Suppose you are the manager of Timekeepers, a company in Lake Charles, Louisiana that manufactures expensive, high-end hourglasses.Formerly, your company used coarse, ordinary brown sand for the hourglass.However, your company is now about to switch to a sand that is a perfect, fine white sand that is only available from the beaches of Shoal Bay East, Anguilla and it is absolutely, without question, unmatched.The long-term economic outlook is quite favorable, and you see no major issues looming on the horizon.

a)in the market for contracts, what would this new input suggest about contract duration?

b)Timekeepers currently has a contract up for renegotiation with the supplier in Anguilla.However, now the weather is forecasted to be unusually harsh during the upcoming hurricane season in the Caribbean, leading to many potential unforeseen circumstances.How would input procurement be beneficial to this new development?