Author: chris

Matt is sitting in a chair at a table anxiously waiting for his Chinese takeout to arrive. The doorbell rings and Matt moves from his chair to go to the door to meet the deliveryperson. In the process of moving from his chair to ultimately sitting back in his chair and eating his General Tso’s chicken with rice, he has to progress through a series of motions. First he must stand upright from his sitting position in the chair. He turns around 180 degrees to face the door. Then he jumps over his couch, takes several steps forward, grabs the door knob, turns it 180 degrees clockwise and pulls open the door. Once he has the food in hand, he turns back around, walks back to his chair and sits down. He divides the food into two bowls for both Maria and himself. He grasps the chicken and rice with a set of chopsticks, raises it to his mouth, takes a bite, which he then chews and swallows.

All the actions that Matt made to move from the chair to the door and back involved the contraction of voluntary skeletal muscles that are each innervated by a specific nerve and each of which cross a specific joint or set of joints to produce a specific action. The series of above actions took Matt less than 3 minutes to complete.

Part A.    Describe in order and in detail the following movements.

1. Stand up from a sitting position
2. While standing upright, turn around 180 degrees to face opposite direction
3. Jumping over the couch and taking several steps forward.
4. Reach forward and grasp a door knob.
5. Turn a door knob 180 degrees clockwise
6. Sit down in a chair.
7. Grasp the chopsticks.
8. Raise the chicken and rice from a bowl to mouth.
9. Bite, chew and then swallow a portion of the food.

Break down each of the above actions into an ordered series of joint movements. Actually do the actions yourself and note which joints move in what order.  What muscles produces these movements and what specific nerve innervates that muscle or groups of muscle?

Part B. Which cranial nerve affects taste? Which cranial nerve is concerned with the maintenance of balance?

Part C.  On the way to the doorknob, Matt stepped on a sharp nail. What type of reflex will he trigger? Describe the pathway from stepping on the nail to withdrawing his foot from the stimulus.

Using the following terms, explain the process of water, mineral, and sucrose transport through a plant:  1. ATP 2. Cohesion 3. Phloem 4. Sink 5. Source 6. Stomata 7. Transpiration 8. Transpirational pull 9. Xylem 10. Water pressure Assignment Guidelines: Your response will be assessed using the following criteria: 1. Inclusion of all ten terms (20 points) 2. Correctly assigning words to the proper type of transport (50 points) 3. Clarity of explanation (10 points) 4. Spelling and grammar (10 points) 5. Adhering to formatting and length requirements – Times New Roman 12 pt font; one inch  margin

If a person bought 1 share of Google stock within the last year, what is the probability that the stock on that day closed at less than the mean for that year? Hint: You do not want to calculate the mean to answer this one. The probability would be the same for any normal distribution.

1.Two partners own together a small landscaping business in North Carolina, called Summer Lawn Care. They have been specializing in summer grass seeding, installation, and maintenance. Recently, the partners acquired special technology and know-how for winter grass installations and maintenance. They also added a tree cutting service as recent storms in the area had caused demand for this service to soar. One of the partners insists that the name of the business should change to Lawn and Tree Care, so that it better reflects the range of services and, thus, generates more customer interest, and thus contracts. The second partner wants to keep the old name and argues, “We have already paid for business cards, vehicle paint, signage, and ads in Yellow Pages”.  Evaluate the arguments of the two partners. Explain and illustrate their points by identifying the relevant and irrelevant costs for this decision.

Guided Response:
In 300 words or more, please, provide your response to the above discussion question. Identify all the costs in the decision process, including explicit costs, implicit costs and sunk costs. Respond substantively to at least two of your classmates’ postings. Substantive responses use theory, research, and experience or examples to support ideas and further the class knowledge on the discussion topic.
Explain what is meant by “contribution analysis”. Carefully define the term and provide examples to illustrate it.

Guided Response:
2.0Can you think of a recent example where you had to evaluate the incremental costs and benefits of different options in order to make a decision? In 300 words or more, please, provide your response to the above discussion question. Respond substantively to at least two of your classmates’ postings. Substantive responses use theory, research, and experience or examples to support ideas and further the class knowledge on the discussion topic.

 

William is the owner of a small pizza shop and is thinking of increasing products and lowering costs. William’s pizza shop owns four ovens and the cost of the four ovens is $1,000. Each worker is paid $500 per week.

Show all of your calculations and processes. Describe your answer for each question in complete sentences, whenever it is necessary.

