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Green Mills Inc. operates several lumber mills throughout the Northwestern United States that produce a variety of wood products. The company is currently considering expanding operations to Chile as a vehicle for reducing the costs of raw materials. In that regard, the management team is interested in analyzing the cost implications as a vehicle to properly assess this backward integration strategy. More specifically, management wishes to evaluate several different aggregate planning policies including level, chase and mixed policies.

Instructor spreadsheet for product 8B12N030.

The newly appointed general manager (GM) of a private golf club in a small community must step in to clean house after the club chooses not to renew the previous GM’s contract. The club has suffered a sizable revenue loss during its most recent year, and membership has declined well below the targeted level. Additionally, three senior managers have departed in the last few months and have been replaced with individuals who have very limited experience in the golf industry. The new GM must identify the issues he needs to address, prioritize them and develop an action plan. The golf season is set to begin in less than three months’ time, and the club cannot experience another disastrous financial year.

The Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement (CBFA) had two primary purposes: (1) to protect Canada’s boreal forest from harmful logging practices; and (2) to improve and protect the reputation of Canada’s forest industry and companies. But the CBFA’s ambitious plans overlooked the fundamental challenges associated with the agreement’s implementation. Two years after its signing, the agreement suffers from a severe lack of funding, the withdrawal of one signatory and major hurdles at the regional working group level. The CBFA’s secretariat needs to develop a plan of action to realize the full potential of the agreement but faces numerous issues in terms of implementation: (1) the CBFA’s exclusion of First Nations communities; (2) funding issues; (3) disagreement at the local regional levels and among some signatories; (4) slow pace of implementation and (5) limited concrete signs of success thus far.

The founder of ServiceForce, a company that provides repair and maintenance for motorized two-wheel vehicles in India, has a dilemma about whether he should sell the rights of his franchisee business, join hands with a venture capitalist, borrow money for capacity building or see the business grow through franchising. The start-up was initiated with his own money and family investment. A mere 18 months has shown great success with two service stations, a mobile workshop to service rural and industrial clients and a system of card packages that allow customers to pre-pay for a range of services. The company is a recognized brand for customer satisfaction and quality workmanship, and the employees are happy and contribute to the company well-being by participating in customer promotion schemes. However, competition from both vehicle manufacturers’ service stations and unorganized garages is growing in tandem with the skyrocketing sales of two-wheel vehicles, especially to the younger demographic. In order to grow, the company is at a crossroads: should it borrow money to ramp up the growth of the business through new capacity building or invest in more franchises? Should the owner accept the offer to buy the franchise rights from him outright or the offer from a venture capitalist, which will result in losing some control?

In early May 2013, Abercrombie & Fitch, a high-end clothing retailer in the United States, faced a loss of consumer confidence in its brand after quotes made by its CEO in an interview seven years earlier resurfaced. His remarks fostered the perception that the company was prejudiced against overweight people. In response, angry consumers released a YouTube video entitled #FitchTheHomeless urging people to donate their Abercrombie & Fitch clothing to homeless individuals. This video went viral and inspired negative feedback towards the company from both social media networks and mainstream media outlets. Abercrombie & Fitch’s first response came 12 days later with a second apology issued the following week. Nonetheless, the controversy continued, and by June, Forbes announced that the company’s BrandIndex Impression was at an all year low. How can Abercrombie & Fitch reverse the negative feedback and regain its consumers’ loyalty?<p><br><br>You might also like: Abercrombie and Fitch, Mountain Dew: The Most Racist Soft-drink Commercial in History?, Domino’s Pizza

<p>At the end of the year’s third quarter, the sales team at a generic-pharmaceutical company has achieved just 91 per cent of its sales target, and growth is less than what was anticipated. The general manager of sales needs to decide whether he can revise the sales targets for the last quarter of the year without compromising growth. He also needs to address the impact of launching a new product when the sales team is striving to achieve its budgets and devise strategies the sales team can use to achieve their sales targets during a selling downturn.</p>

A non-governmental organization dedicated to improving underprivileged rural children’s access to quality education in southern India has grown considerably in the seven years since its inception. In considering a growth strategy, the organization’s two founders and managing trustees consider the roles of social value creation, funds sustainability, organizational visibility, resources constraints and how the relationships among these factors affect the organization’s future plans.

