McGee Carpet And Trim Installs Carpets In Commercial Offices

McGee Carpet and Trim installs carpets in commercial offices. Andrea McGee has been very concerned with the amount of time it took to complete several recent jobs. Some of her workers are very unreliable. A list of activities and their optimistic completion time, the most likely completion time, and the pessimistic completion time (all in days) for a new contract are provided in a given table. Following are the activities that are required to install the carpets in the offices: Activity 1 (Measure office room dimensions), Activity 2 (Estimate cost), Activity 3 (Material Requisition), Activity 4 (Workforce Requisition), Activity 5 (Special Tool Requisition), Activity 6 (Installation), Activity 7 (Inspection and customer acceptance).

Activity 2 starts immediately after Activity 1. Activity 3, Activity 4, and Activity 5 start concurrently after Activity 2. Activity 6 does not start until after Activity 3, Activity 4, and Activity 5 are completed. The carpet installation project is complete after Activity 7 is completed. If OT = Optimistic Time, MT = Most Likely Time, and PT = Pessimistic Time, use Program Evaluation Review Estimate (PERT) to compute the statistical time for each activity in the table shown below.

Activities

OT / MT / PT

Activity 1

4 / 6 / 14

Activity 2

5 / 12 / 16

Activity 3

7 / 15 / 23

Activity 4

13 / 16 / 28

Activity 5

17 / 20 / 35

Activity 6

20 / 32 / 50

Activity 7

5 / 6 / 13

Also, (a) Determine the expected completion time and the variance for each activity (b) Determine the total project completion time and the critical path for the project. (c) Determine Early Start (ES), Early Finish (EF), Late Start (LS), and slack for each activity. What is the probability that McGee Carpet and Trim will finish the project in 40 days or less?

Define project management and the necessary requirements.
Analyze implications of changes in project scheduling.
Evaluate application of project management techniques in terms of the firm’s business operational goals and requirements.
Please submit your assignment in an APA formatted paper.

Submitting your assignment in APA format means, at a minimum, you will need the following:

TITLE PAGE. Remember the Running head: AND TITLE IN ALL CAPITALS
ABSTRACT. A summary of your paper…not an introduction. Begin writing in third person voice.

BODY. The body of your paper begins on the page following the title page and abstract page and must be double-spaced (be careful not to triple- or quadruple-space between paragraphs). The type face should be 12-pt. Times Roman or 12-pt. Courier in regular black type. Do not use color, bold type, or italics except as required for APA level headings and references. The deliverable length of the body of your paper for this assignment is 2-3 pages. In-body academic citations to support your decisions and analysis are required. A variety of academic sources is encouraged.

REFERENCE PAGE. References that align with your in-body academic sources are listed on the final page of your paper. The references must be in APA format using appropriate spacing, hang indention, italics, and upper and lower case usage as appropriate for the type of resource used. Remember, the Reference Page is not a bibliography but a further listing of the abbreviated in-body citations used in the paper. Every referenced item must have a corresponding in-body citation.

 
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50-C2

This is a complete written report  of your portfolio formation in a Word file. Your historical data and relevant derived values in tables can be pasted from your previous calculations in the Excel file. Please provide explanations of all calculations and the justifications in the Word format. Also, make sure to paste all underlying  Excel formulae that you used for calculations in the Word file.

  1. Provide once again the data that you presented in answering part 2 of professional assignment 2.
  2. Calculate the mean, variance, and the standard deviation of each security’s annual rate of return.
  3. Calculate the correlation coefficient between every possible pair of securities’ annual rates of return.
  4. Choose percentages of your initial investment that you want to allocate amongst the five (5) securities (weights in the portfolio). Create embedded formulae which generate statistical properties of the portfolio upon insertion of the weights. Observe the mean, the standard deviation, and the CV of the annual rate of return of the portfolio.
  5. Find the combination of the weights that minimizes CV of the portfolio. How the CV of the optimal portfolio compares with the CV’s of its constituents. What is the expected rate of return and standard deviation of the rate of return of the portfolio?
  6. Choose different values within the range of the standard deviation of the portfolio, and for each chosen value locate the corresponding point on the efficient frontier by finding the weights that maximize the expected rate of return of the portfolio. Subsequently, construct the efficient frontier of your portfolio.    
  7. Assume that you initially invested $1,000,000 in the portfolio and that the distribution of the annual rate of return of the portfolio is normal. What is the distribution of the return of the portfolio 20 years after its formation? Provide the graph of the distribution of the return of portfolio. 

