Introduction to the Problem
This report attempts to address the operational challenges faced by A-Cat Corporation. A-Cat Corporation is basically a manufacturer of the electronic appliances in India. The main market of the company is the rural market of India which is highly price sensitive. The management of the company has seen a large drop in the sales of the company over a period of the past several months. The major product of the company is the transformer that also called as the voltage regulator which is widely used by the customers of the company for a variety of purposes for their television sets and refrigerators as a device which protects these things from the load fluctuations of electricity.
Also, the phenomenon of power failure is very frequent in the region where the products of the company are sold. The chief operations manager has now been asked to look into the problem and provide a detailed analysis to the Vice President of the company. The stakeholders of the company include the employees, operational staff, management and the customers of the company. Now the past data needs to be analyzed and different forecasting and statistical methods need to be used in order to determine the future demands for the company. Finally, recommendations need to be made to the president of the company on the core issues being faced by the company resulting in declining sales for A-Cat Corporation.
Analysis Plan
The core problem facing the company is highlighted in the problem statement stated below:
“A-Cat Corporation has been facing the problem of overstocking and under-stocking due to problems in demand forecasting and this has been the basic problem at A-Cat Corporation.”
The case states that the sales of the company are reducing and there seems to be one major reason for the drop in the sales of the company. First of all, it seems that the forecasting method currently used by the management of the company is not appropriate and is not resulting in the right demand needs for the company’s transformers.
Therefore, in time of high demand the company has been manufacturing fewer transformers and at times of low demand the company has been manufacturing more transformers. This results in under-stocking and overstocking of the transformers, which directly impact upon the sales of the company. Therefore, in order to determine the appropriate demand requirements of the company, the management of the company needs to first of all change their forecasting methods and estimate the demand of the company based upon more authentic methods.
Since the business of A-Cat Corporation is more of a non-seasonal business therefore;the demand estimation or the forecasting model of demand for A-Cat Corporation should be based upon certain factors which impact significantly upon the sales of the company’s main product, the transformers. This would be the most valid strategy for the management of the company in order to boost its sales and meet the requirements of the customers at the right time.
Statistical Tools used & Methods used to Collect Data
First of all,in order to analyze the data the statistical tool that has been used is the excel tool and the data analysis add on provided in excel. This is because here we are dealing with the demand quantities of the company and all the statistical tests such as the one sample t-test, regression analysis or descriptive statistics could be easily performed in the excel tool.
Furthermore, the type of the data that has been provided in the case study is just scale data as we are dealing here with demand quantities only. There are no nominal or ordinal variables in the data sets that have been extracted from exhibits 1 and 2 of the case. Therefore, the use of the more sophisticated software such as SPSS is not required in the analysis of the data for A-Cat Corporation. Excel spreadsheets have a wide set of tools that could be used to arrange, summarize and analyze the data.Statistical Analysis Report Case Solution
The actual demand for the years 2006-2008 has been provided in the case exhibits, however, with the help of the excel formulas and tools the future demands and the demand models could be easily estimated for A-Cat Corporation. This simplifies the tasks for the operational managers and will also resolve a range of the issues that are currently being faced by the management of the company. Furthermore, there are no specific methods that have been employed in order to collect data from any external sources. The data for demand has been provided for the period 2006-2008 and this has been used as the base for the estimation and analysis of the future demand models or forecasting models for A-Cat Corporation...........................
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