Operations/Supply Chain Management Round 1

Please kindly read the following requirement list before you start working.

1. Please put your answers to 1 Word file without questions. Use “your

full name” to name the file.

2. If you want to use excel to do calculation, please upload excel file as

well.

3. Based on the above, you need to upload 1word file plus one excel file

(if needed).

For all writing question, whenever you quote online sources, please

paraphrase it and reference it. If you copy and paste directly, it will be considered as

plagiarism and that you will be rejected directly. You are encouraged to give

your personal opinion and analysis here.

For calculation based questions, please show all your calculations by typing in the word file
itself.

Question 1:

Bullwhip effect has increased due to COVID-19. Elaborate on the phenomenon with help of
an example and explain its relationship with supply chain coordination. (Max: 250 words) [20
Marks]

Question 2:

You are a newly appointed Supply Chain Manager of a firm looking to reduce its
transportation costs. Explain what would be the potential trade-offs for reducing the
transportation costs with the help of a real-world example. (Max: 250 words) [20 Marks]
Question 3:

The actual sales made by a cement company (in tonnes) for the year 2021 is shown in the
Table below. The company had forecasted that they would make sales of 20 tonnes in
August. Assuming that the demand for cement is associated with Alpha = 0.4, forecast the
demand for cement in January 2022 using Exponential Smoothing Method. Clearly write
down all the calculations. [20 Marks]

Month Sales
(Tonnes)
January 18
February 20
March 16
April 18
May 15
June 19
July 16
August 17
September 21
October 19
November 22
December 20

Question 4:

A sports shop is selling cricket balls to the cricket academies in the city. The shop is expected
to make sales of 2500 balls annually (365 days in a year). These balls are bought by the store
from an international supplier at $20 per ball. Each order costs the sports shop $100 as it
requires transportation by air, and the annual per unit inventory carrying cost is 20% of the
purchase price. (Show Calculations for all the Questions)

a. Compute the optimal quantity that the sports shop should order each time from the
international supplier. [5 marks]
b. What would be the expected number of orders for the cricket balls? [2 marks]

c. Assuming that each order takes 5 days to be delivered to the sports shop, what should be
the reorder point for the sports shop? [3 marks]

d. Suppose the international supplier provides a discount of 5% for purchasing in quantities

of 500. Should the sports shop take the discount? Explain with calculations. [10 marks]

Question 5

A handcraft store specialising in making decorative and useful products from wood needs to
decide on how many products should be made for the next week. The store owner thinks that
they will require at least 120 units of their popular wooden bottle. The store owner also thinks
that their new product of wooden wall décor would also attract high sales and expects to
make at least 80 of them. Their production worker has provided information about the time
required to make the products: The wooden bottle will require 30 minutes of carpentry and 8
minutes of painting time. Whereas, the wooden wall decor will require 25 minutes of
carpentry and 10 minutes of painting. The store has decided to sell the wooden bottle for
$5.00 a unit and to price the wooden wall decor at $6.00 for each unit. At this time,
production workers can devote 120 hours to carpentry and 50 hours to painting. They charge
the store $1 for handcrafting each of the items. How many of each product should the store
make to maximise the profit what is the store’s expected profit?

(Please mention clearly the objective function and the constraints below and solve using
Excel Solver (preferred) and attach the Excel file with this file) [20 Marks]