Provide your explanations and definitions in detail and be precise. Comment on your findings. Provide references for content when necessary. Provide your work in detail and explain in your own words. Support your statements with six (6) peer-reviewed in-text citation(s) and reference(s).

 
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Interest Rates

1.

Part 1: Interest Rates

Many managers do not understand the various ways that interest rates can affect business decisions. For example, if your company decided to build a plant with a 30-year life and short-term debt financing (renewed annually), the cost of the plant could skyrocket if interest rates were to return to their previous highs of 12% to 14%. On the other hand, locking into high, long-term rates could be very costly also with a long period when low short-term interest rates were to be available. As you can see, the ability to know your economic environment and its impact on projected interest rates can be crucial to making good financing decisions.

Describe two to three macroeconomic factors that influence interest rates in general. Explain the effects of each factor on interest rates.

Now think about the industry in which you are employed or one in which you have past experience. To what macroeconomic factors is your industry most sensitive?

Describe two contemporary factors that seem to be impacting your industry today, and identify their impacts on the interest rates experienced within your chosen industry.

Support your comments with your own experiences, the weekly resources, and/or additional research. Use APA throughout and provide appropriate in-text citations and references.

Part 2: Stock Valuation, Risk and Returns

Stock valuation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSn1HThfb5w

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfcRUzKZZE8

https://notendur.hi.is/ajonsson/kennsla2008/stock_valuation.pdf

Risk and Returns

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BIIiUyr3-w

The links above contain information on stock valuation, risk and returns. Please review each one of them. Based on the knowledge gained from the materials presented in the links above, complete the following activities:

Present a detailed discussion of what you learned about stock valuation. Provide examples of how your company have used the concepts. Do you believe financing a company’s operation using stock is better than financing with bonds? Why or why not? Support your discussion with a numerical example.

Based on the materials presented in the “Risk and Return” video, present a discussion on why the materials are important in financial decision making. How would you incorporate risk and return in your financing decisions?

2.

In the link below, you will explore how companies compute their cost of capital by computing a weighted average of the three major components of capital: debt, preferred stock, and common equity. The firm’s cost of capital is a key element in capital budgeting decisions and must be understood in order to justify capital projects. In addition, you will also learn capital budgeting techniques including Payback, Net Present Value, Internal Rate of Return, etc.

Cost of Capital:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8JZhQofRTs

For this Discussion, imagine the following scenario:

You are the director of operations for your company, and your vice president wants to expand production by adding new and more expensive fabrication machines. You are directed to build a business case for implementing this program of capacity expansion. Assume the company’s weighted average cost of capital is 13%, the after-tax cost of debt is 7%, preferred stock is 10.5%, and common equity is 15%. As you work with your staff on the first cut of the business case, you surmise that this is a fairly risky project due to a recent slowing in product sales. As a matter of fact, when using the 13% weighted average cost of capital, you discover that the project is estimated to return about 10%, which is quite a bit less than the company’s weighted average cost of capital. An enterprising young analyst in your department, Harriet, suggests that the project be financed from retained earnings (50%) and bonds (50%). She reasons that using retained earnings does not cost the firm anything, since it is cash you already have in the bank and the after-tax cost of debt is only 7%. That would lower your weighted average cost of capital to 3.5% and make your 10% projected return look great.

Based on the scenario above, post your reactions to the following questions and concerns:

What is your reaction to Harriet’s suggestion of using the cost of debt only? Is it a good idea or a bad idea? Why? Do you think capital projects should have their own unique cost of capital rates for budgeting purposes, as opposed to using the weighted average cost of capital (WACC) or the cost of equity capital as computed by CAPM? What about the relatively high risk inherent in this project? How can you factor into the analysis the notion of risk so that all competing projects that have relatively lower or higher risks can be evaluated on a level playing field?

 
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Netflix Case Study

Case Preparation:

Remember, the cases are graded per the rubric. Any analysis details should be covered in an appendix. The BoD would want your recommendations with the proper support.  Do not go to the Internet to find, for example, a SWOT analysis and use it for your case.  You are expected to do the research and develop your own strategic analysis.