In 2012, a young entrepreneur is preparing the marketing portion of a business plan to launch a board games café, and he needs to complete the plan within a week so that he can review it with his business partner. The marketing plan must include a recommendation for a target market and detail plans for promotion, pricing and product offering. The partners have budgeted $6,000 for promotion to gain exposure and bring customers into the café.

In 2012, the owner of a popular batting cage reveals financial details about her company’s long-lived assets for the purpose of completing the necessary fiscal-year accounting transactions.

The chief financial officer (CFO) and major shareholder of a small charter sport fishing company must prepare the company books for the fiscal year according to international financial reporting standards (IFRS) rules. The CFO must deal with both finance and operating leases.

Excel spreadsheet for students.

Excel spreadsheet for students.

A media planner at a specialized media buying firm was in the process of planning the spring 2012 television campaign for a customer with a recognizable brand name. The campaign budget of $7 million was to be spent on seven weeks of advertising during the first 20 weeks of the year. Each week of advertising involved a carefully selected series of advertisements on network and local television, and each week of advertising cost $1 million. Which seven of the 20 weeks should the planner choose? Is the $7 million budget the correct amount?

Marks and Spencer (M&S) had first ventured into international markets 70 years ago. By 2012, M&S had 337 stores in 41 countries. Although M&S saw itself as a U.K. retailer that exported its products, the company had been attempting to reduce its dependency on the U.K. economic cycle. Its goal was to increase international sales from £800 million to £1.0 billion by 2013/14. By 2020, M&S wanted to be an international, multi-channel retailer. <br><br>When the company entered the Chinese market in 2008, it faced many difficulties. It had failed to conduct proper market research to understand the Chinese consumer, which had led to many issues. The company had neglected to address the cultural gaps between the United Kingdom and China. It had also taken an approach of standardizing its products, instead of adapting products to the new market. Students must consider the marketing mix policies of product, price, placement and promotion to recommend changes to M&S’s entry into China.

The U.S. presidential primary elections represent an especially challenging decision context. The four candidates in the 2012 Florida Republican primary, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul and Mitt Romney, all have strengths and weakness in the eyes of a Republican primary voter. In this case, these qualities are illustrated by the candidates’ statements and their reported actions during the campaign. The Republican primary voter must use the information given to decide which candidate to support. Furthermore, in a typical business or political decision, a person chooses on the basis of his or her personal preference. In a primary election, however, voters are advised to take into account the candidate they think can win the later presidential election, which greatly complicates the decision-making process.

The SickKids Foundation, the fundraising arm of the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Ontario, works with Dairy Queen and the Children's Miracle Network on an annual event called Miracle Treat Day. On that day, proceeds from Dairy Queen Blizzard sales are donated to children’s hospitals across North America. But the cause-related marketing program has had unequal success: the amount raised in Toronto is less than what is raised in many other Canadian municipalities. The associate director of the Children's Miracle Network at the SickKids Foundation has challenged her team to figure out why this is happening and what they can do to improve the performance of the initiative.

The (A) case involves managing the planning and execution of the first convocation held at one of the campuses of a business school in Nagpur, India, at fairly short notice. The school’s chairperson of post-graduate studies in management programs has been appointed as the chief co-ordinator of the event. Leveraging his operations-management background and working in collaboration with other faculty, he sets about identifying the required activities and their precedence relationships in order to ascertain the time required to complete these activities.<br><br>The (B) case 9B13D004 presents a situation that arises about three weeks into the project that necessitates some replanning in midstream.

This is a supplement to Convocation at the National Institute of Management's Central India Campus (A), 9B13D003.

Presentation for product 8B12A036.