1. Which inputs are fixed and which are variable in the production function of William’s pizza shop? Over what ranges do there appear to be increasing, constant, and/or diminishing returns to the number of workers employed?
2. What number of workers appears to be most efficient in terms of pizza product per worker?
3. What number of workers appears to minimize the marginal cost of pizza production assuming that each pizza worker is paid $500 per week?
4. Why would marginal productivity decline when you hire more workers in the short run after a certain level?
5. How would expanding the business affect the economies of scale? When would you have constant returns to scale or diseconomies of scale? Describe your answer.

Problem 2:

The Paradise Shoes Company has estimated its weekly TVC function from data collected over the past several months, as TVC = 3450 + 20Q + 0.008Q2 where TVC represents the total variable cost and Q represents pairs of shoes produced per week. And its demand equation is Q = 4100 – 25P. The company is currently producing 1,000 pairs of shoes weekly and is considering expanding its output to 1,200 pairs of shoes weekly. To do this, it will have to lease another shoe-making machine ($2,000 per week fixed payment until the lease period ends).

Show all of your calculations and processes. Describe your answer for each item below in complete sentences, whenever it is necessary.

1. Describe and derive an expression for the marginal cost (MC) curve.
2. Describe and estimate the incremental costs of the extra 200 pairs per week (from 1,000 pairs to 1,200 pairs of shoes).
3. What are the profit-maximizing price and output levels for Paradise Shoes? Describe and calculate the profit-maximizing price and output.
4. Discuss whether or not Paradise Shoes should expand its output further beyond 1,200 pairs per week. State all assumptions and qualifications that underlie your recommendation.

 

Carefully review the Grading Rubric for the criteria that will be used to evaluate your assignment.

Consider the ELL as you read the following quotes and watch the accompanying YouTube video prior to posting a response to the discussion board.

“If we teach today’s students as we taught yesterday’s, we rob them of tomorrow”. – John Dewey

“The belief that all genuine education comes about through experience does not mean that all experiences are genuinely or equally educative.” – John Dewey

John dewey quote – http://viewpure.com/kM2fefI2s78

How much do you know about ELL’s? What kind of instructional strategies will you need in your teacher toolkit to ensure success for students whose first language is other than English? What is your plan to gain the knowledge you need? What are some ELL resources for educators?

During the span of his lifetime, 1859-1952, John Dewey was an advocate for educational reform. His writing from the early 1900’s continues to be applicable to education today.

Watch your selected comedy, horror, or science fiction film; select one genre to work with; select one short film to screen that corresponds to the selected genre.

Create a minimum of a 10-slide Microsoft^® PowerPoint^® presentation discussing your selected genre and how the corresponding short film fits or does not fit the standard model for the genre.

Include images from the short film itself to help illustrate your presentation.  Strike a fair balance with your image use.

Include the following:

• Discussion of each of your selected genre
• Discussion of the following components in your selected film:
  • Summary of the film’s story
  • Setting
  • Acting
  • Lighting
  • Costumes
  • Makeup
  • Music
  • Sound
• Discussion of the film’s theme(s) and how the components discussed above support the theme(s) you have determined for the film.

Address fictional aspects of film as discussed in Ch. 6 of Film by writing the following for inclusion on one slide:

• Create your own genre movie character and write a goal for your character, a conflict he or she encounters, and how he or she resolves the conflict and achieves the goal.

Include detailed speaker notes.

Reference and incorporate readings from Film: An Introduction into your arguments as well as a minimum of two references from the course’s ERRs.  THIS IS NOT OPTIONAL

Because this is an academic analysis, this presentation will include an introduction, body consisting of the above topic points, and a conclusion.

Include a References Slide(s) with APA formatted reference entries and speaker notes.

 

Because firm valuation is an overriding concern in M&A transactions, you have been asked to conduct a company valuation analysis using all three methods covered in class: DCF, comparable transactions and multiples (relative valuation).

For the DCF analysis. You can either use cash flow estimation (using analysts’ forecast or your own) or the formula approach (seen in Weston et al handout). Be clear as to what your main assumptions are regarding  terminal value calculation and operating cash flow estimations. 

Compare all three methods with current stock price of the company, mentioning advantages and disadvantages for each method for the case being and write up your conclusions and recommendations regarding the firm’s true value (stating whether you feel the company is overvalued or undervalued and why).

This term paper is an individual effort and should be no longer than 4-6 slides (ppt format) not including appendix

A hotel, which is 300 metres from the beach at Surfer’s Paradise, advertises throughout Australia that it is ‘only a stone’s throw away from the beach’. Has it committed a breach of s18 of the ACL. Has it committed a criminal offences under the ACL?

