation of 20
points.

To pin down the precise terms of the performance incentives for the new valve system,
Armstrong called Andre Gide, who was familiar with the Sager scale and agreed to its use. After a
lengthy conversation, the two men agreed that, for every Sager point above 522 and up to 600, the
price of each valve system would increase by $25 a point. If the improvement rating exceeded 600
(i.e., was considered a dramatic improvement)—in addition to the extra $1,950 for the first 78 points
of improvement—Armstrong proposed $200 a point for each point above 600. Gide, after some
reflection, agreed to this arrangement, with the proviso that the total price per valve could not exceed
$25,000, which was somewhat better than the 100% premium he had originally offered.

This document is authorized for use only in Georgina Hall's MBA72DSCFB - Decision Models - P5 - Nov-Dec 2020 at INSEAD from Oct 2020 to Dec 2021.