Case - Production manager required at Mapple! We are one year in the future from today. After years of hard work in college you have decided to search for a job in the analytics industry. You did some research and learned that working as a management scientist (or operations research specialist) is one of the jobs with higher salaries in the US (you can confirm this information by searching it in Google). After checking different career options, you have found a job opportunity as production manager at Mapple factories, a major cell phone producer. The information is as follows. Job Description: Mapple is a leading company in the production of fancy cell phones, the MyPhone, at one of the factories in California. The duties of the selected applicant are the followings:

a) Make sure the demand of MyPhones are satisfied in the following weeks;

b) Communicate with the department sales and marketing to know what would be the MyPhone demand the following weeks;

c) Communicate with the customer service department to make sure all customer complains are satisfied.

Job salary: $97,158

Days of work: Remote work Monday to Wednesday. Work at the plant Thursday and Friday

-A conversation during the first day of work-

The new MyPhone model is on its way! We know the previous model was sold out the very first week of launching and many people were complaining in their social media that they didn't have the chance of using that model before their friends. Most of them got their MyPhone after several weeks, when the production was capable of putting more phones in the market. Some other users weren't patient enough and ended up buying a cellphone from our competitor, Cyborg. We needed to check our forecasts from the marketing and sales department and adjust them so this time we don't face that situation and lose customers again!

We trust that the new model for forecasting is actually really good because it has been very precise in the sales forecast for other of our products, the MyPad. Therefore, we don't need to worry about unprecise forecasts anymore, but we need to use those forecasts to make sure we produce enough MyPhones for the coming weeks. The forecasts indicate that we will need 2,800 MyPhones for the first week of launching, 1,100 for the week after that, 1,050 for the third week, 1,150 for the fourth week, and 950 for the fifth week. Unfortunately, we can only produce up to 1,100 MyPhones per week, but we can start our production earlier and keep some inventory for the weeks with higher demand. There is another option: we have another production line for the MyPads, and we could borrow some hours from there to reach our production targets. Nevertheless, there is an extra cost for using that line. Speaking about money, the MyPhone production on the main production line costs $400 per unit, and it costs $100 to keep a unit in inventory during one week. Also, the extra production line could produce up to 500 units, but the production cost is 25% higher than in the main production line due to overtime. The marketing department indicates that 60% of the customers that don't get a Myphone during the week they tried to purchase it are willing to wait for the next week, and the remaining 40% will just give up and either not purchase a MyPhone, or go to our competitor Cyborg, which would represent not selling our $799 MyPhones to some potential customers. . . Please do the following:

a) Since this is a conversation, you may need to contribute to it a little bit. Please indicate any assumptions (to fill holes in the story, such as data, objectives, etc.) that you would consider in the system to address this problem (2 or 3 assumptions will suffice).

b) Utilize the tools learned in class to provide some managerial decisions to the production lines regarding the new MyPhone model. How can we meet the demand in the weeks following the launching? What other valuable information can you provide?