Describe the management science study

Assignment Help Operation Management

Reference no: EM131938311

Read the referenced article that fully describes the management science study summarized in the application vignette presented in Section

Briefly describe how the model for a special type of minimum-cost flow problem was applied in this study.

Then list the various financial and nonfinancial benefits that resulted from this study.

An Application Vignette:

Hewlett-Packard (HP) offers many innovative products to meet the diverse needs of more than 1 billion customers. The breadth of its product offering has helped the company achieve unparalleled market reach.

However, offering multiple similar products also can cause serious problems-including confusing sales representatives and customers-that can adversely affect the revenue and costs for any particular product.

Therefore, it is important to find the right balance between too much product variety and too little. With this in mind, HP top management made managing product variety a strategic business priority.

HP has been a leader in applying management science to its important business problems for decades, so it was only natural that many of the company's top management scientists were called on to address this problem as well. The heart of the methodology that was developed to address this problem involved formulating and applying a network optimization model.

After excluding proposed products that do not have a sufficiently high return on investment, the remaining proposed products can be envisioned as flows through a network that can help fill some of the projected orders on the right-hand side of the network.

The resulting model is a special type of minimum cost flow problem (related to the special type discussed in the next two sections).

Following its implementation by the beginning of 2005, this application of a minimum cost flow problem had a dramatic impact in enabling HP businesses to increase operational focus on their most critical products.

This yielded companywide profit improvements of over $500 million between 2005 and 2008, and then about $180 million annually thereafter. It also yielded a variety of important qualitative benefits for HP.

These dramatic results led to HP winning the prestigious first prize in the 2009 Franz Edelman Award for Achievement in Operations Research and the Management Sciences.

Reference no: EM131938311

Questions Cloud

Examine four print or television advertisements : After reading about classical conditioning, consider how marketers have attempted to use classical conditioning in their advertising.

Write a program that uses specific functions : Write a program called [YourName]-Assignment that uses specific functions to let the user select and print specific series of numbers.

What is transformational leadership : What is transformational leadership? What leadership skills do transformational leaders possess?

Determining the maximum value : A LR circuit has L= 0.0082 and R= 33 ohms. How long after it is turned on will the current in this circuit reach 63% of its maximum value?

Describe the management science study : Describes the management science study summarized in the application vignette presented in Section.

Demonstrating for your reader the ways the poem fulfills : Eng. 102- Demonstrating for your reader the ways the poem fulfills/satisfies Frost's observation. In other words, use Frost's assertion as a springboard

Draw the p and l diagram at maturity of the bull spread : Synthesize a 45-56 bull spread using only the call options. Draw the P&L diagram at maturity of the bull spread.

What is the magnetic field : Four wires are carrying a 1.0A current in the same direction . The wires are at the corners of a square of sides s=1.0m. What is the magnetic field

What was the real exchange rate for the peseta : What was the real exchange rate for the peseta in May 1981? Did the peseta appreciate or depreciate against the U.S. dollar in real terms over the period?

User Account

All Pages