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What could you see below? Please help explain as much as possible based on the image above. Thanks. The demand for Red Tomato Tools gardening
What could you see below?
Please help explain as much as possible based on the image above. Thanks.
The demand for Red Tomato Tools gardening tools is highly seasonal, peaking in the spring as people plant their gardens. This seasonal demand ripples up the supply chain from the retailer to Red Tomato, the manufacturer. The options Red Tomato has for handling the seasonality are adding workers during the peak season, subcon tracting out some of orders that will be delivered late to customers. To determine how to best use these options through an aggregate plan, Red Tomato's vice president of supply chain starts with the rst taskbuilding a demand forecast. Although Red Tomato could attempt to forecast this demand itself, a much more accurate fore- cast comes from a collaborative process used by both Red Tomato and its retailers to produce the forecast shown in Table 8-2. It is important that this demand account for the product mix that is expected to sell and be in terms of aggregate units dened earlier. Red Tomato sells each tool through retailers for $40. The company has a starting inventory in January of 1,000 tools. At the beginning of January, the company has a workforce of 80 employees. The plant has a total of 20 working days each month, and each employee earns $4 per hour regular time. Each employee works eight hours per day on straight time and the rest on overtime. As discussed previously, the capacity of the production operation is determined primarily by the total labor hours worked. Therefore, machine capacity does not limit the capacity of the production operation. Because of labor rules, no employee works more than 10 hours of over- time per month. The various costs are shown in Table 83. Currently, Red Tomato has no limits on subcontracting, inventories, and stockouts/backlog. All stockouts are backlogged and supplied from the following month's production. Inventory costs are incurred on the ending inventory in the month. The supply chain manger's goal is to obtain the optimal aggregate plan that allows Red Tomato to end June with at least 500 units (i.e., no stockouts at the end of June and at least 500 units in inventory). The optimal aggregate plan is one that results in the highest prot over the six-month planning horizon. For now, given Red Tomato's desire for a very high level of customer service, assume all demand is to be met, although it can be met late. Therefore, the revenues earned over the planning horizon are xed. In many instances, a company has the option of not meeting certain demand, or price itself may be a variable that company has to determine based on aggregate plan. In such a scenario, minimizing cost over is not equivalent to maximizing prots. Table 8-3: Costs for Red Tomato Tools Table 8-2: Demand Forecast at Red Tomato Tools Item Cost Material Cost $10fUnit Demand Inventory Holding Cost $2fUnit/Month Month Forecast Mar ; 'nal Cost of Stockout/Backlo ; $5/Unit/Month January 1,600 Hiring and Training Costs $300/Worker M Layoff Cost $500/Worker March 3:200 Labor hours Rea uired 4/Unit APl 3:800 Regular Time Cost $4/Hour Ma 25200 Overtime Cost $6/Hour June 2200 Cost of Subcontractin_ $30/UnitStep by Step Solution
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