Fundamentals of Successful Business Operations
The successful operation of any business requires the ability to accurately forecast future sales demand and then coordinate the company’s marketing and production efforts with the forecasted sales. This assignment will walk your team through the process of forecasting your company’s sales demand, assessing your marketing expenditures, and ensuring that your manufacturing capacity is adequate to meet the forecasted sales. The page limit for this assignment is two double spaced pages with appropriate headings and formatting (12 point font, one inch margins).
Part I: Forecasting Sales Demand:
Research
Calculate the forecasted sales for each segment (Note: You should use the Capsim Courier data for your calculations, and explain your calculations).
Respond
Choose a segment that is critical to the implementation of your company’s strategy. Identify two factors you should consider when you forecast sales for the segment. For both of these factors, explain how you could capitalize on (if you have an advantage over your competitors) or counteract (if your competitors have an advantage over you) the impact of these factors. Talk about how much revenue you are losing through lost sales.
Part III: Planning Production Capacity:
Research
Perform a capacity analysis to determine if your company’s capacity in the segment you chose is adequate to meet forecasted demand by completing the following steps:
Enter in the requested information in the gold boxes from the Capstone Courier for the segment you’ve chosen.
Examine whether or not your company has enough capacity to meet potential demand and how much it would cost to purchase additional capacity.
Respond
Discuss the impact this analysis will have on your capacity investment decisions in the segment.
What other plans do you need to make (e.g., financing, etc.) to take advantage of this opportunity? Note: Remember that capacity investments take a year to take effect.
What elements will your company need to incorporate into its strategy to make sure that adequate capacity is available each year? For example, should you employ a “capacity trigger” to assist in your decision-making process, where if capacity utilization reaches a certain percentage, you will invecgost in set amount of additional capacity?