In doing your cases you will need a minimum of five references outside the Case material from Thompson.  The Thompson information is to get you started. (Do not use just the data from the case.) One of the references should be the company’s latest 10K report. Wikipedia and QuickMBA type sources do not count.  Certainly do not use websites that develop term papers or do strategy analysis on these cases and publish them. Use current business websites to find out about recent developments.

The case study analysis allows you to apply your knowledge to the real world. Your goal is to identify the major problem confronting the subject company and provide a strategic solution for the problem. Each of the companies that you will be studying faces different situations in the marketplace. Your analysis of the case using strategic management tools and tools that you have learned in other classes will allow you to interpret what is going on in the companies in the marketplace. To fully understand the case you will need to collect data and interpret it. You must also isolate the critical issues that the company faces.  Remember that in the words of Lord Kelvin, “that anything that cannot be expressed in numbers represents knowledge that is of a poor and uncertain kind.” You will have to get into the numbers, ratios, annual performance change, etc.

After identifying the critical issues you can generate alternatives to address the company’s competitive situation. Evaluating these alternatives allows an organization to select one course of action. With a course of action defined the strategic manager can then provide a plan for implementation this is what you are to do on the case studies. Always refer to the rubric for the critical points to cover. The format for the case studies should be as follows.

In addition to the APA cover page, you need a one page, single spaced executive summary for the case as noted below. This one-page report should use headings and subheadings to identify the critical issues. Begin with your understanding of the situation in a problem statement. Follow this with a concise presentation of your analysis and the alternatives you see. Recommend one course of action and support that recommendation with facts and other information, such as competitor’s moves. The last item is presents a plan for implementation. After the one-page summary you proceed with the body of your presentation.  The summary page should encapsulate your understanding to the problems facing the company, a brief summary of the strategic analysis, financial analysis, the alternatives considered and a single recommendation with an implementation plan.

After the executive summary page, you are to use standard APA formatting and a 4 to 5 page expansion upon the points you have made in the executive summary. Tables, charts, graphs, etc. are to be put in the appendix and referenced from the body of your paper. Deductions may be taken for papers where the body is longer than six pages. Remember, in management you must get your thoughts across quickly if you expect your work to be read. Long reports generally wind up in a stack awaiting reading at some future date (which never comes).

Case Study Report Format:

Your report should include:

I.          NSU Cover page (1 page in length).  It will present the name of the case and the author(s) of the report.

II.         Executive Summary (1 page in length).

The Executive Summary is a concise overview of the report.  The Case Study Report should be written from the perspective of an outside consultant, writing to the Board of Directors of the firm.  It notes the essential points of the report and should have the following sections:

A.              Problem Statement: State the main problem facing the firm (or industry) in one, succinct sentence.

B.               Analysis: Summarize the main findings of your analysis.  You may use bullet points, bold, italics – any means to convey and highlight the key factors you have determined based on your analysis. Don’t repeat items from the body of your report like the SWOT.  Summarize the major issues.

C.               Alternatives:  State briefly (one sentence or a bullet point each) 2 or 3 alternative courses of action that could be implemented

D.              Recommendation:  Choose one course of action and support your choice.

E.               Implementation:  Briefly (2 or 3 sentences) present how the plan would be implemented.  This tests the viability of the choice.  For example, your plan would demonstrate that the company has the people, financial resources and time to implement your recommendation.

 

These bullets should appear in your paper. The following is a precise format of the Case Studies.

 

FORMATTING for Executive Summary:

·  Single-space

·  One inch all margins

·  Use bullet points, lists, or other means to convey information briefly.  Further explanation can be found in the main body of the report.

·  Use headings and subheadings to organize the material in an easy to read and understandable manner that highlights the essential points of your analysis.

·  Do not include a summary or overview of the firm in your report.  All parties are knowledgeable and need no background presented.

 

The body of your paper should be in standard APA format, with appropriate references.

 

Remember that cases are graded per the rubric. The Case Study rubric can be found in the Rubric file.

 

 

 

Netflix 10K

https://ir.netflix.com/secfiling.cfm?filingID=1065280-16-47&CIK=1065280

 
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