This assignment is to develop a strategy that will reverse the losses of the PVC plant located in Slidell, LA. The PVC Pipe Plant incurred losses over $1.1 million, and a successful strategy was developed to make the company profitable in one year. Not a hugh profit—less than $50,000. Read on.

 

When CDC acquired BirdTech, Inc. out of bankruptcy they received the following assets:

 

• A PVC Pipe plant in Louisiana that was the last of the PVC pipe operations BirdTech owned. At one time BirdTech was a major competitor in the production of PVC pipe.Details on the PVC Pipe Plant follow.
• An overfunded pension plan valued at $3.4 million. It took the management of CDC over two years to work through the IRS regulations to liquidate the pension plan and collect the $3.4 million. The IRS stipulated that the PVC plant must continue operating until the overfunded pension plan was closed.
• A Gulfstream jet. This gave CDC two corporate airplanes, one a turbo-prop from the previous major stockholder and the Gulfstream. Both planes were sold by the CDC management team. We used the turbo-prop a couple of times, but after looking at the condition of the PVC Pipe Plant, we decided that the maintenance on the Gulfstream  might be suspect, so we let it set in the hanger until the sale.
• Several season tickets to the professional football team in Houston, which were sold to one of the partners of the CPA firm. Like good auditors, they covered their increased expenses by billing CDC a few extra hours to cover the cost of the tickets.

 

The PVC Pipe Plant

 

The PVC Pipe plant was a 24/7 operation and produced PVC pipe for the construction industry in sizes from 1”-14” diameter and in standard lengths. The pipe was formed in an extrusion machine, where PVC pellets were fused by heat and then extruded over a mandrel to produce to appropriate diameter pipe. The time required to change the extrusion head, which determined the PVC pipe diameter, was close to 24 hours. So, to achieve maximum efficiency/lower costs it was desirable to run the extrusion machines for as long a period as possible without changing the size of pipe being produced (say on the 1-1/2” PVC pipe which is a standard for residential plumbing).

 

The alternative to changing the machinery on a frequent basis was to have long runs in excess of current demand and put the finished pipe in inventory. The pipe could be stored in racks, and the pipe had a very extensive shelf life. Then when the construction project for the new shopping center needed the drain pipe (larger diameters/often colored blue) tomorrow (general contractors are notoriously poor planners), the pipe would be in inventory and it would be loaded on a truck and taken to the job site the next day.

 

Note the problem. If management wanted to have pipe on hand (in inventory) when the customer placed an order, then the cost of carrying the inventory would be high. Do you recall that inventory is a use of cash?? If management wanted to minimize inventory (maximize cash flow), then PVC Pipe would be at a disadvantage when a company with more production lines (50 lines was the norm for a medium sized plant and some companies had over 150 lines on average in production) and greater sales was able to carry the inventory and/or have the capability to switch out a line for a special order.

 

Another limiting factor in the PVC pipe industry is the distance you can transport a load of pipe on an 18 wheeler. The shipment is light in weight and a great portion of the volume of the shipment is air. The larger the pipe diameter, the more air is being shipped. The customer does not pay for the air, only the pipe on the truck. Hence, PVC pipe plants were located close to large metropolitan centers, where there was a lot of construction.

 

The competition was fierce. The pipe producers usually employed their own salesmen, who sold to distributors who maintained contact with the contractors. Since there is almost no product differentiation between suppliers, the sales effort became a ‘good ol’boy’ network between the sales staff and the pipe distributors.

 

The industry is similar to the USMC Aviation motto—‘On Target. On Time’. The product had to be at the job site when the trench was dug and at the lowest price

 

Obviously, the larger producers (many parallel production lines at one location) had an advantage of the smaller producers. All of the BirdTech pipe companies operations had been sold before the acquisition of the bankrupt BirdTech, and the remaining plant in Louisiana was left to compete with the big boys—with only 3 production lines!

 

A significant competitor is The Evansville Pipe Company in Indiana.  Evansville Pipe has several plants in the Midwest and in the Mississippi-Texas corridor. Evansville Pipe is a well-managed mid-sized competitor and along with the larger producers makes life difficult for the PVC Pipe Plant.

