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Spreadsheet for case UV6136

B Case to UV0725

The president of a well-established manufacturer of mattresses has asked his assistant to recommend whether to consolidate plants of three different locations. He must decide not only which criteria are most useful in making such a decision, but also how to weigh the different criteria in coming up with a single decision.

This note teaches the student how to account for seasonality in time-series data. All the necessary steps to (1) deseasonalize, (2) forecast with deseasonalized data, and then (3) re-seasonalize the forecast are illustrated with examples from the coal industry.

The president of a large and established manufacturer of laboratory equipment has to decide whether to invest $1 million for 30% equity in a start-up company in the field of lab robotics. The agreement would also allow his company the right to market the product. He already has a spreadsheet that projects the best guess of the future scenario and calculates several measures of performance (ROS, ROE, ROI, NPV, and IRR). He must decide which of the criteria are most useful. A relevant-cost issue that is introduced must be resolved, because it makes a big difference in the NPV. In the supplement, some background material is provided for a forecasting/judgmental assessment exercise based on this decision. The supplement could, assuming students have already been introduced to this topic, form the basis for a short workshop (an hour or less) on judgmental probability, or it could be used with a note on cumulative probability distributions for an introductory class on the topic. (The B case number is UVA-QA-0383, and a supplement to the A case is UVA-QA-0384.)

The president of a natural-resource exploration company has to decide whether to invest in a new drilling opportunity. He already has a spreadsheet that projects the most likely scenario for the well and calculates the NPV and internal rate of return. However, six uncertainties are discussed by the president and another potential investor. He also has prepared a spreadsheet for a couple of downside scenarios--one where gas is not able to be produced after the well is drilled and a second where gas is produced but all other uncertainties are at their 1% worst possible values. A student worksheet file is available for use with this case.