The president of a small manufacturing firm is concerned about the continual increase in manufacturing costs over the past several years. The following figures provide a time series of the cost per unit for the firms leading product over the past 8 years.

Year	Cost/Unit ($)
1	20.0
2	24.5
3	28.2
4	27.5
5	26.6
6	30.0
7	31.0
8	36.0

Instructions:

Input the data into Minitab

Create a time series plot and use it to describe the pattern that exists in the data.

Create a trend analysis plot

What is the fitted trend equation?

What is the average cost increase that the firm has been experiencing per year?

Compute an estimate of the cost/unit for next year (year 9)