Management Class Case Analysis

114 Parr2 ' Planning Magic Carpet Software To: Rajiv Dutta, Research Manager From: Amanda Schrenk, Vice President of Operations Re: Software Design Decisions Rajiv, we have a problem in our software design unit. Our di- verse pool of extremely talented and skilled designers is, un- doubtedly, one of our company's most impodant assets. How- ever, l'm concerned that our designers' emotional attachment to the software they've created overshadows other impodant factors that should be considered in the decision whether to proceed with the new product design. At this point, l'm not sure how to approach this issue. The last thing I want to do is stifle their creativity. But I'm afraid if we don't come up with an action plan soon, the problem may get worse. I need you to research the role of emotions in decision making. What do the "experts" say? ls it even an issue that we need to be concerned about? What's the best way to deal with it? Please provide me with a one-page bulleted list of the important points you find from your research. And be sure to cite your sources in case I need to do some follow-up. This fictionalized company and message were created for educa- tional purposes anly, and nat meant to reflect positively or negatively on management practices by any company that may share this name. GASE APPLICATION #,7 Big Brown Numbers t's the world's largest package delivery company with the instantly recognizable trucks.58 Every day, United Parcel Service (UPS) transports more than l8 million packages and documents throughout the United States and to more than 220 countries and territories, including every address in North America and Europe. (Total worldwide delivery volume was 4.6 billion packages and documents in 2014.) Delivering those packages efficiently and on time is what UPS gets paid to do, and that takes a massive effort in help- ing drivers to make decisions about the best routes to fbllow. Efficiency and uniformity have always been important to UPS. The importance of work rules, procedures, and analytic tools are continually stressed to drivers through training and Consider that each UPS driver makes an average of 120 stops per day. The efficiency challenge is deciding the best order to make all those stops (6,689,502,913,449,135 + 183 zeroes of possible alternatives)-taking into consideration "variables such as special delivery times, road regulations, and the existence of private roads that don't appear on a map?"-5e Another description of the logistics decision chal- lenge: There are more ways to deliver packages along an average driver's route "than there are nanoseconds that Earth has existed."oo Any way you look at it, that's a lot of alter- natives. The human mind can't even begin to figure it out. But the ORION al- gorithm, which has taken 10 years and an estimated hundreds of millions of UPS has been descrihed as retraining. For instance, drivers are taught to hold their keys on a pinky finger so they don't waste time fumbling in their pockets for the keys. And for safety reasons, fhey're taught no-lefi turns and no backing up. Now, however, the company has been testing and rolling out a quantum leap in its long- used business model of uniformity and efficiency. It goes by the name ORION, which stands for On-Road Integrated Optimization and Navigation. What it boils down to is helping UPS drivers shave millions of miles off their delivery routes using decision algorithms built by a team of mathematicians. dollars to build, is the next best thing. IT experts have de- scribed ORION as the largest investment in operations re- search ever by any company. So what does ORION do? Instead of searching for the one best answer, ORION is designed to refine itself over time, leading to a balance between an optimum result and consistency to help drivers make the best possible decisions about route delivery. And considering how many miles UPS drivers travel every day, saving a dollar or two here and there can add up quickly. When a driver "logs on" his delivery ffi EFFICIENCY FREAI( information acquisition device (DIAD) at the beginning of his shift each workday, what comes up are two possible ways to make the day's package deliveries: one that uses ORION and one that uses the "old" method. The driver can choose in the morning and come back to the same neighborhood later in the day. But despite the challenges, the company is CHAPTER 4 . Foundations of Decision Making 115 committed to ORION, saying that "a driver together with ORION is better than each a1one."61 Discussion 0uestions decisions? (Think of the steps in the decision-making process.) 4-17 How is UPS being a sustainable corporation? to use either one but if oRIoN is not chosen, the driver is04-'14 Whyisefficiencyandsafetysoimportantt0Ups? asked to explain the decision' The roll-out of oRIoN hasn't * 4- t 5 wou ld you characterize a driver s route decisions as structured been without challenges. Some drivers have been reluctant - 0r unstru6tured problems? programmed or nonprogrammed to give up autonomy; others have had trouble understanding declsions? Explain. ORION's logic-why deliver a package in one neighborhood fi +-f C How would 0Rl0N technology help drivers make better CASE APPLIGATION #M The Business of Baseball aseball has long been called 'America's national pas- time" (although according to a Harris Interactive sur- vey, the NFL has been, hands down, the favorite sport of Americans;.62 Now. the game of baseball can probably be better described as America's number crunchers. Take. for instance, Sandy Alderson, the general manager of the New York Mets. He explained the team's decision to let batting champion and free agent shortstop Jose Reyes go to the Miami Marlins. "l'm happy with the analysis we used and the strat- egy we pursued." As he made this announcement. three mem- bers of his baseball operalions staff stood by with their laptops open and ready to provide any needed data. A baseball writer percentages were better indicators of a player's offensive po- tential. The goal of all this number crunching? To make better decisions. Team managers want to allocate their limited payroll in the best way possible to help the team be a winner. The move to more systematic data usage can also be seen in college baseball. At this level, coaches have long used their faces (touching their ears, noses, and chins continually and constantly) to communicate pitch selection to the catcher. Now, however, hundreds of college teams at all levels have abandoned these body signals and are using a sys- tem in which the coach yells out a series of numbers. "The catcher decodes the sequence by looking at a chart tucked Yh* GAI,IE *f Sasehail" ". nir,mh*r cruncking, statistieal analysis, and data" has described the sport's move to data analysis this way, "Don't overlook the increasing value of facts, figures, and other data. . . and the people who interpret them." As the fiLm Moneybal/ (based on an earlier book by the same name) emphasized, statistics-the "right" statistics-are crucial aspects of effective decision making in the spot of baseball. The central premise of Moneyball was that the col- lected wisdom ofbaseball insiders (players, managers, coaches, scouts, and the front office) had pretty much been flawed almost from the onset of the game. Commonly used statistics such as were inadequate and poor gauges of potential. Rigorous sta- tistical analysis showed that on-base percentages and slugging into a wristband-the kind football quarterbacks have worn since 1965-and then relays the information to the pitcher the way he always has." Coaches say this approach is not only faster and more effrcient, it's not decipherable by opponents wanting to steal the signs. Since the method allows for many combinations that can mean many different pitches, the same number sequence won't be used for the rest of the game-and maybe not even for the rest of the season. Discussion 0uestions 0r unstructured problems? Explain. What type{s) of decision- making condition would you consider this to be? Explain. stolen bases' runs batted in' and batting averages rhat wereft+-r* ln a general sense, what kinds of decisions are made in typically used to evaluate players'abilities and performances - baseball?wouldyoucharacterizethesedecisionsasstructured