a. You may choose from the following approaches and topic areas: i. Internal Com

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a. You may choose from the following approaches and topic areas:
i. Internal Company Project or New Venture Investment: Create a scenario
where you or your company (real or fake) is considering investing in a new project. For example, you may be considering investment in a new software, opening a call center, opening new store locations, hiring staff, or replacing staff with machines, etc. Therefore, there should be a baseline or some state of nature that involves doing nothing. Additionally, there will be an expected impact based on investing in the project. Therefore, you should be able to calculate a return and ROI, IRR, and break-even point based on the analysis of the cash flows from the investment across a time-period (e.g. 5 years).
1. Example: Return on Investment Analysis for E-business Projects (Jeffrey)
ii. Multi-attribute Scoring or Utility: Frame a major decision in which it would difficult to assess the problem using financial or monetary measures
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alone. You should list all of the criteria or attributes, assign weights to the attributes, and assess the expected benefit to determine a winning strategy. Additionally, you should incorporate the cost of each strategy as a separate analysis and determine the value of each (benefit/cost). Again, you should consider alternatives, different weights for criteria, and other possible factors that may impact or influence your recommended decision. You may decide to include utility functions including custom assessments as the value of a one-unit increase in an attribute you are considering may not be linear. In addition, you must build a decision tree to represent your problem and incorporate probability.
1. Example(s): See Ragsdale for Multicriteria Scoring problems + Mad Hatter Case (in-class exercise)
iii. Optimization problem: Frame an optimization problem that considers an objective, decision variables, and constraints (e.g. maximize profit, minimize cost, etc.). Again, this may be related to a new venture or new decision that has different elements that should be considered before a decision is made. The problem should have more than one decision variable and at least five constraints. In other words, do not simply find a simple linear programming, word problem online and solve for (it should be original). There should also be several assumptions tested (e.g., several different interest rates in an investment decision, several levels of demand for a product, several vendors utilized for production, several cost structures or consideration of production internally vs. outsourcing). Consider if any of constraints are binding and non-binding and whether you would prefer to acquire more or less resources based on the solutions. Also, you should discuss any limitations to your spreadsheet models in considering execution of the recommended strategy.
1. Example(s): See Ragsdale for Linear Programming problems
b. Should there be another topic in which your group prefers that incorporates some
of the decision analysis techniques and software tools covered in the course, we can discuss options. For example, one team member may have a particular work- related project in mind. However, the project must incorporate decision analysis techniques covered during the course.
c. Data and/or information can be publicly available or private. However if you chose to use data from your own organization it is your responsibility to seek permission from your employer and to anonymize the data and/or information. Additionally, you can use your own estimates but you should try to justify it based on realistic values (e.g., based on industry).
d. You should frame the problem as if you were hired by a company or work for a company and are providing recommendations to the CEO, owner, or major
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decision-maker. As such, you should provide recommendations assuming the
audience has limited knowledge of the quantitative techniques you applied.
e. A major part of the project will be clearly outlining your assumptions. As a
result, you should include any relevant literature, research, or industry information to frame the problem. You may use library resources to collect such research.
f. You should provide a final recommendation(s) based on your analysis. Additionally, you should be able to identify the risk involved and perform a sensitivity analysis around your considered strategies.
g. As a result, I expect the following sections to be included:
i. Introduction to the problem statement
ii. Detail on current situation (e.g., What are the current facts?)
iii. Industry/market research (e.g., Business model, Size of the market,
Competition)
iv. Outline of information available for your decision that will drive your
analysis
v. Identification of the appropriate techniques and why your methodology is
appropriate
vi. Main analysis applying techniques covered during the course
vii. Sensitivity analysis and testing of your assumptions (DO NOT FORGET TO INCORPORATE AND ASSESS UNCERTAINTY)
viii. Final recommendations and any limitations (e.g., what should be done next?)
ix. Conclusion with team learnings or takeaways from the experience
h. The final deliverable is a group presentation (slides). The live presentation will
take place the evening of our last session. Duration: 25 + 5 minutes for Questions (30 minutes total). There is no limit to the slide count but the team should be able to present in 25 minutes.
i. In addition, you must provide an Executive Summary (Word or PDF) that provides information on the main results and takeaways. This should be at most a page in length (single-spaced).
j. You must choose your team and submit a short, one-paragraph proposal that includes your topic area and what analyses you expect to do by the end of Week 4

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