1. an automotive assembly plant makes four-door sedans (that have four seats). they receive 1,200 doors a day from one supplier and 1,600 seats a day from another. the plant has capacity to assemble 500 sedans a day. currently, customers demand 350 sedans/day. how many sedans should the plant assemble per day?

2. one employee is in charge of the following activities at a drive-through of a bank:

activity

activity time per customer

greet customer

2 seconds
take order

3 seconds
process order

2 minutes
print receipt

10 seconds
what is the capacity (in customers per hour) of the employee?

3. patients are arriving at a clinic at a rate of two per minute. each patient’s visit consists of four steps: check in, record vital signs, receive treatment, and check out. a receptionist takes 1 minute to check a patient in. a nurse takes 2 minutes to record the patient’s vital signs. a doctor spends 10 minutes with a patient. a staff member takes 3 minutes to check a patient out. what is the process capacity in patients per hour?

Onsider the following subscription behavior information from genie, a web site that provides tools for constructing a family tree (ancestor search). subscriptions cost $9.99 per month, but you are charged for the entire year at the time of purchase. there is a one-year minimum term when you sign up for the service. once purchased, subscriptions are set to renew automatically unless the subscriber cancels them. when a membership renews, it renews for a one-year term and again you are charged for the entire year. there are no variable costs associated with providing this service to an individual customer, but genie does engage in customer relationship activities that they believe will increase customer retention. these customer relationship activities cost genie about $10 per year per customer. based on a sample of 1000 customers that joined genie five years ago, near the time when the company was founded, they were able to determine how many of those customers remained subscribers in the second year, third year etc. based on this information, genie calculated the average annual retention rate to be 20%. genie uses an annual discount rate of 8%. a. last year, genie spent $10,000 placing advertisements on google. genie management believes that these advertisements were responsible for about 300 new subscribers. would you recommend to genie management that they purchase more google ads? b. suppose a newly-introduced loyalty program increases the number of customers that remained to 30%. does this new data change your answer to 9.a? c. do you have any hesitations or concerns about making recommendations to management based on your above estimate of customer lifetime value?

What impact might an economic downturn have on a borrower’s fixed-rate mortgage? a. it might cause a borrower’s payments to go up. b. it might cause a borrower’s payments to go down. c. it has no impact because a fixed-rate mortgage cannot change. d. it has no impact because the economy does not affect interest rates.

Google started as one of many internet search engines, amazon started as an online book seller, and ebay began as a site where people could sell used personal items in auctions. these firms have grown to be so large and dominant that they are facing antitrust scrutiny from competition regulators in the us and elsewhere. did these online giants grow by fairly beating competition, or did they use unfair advantages? are there any clouds on the horizon for these firms -- could they face diseconomies of scale or diseconomies of scope as they continue to grow? if so, what factors may limit their continued growth?