 

The Status of the Company in 1987

 

The structure of PVC Pipe Plant is as follows:

• The organization chart is as follows:
  • General Manager. Compensation $65,000. Company car.
  • Sec to GM. Compensation $16,000.
  • Sales Manager. Compensation $50,000
  • Two salesmen. Compensation $40,000 each + car
  • Operations Manager. Compensation $45,000
  • 5 Supervisors for 5 shifts. 24/7. Compensation $25,000
  • Warehouse Manager. Compensation $26,000
  • 3 shift supervisors for warehouse. Compensation $19,000
  • Accounting Manager. Compensation $38,000
  • Three accounting clerks. Compensation $18,000
  • Purchasing clerk. Compensation $17,000
  • Fringe benefits at 32% of salary

 

The other costs are detailed on the P&L statement for 1987-1989. The division, a wholly owned subsidiary of CDC, has losses that range in the $1.1 million annually.

 

That was the problem that I inherited as CEO of CDC. We had two years of losses at the $1.1 million figure, and we had taken the steps to re-organize the facility with a new sales manager, new general manager, trimming expenses and trying to get an understanding of the business. We were in the last steps of re-capturing the $3.4 million in the over-funded pension plan. The most memorable thing about the town of Slidell was the great food one could get in the local restaurants. There was nothing memorable about the PVC Pipe Plant.

 

We had contacted our competition in the industry to see if we could arrange a sale of the facilities. There were no takers and we could not sell the company due to the IRS regulations. We had developed a good relationship with the Evansville Pipe executive team, but they did not have the financial resources to purchase a PVC pipe plant.

 

During a dinner one night in Slidell, crayfish and beer, with the Evansville management, we developed a strategy that offered the only way to reverse the $1.1 million dollars of loss to a small operating profit in one year. What we had to do was to turn the strategy into an operating plan and make it happen. We did this, and the next year the PVC Pipe Plant had a $36,000 profit at the operating income level. Your assignment is to develop a strategy that puts the company in the black. I am sure that no one will be able to duplicate the successful strategy. In fact, I am so confident that there will be a 1 point bonus for the first person who develops the appropriate strategy. In addition to reversing the loss, we were able to reverse the negative cash flow.

 

You can do research on the PVC pipe industry, you will find nothing of value to assist in developing the correct strategy. If you want to do research I would do the following.

• Find out who the producers of PVC pipe are in the US and call up the plant and talk to the plant manager or the sales manager.
• Analyze the structure, giving special attention to the plant locations, size of plant (# of operating lines), range of product produced, market served (customers and geographic) and suppliers of the raw material.
• See if you can get an idea of the disadvantage a 3-line plant would have in the market. Find out about the suppliers of the resin and the stability of the price of raw material. Discuss the 24/7 operation and the problem of line changes (from one diameter of pipe to another).
• You will probably find that the raw material is 75-78% of the COGS and there is no chance of a price reduction. There are a limited number of suppliers and they are not willing to negotiate price.
• Discuss the importance of having the right inventory at the pipe distributor when the customer calls in with an order.
• GM% and operating income %.
• Price stability. Discounts offered to suppliers for quantity purchases.
• Unions. Not a significant factor, since most of the plants are in the southern US.
• Any financial information which can be reduced to ratios, such as gm%,
• Approximately 74% of the industry employees were laborers, operatives or service workers.
• Approximately 14% were officials, general managers and professionals.
• Approximately 12% were technicians, salespeople or office workers.
• The average hourly earnings of production workers were $15.78/hour in 2005.
• PVC pipe and other plastic piping is part of SIC 3079: Miscellaneous Plastics Products in 1972, and the workforce figures were calculated on the 1972 SIC basis.)
• 75-78% of sales price is material. See if you can gather data as to the stability of the raw material price as a % of sales. If the price is relatively stable as a % of sales, then another way to reduce costs and achieve profitability is eliminated.
• You cannot exist as a supplier of PVC by only producing a few sizes of pipe. You must produce all sizes and maintain some inventory to be competitive.
• Therefore, it is a waste of time in contacting producers of PVC pipe.

 

Modified Deal Structures covers the structure of the strategy to save PVC pipe.  Your assignment is to build on the Modified Deal Structure strategy and develop specific actions that will insure an operating strategy. Do not worry about playing ‘what if’ and changing sales/costs etc. It cannot be done. The answer to think outside the box on how you would structure a deal to save this company. Think about optimum lowest cost/maximum productivity for a 24/7 operation/limitations that come with must three machines/pricing of the product/working closely with a partner and what results in a good deal for both sides. There is a hugh cash flow bonus once the operations are established.

 

You do not need a complete financial statement. You can play what if with the existing balance sheet and the numbers established for assets and liabilities. Once you develop the strategy, the financials will all into place.Create a pro-forma year showing how the deal is structured. Contact me if you have trouble with the financial statement and I shall assist—however you must have a strategy that we can discuss.