Covid-19 pandemic resulted in a rush of purchases and stock outs on numerous items, as well as overstocking in certain categories due to shutdowns in other industries. In addition, many businesses' use of e-commerce ordering has skyrocketed. As a result, many businesses are experiencing inventory shortages. 

(a) Describe the types of inventory normally maintained by the firm and give suggestions to improve them in order to sustain during this pandemic. 

(b) Razer company stocks and sells a particular brand of laptop. The annual demand is 25,000 units. The ordering cost is RM1562.50 per order and annual holding cost per unit is RM50. 

i. Calculate the optimal number of laptop per order 

ii. Determine the number of orders per year, Nn
iii. Calculate the total inventory cost.

12. Financial Planning. Managers at Industrial Supply, Inc. are planning a sales campaign for the coming year in which they must determine how many sales representatives they will assign to seven product lines. S-shaped sales response functions of the form %Sales = b+ (a b)(%Reps /(d+%Reps")) have been fitted to subjective data provided by a group of experienced managers. (Both variables Sales and Reps have been measured relative to base levels. Thus % Reps represents the ratio between proposed reps and base reps, while %Sales represents the ratiobetween proposed sales and base sales.) The fitted values for the four parameters for each product are givenin the following table: Response Parameters a b Product A 1.6574 0.4722 2.0322 1.1954 Product B 1.3792 0.1493 2.5622 0.4562 Product C 1.2798 0.3101 2.3345 0.4033 Product D 1.0971 0.4497 3.0420 0.1910 Product E 1.2527 0.5603 1.7734 0.5576 Product F 1.1152 0.5899 2.8685 0.2851 Product G 2.0276 0.1575 1.7337 1.0381 The following table gives the current number of reps assigned to each product and current sales, along with the contribution margin on each product. The cost of each rep is $63,000 per ear. Current Current Contribution Reps Sales Margin Product A 96.8 214,400 0.70 36,500 21,200 37,200 Product B 142.4 0.55 Product C 52.7 0.72 Product D 24.1 0.72 Product E 27.3 38,000 0.62 Product F 29.7 14,600 0.53 Product G 56.8 11,200 0.52 a. Build a financial model to calculate the total net profit over all seven product lines for any proposed allocation of reps. What is the optimal allocation of reps and resulting optimal profit if we use no more reps than we currently have? b. What is the optimal allocation of reps and the resulting optimal profit if we can hire an unlimited number of reps?