Blaine Kitchenware has occupied the industry for over 80 years and continues to gain control in the market it occupies. As the CEO of the company, Mr.Dubinski is faced with the difficult decision of determining what is best for the family company. The following questions will address what decision is the optimal and why it is beneficial for BKI.

The main dilemma in the case is whether Blaine Kitchenwares should choose to repurchase its own shares or not. If Blaines Kitchenware does repurchase its shares, they must consider whether to partially repurchase the market float or go for a complete buyback where Blaines family would become the owner of all the remaining shares. They also have to consider of the effect of the repurchase on various factors like the risks involved in raising a debt especially when they are large, very conservative and debt free. They should also consider things such their acquisition plans, their earnings per share and their dividend per share, ownership structure, capital structure and of course the reputation of the company in the market after the buyback. With this in mind we can consider a few situations and then decide what Blaine should do, keeping in mind the perspective of both the existing shareholders' as well as Blaine's familys. Since no debt is being raised, if all the cash & cash securities plus the market securities are used for the buyback, his family may like this option. Their management will have increased stakes, this will reduce their chance of being acquired and this will provide more dividends to their remaining shareholders.

Draw A process map/flow diagram utilizing the standard conventions

Identify the relevant resources with their specific tasks

Identify appropriate non relevant resources that impact the process

Using a table (similar to the slides in class), provide the following: o Give the activity time for each task (reasonable estimates based upon some observation are allowed). o

Capacity for each resource

Identify the bottleneck

Identify the process capacity

Make a recommendation for improving the overall process. Where would you invest your resources to improve the system capacity?