JET COPIES CASE PROBLEM

Assignment #1: JET Copies Case Problem

Assignment #1: JET Copies Case Problem

Introduction

Jet Copies is a small business that was started by three friends to provide copy services to students at State University. To accomplish this they borrowed from one of the partners parents to purchase a high end copy machine. But after purchasing the copy machine they found that it was not as reliable as they were led to believe. The partners wanted to find out how long and how often the copier would be out of service. They also wanted to know how much money they would lose when the copier was out of service. If the copier was out of service so long that they would lose more than 12,000 dollars they would purchase a backup unit. To accomplish this we will use Microsoft Excel to create a statistical analysis of a year of operation of the copier.

This project will provide an overview of forecast methods, how forecasts are measured, and identify different types of forecasting methods. According to author Bernard W. Taylor, 2010, “a variety of forecasting exist, and their applicability is dependent on the time frame of the forecast, the existence of patterns in the forecast, and the number of variables to which the forecast is related” (p.682). Time frame classifies forecast into three different categories, short -range, medium-range, and long-range forecast. Short-range forecast are forecast such as Weather forecast in that they predict daily, or weekly short-range outcomes. Medium-range forecast are typically a month to a year, and Long-range forecast are long-term patterns that are considered trends (Murphy, 2002). These Forecasts are documented and observed from one to two years (Taylor, 2010). It is very important to make reliable predictions, and using forecasting, but the further out the prediction the less accurate the forecasting data maybe.

Discussion and Analysis

Days-to-repair

Terri was able to gather data from the college which allowed them to develop a table for the probability distribution of the wait for repair services on JET's copier. To model the probability of wait times in the JET Copies simulation, the JET partners generated a random number representing the probability of an occurrence of a breakdown. They then programmed a VLOOKUP function to match this breakdown probability to the corresponding “Repair Time in Days” column of the table. The result is the simulated time to get repair service for each breakdown occurrence.

Interval between breakdowns

The James, Ernie, and Terri purchased a copier just like the one used at their college office. When Ernie talked with someone in the dean's office at State, he was told that the University's copier broke down frequently often for 1 to 4 days. The partners became worried that their machine would also frequently break down. Although they could not get an exact probability distribution, James was able to determine that breakdowns occurred between 0 and 6 weeks apart. The probability of a breakdown increased as time passed.

To model the time between breakdowns in their simulation, JET created a list of ...