Prompt

Your needs assessment and improvement proposal should answer the following prompt: Given the organization, products, and specifications provided in the Acme Bicycle case study, what are the logistics needs and what suggestions can you make for improving aspects of the framework?

Specifically, the following critical elements must be addressed:

1. Needs and Scenario Assessment
   1. Assess customer logistics support needs for a product line.
      1. Scenario Background: Analyze the logistic support needs of an external customer given their own production requirements and considering time, cost, and quantity of materials needed. What are the key elements, such as product requirements, provided in the scenario that are essential for determining the logistic support needs of the organization? What are the needs of the organization?
      2. Sourcing Alternatives: Given required logistic support, calculate the costs for in-house and outsourced production of goods for the demand cycle. What would be a best package solution that considers in-house capabilities and outsourced alternatives that would allow for least cost, given your results?
      3. Post-Sale Support/Reverse Logistics Needs: Calculate the estimated warranty costs for a product and explain what the costs mean for the company. Something to consider in the explanation is support needed to customers post-sale to plan post-sale support, replacement, and discontinuation of products. For these, you will need to estimate the failure rates from the scenario.
   2. Assess company capacity and approaches in order to satisfy needs.
      1. Capacity Constraints: Given customer requirements and sourcing mix, identify specific capacity constraints in production. You will need to figure out the known capacity in view of project demand to do this successfully.
      2. Product Positioning: Develop a plan for positioning finished goods to ensure ease of delivery and convenience, while also attending to resource needs and capacity constraints.
      3. Materials Requirements Planning: Given the required rate of production and plant capacity, create a material requirements plan to successfully fulfill customer and logistics needs identified in the scenario and during your analysis of the case. Your plan should be simple, focusing only on the needs identified and your plan to ensure you are meeting material requirements.
2. Optimization Proposal
   1. Recognize and apply logistics management techniques given internal capabilities.
      1. Production Plan Creation: Given the set of production requirements for one item, determine optimal batch size (the best size or number of products per batch that you will create in a given set to meet production requirements) for a product considering the set-up time and calculated demand patterns.
      2. Production and Stockage Alternatives: Considering the required output for the product line, develop a single solution or mix of make- to-stock, make-to-order, or make-to-engineer methods to fulfill projected demand.
      3. Profit Potential: Given the set of costs and selling prices, determine and explain the optimal mix of two products a company could produce given the capacity constraints you identified previously.
   2. Manage sourcing and inventory to minimize costs.
      1. Inventory Levels: Determine inventory levels of three products to minimize costs while considering the production schedule and projected sales. In other words, what would be the best number of each product to have on hand to meet projected sales while not wasting money on extra storage of unsold goods?
      2. Inventory Management Evaluation: Discuss the effectiveness and efficiency of the inventory management process, considering key metrics such as inventory turn rate, stock outages, and carrying costs for three products.
      3. Planning for Inventories: Based on historic and projected data, determine the likely inventory position for three products that balances the need to minimize costs with avoiding stock outages. In other words, calculate and explain the significance of not-in-stock rates for three products, based on product and demand schedules.
      4. Just-in-Time (JIT) Inventory: For the given inventory consumption patterns, determine an opportunity to use JIT inventory techniques to reduce warehouse needs while not starving production capacity. In other words, calculate JIT inventory needs for a segment of a production line for a single day.
   3. Manage a physical distribution system to minimize costs.
      1. Physical Distribution Process: Based on the inventory requirements, develop a physical distribution process for the company that is focused on necessary square footage of warehouse space for given inventory levels.
      2. Warehousing Effectiveness: Given the set of required inventory, evaluate the effectiveness of the warehouse operations using key metrics (that you will choose). Be sure to consider the following in your calculations of key metrics: receipt of raw goods, stowing, shipping, and warehouse relocation.
      3. Shipping Management to Minimize Costs: Develop a plan to deliver finished goods to customers within given shipping requirements for three products while minimizing costs.
      4. Warehousing Utilization: For the required inventory, determine the effectiveness of warehouse utilization for the inventory. Your evaluation of warehouse utilizations should include calculating space utilization rates for commodities.

Milestones

Milestone: Acme Bicycle Case Study Questions
In Module Five, you will submit answers to 16 questions related to the Acme Bicycle case study. Answering the 16 questions will assist you in completing your final project case study, due in Module Seven. Answer the questions as completely as possible to prepare yourself for the final case study. Each question identifies the critical element of the final project to which it is related. Review the case study questions, and review their alignment with the corresponding critical elements of the final case study: Case Study Questions Alignment.

Final Project Submission: Acme Bicycle Case Study
In Module Seven, you will submit a report or a presentation with detailed speaker notes or a recording using a tool such as Jing. This report or presentation will detail your analysis and will include foundational calculations and suggestions for optimizing an existing company’s logistics framework. It should be a complete, polished artifact containing all of the critical elements of the final product.