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Instructor Spreadsheet to accompany product 8B20E018.

Instructor spreadsheet for product 8B20E011.

Spreadsheet to accompany product 9B20E011.

In November 2019, Jean Matthews had to decide how to allocate CA$300,000 toward neighbourhood improvement ideas submitted by city residents. Each of the four neighbourhoods in the city could receive up to CA$75,000 in funding, and Matthews had to consider the number of votes for each idea in her analysis. How should she identify which community projects to pursue?

The owner of Manipal Power Laundry asked his nephew, an MBA student, for advice on the business. The company’s operational inefficiencies had led to high operating costs over time. Coupled with regulatory price caps, the situation made the business unsustainable. The owner asked his nephew to provide a solution that would benefit the company both in the short term and over the long term. After observing the various processes, collecting data, and interviewing employees, the nephew decided to use process flow analysis to help the company optimize its operations.

Instructor Spreadsheet to accompany product 8B20E004.

Student Spreadsheet to accompany product 9B20E004.

Instructor Spreadsheet to accompany product 8B20E013.

Spreadsheet to accompany product 9B20E013.

In December 2019, a member of a fantasy hockey league had to decide whether to trade away his top talent in exchange for draft picks in the following year’s fantasy draft or to continue to compete for a position in the playoffs. If he traded his top players, he would forfeit his chances at competing for a championship; however, this move might put his team in a better position for the following year’s fantasy hockey season. He had access to the league’s historical data to help determine the likelihood of his team making the playoffs. He wanted to conduct an analysis to make an informed decision grounded by numbers.

As an e-commerce logistics manager at the national grocery store chain TrixMag, Jim Vector was continually seeking efficiency improvements in the company’s supply chain. Following positive trends in the online grocery segment, Vector was specifically exploring the idea of upgrading parts of TrixMag’s intralogistics warehouse system for more efficient throughput. Well versed in the growing world of e-commerce, Vector knew that TrixMag’s warehouses would soon be experiencing tremendous consumer pressures. Competition was also mounting: if Vector’s segment could not reduce costs, TrixMag would not have the capabilities to maintain the low prices that consumers continually demanded. It had become clear that if Vector did not act soon, TrixMag’s market share would begin to deteriorate.

Instructor Spreadsheet to accompany product 8B20E006.

Student spreadsheet to accompany product 9B20E006.

Spreadsheet to accompany product 8B20E009.

In April 2018, the owner of Express Bike Works (EBW), an Indian start-up that provided automated motorcycle washing, among other services, was planning to expand his business to various locations in South India, such as Udupi, Chennai, and Bangalore. He needed to decide whether to expand through self-owned stores or franchise stores and wondered how to select appropriate store locations. His objective was to come up with an expansion strategy that would maximize his payoff.

In April 2019, the chief executive officer of Dubai-based Diamond Developers, reflected on his company’s progress in developing a business model based on sustainable living. In December 2015, The Sustainable City in Dubai had welcomed its first residents. The project had become a success story, both commercially and in terms of building a vibrant community of 3,000 residents from 60 countries, who were living a lifestyle characterized by social, environmental, and economic sustainability. After this initial and significant success, the chief executive officer wondered how to replicate the concept, both locally and internationally, to grow the company and to maximize the company's contribution to sustainability and to the fight against climate change.

DailyFish was an emerging e-commerce enterprise that was started in 2016 by Baby Marine Ventures, one of the largest exporters of frozen seafood from India. Subramanian Sankaran, Head of Loyalties and customer service management (CSM) was facing challenges related to increased missed calls in the call center that eventually led to a loss of sales opportunities. The chief executive officer of the company instructed Sankaran to reduce the waiting time per call by one third, thereby minimizing the missed calls. Sankaran had to find out how to minimize the waiting time without compromising the call quality. He was looking forward to hiring a couple of executives to tackle the issue. He planned to find the best fit using fractional factorial experiment using Taguchi orthogonal arrays.

Spreadsheet to accompany product 8B20E007.

Student Spreadsheet to accompany product 9B20E007.

The chief marketing officer (CMO) at an automobile agency was looking at a list of car model features, which he had received from the manufacturing plant. He was expected to provide the manufacturer’s suggested retail prices of the cars to dealers the following week and had to decide on the base prices. The CMO asked a data scientist at the research lab to predict prices using the data of past car models. Each car model had different features that could affect the price. The data scientist decided to use feed-forward neural networks as a tool for predicting the prices of new models. After comparing different prediction models, he also wanted to determine which prediction model was suitable for car manufacturing plants.