Darden Case: Business Communications (Topic)最新文献

{"title":"Dooly County Doughnuts","authors":"Tim Kraft, Anderson Wasden","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3002736","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3002736","url":null,"abstract":"Dooly County Doughnuts (DCD), a south Georgia based doughnut shop, faces capacity issues as its sales continue to grow. As its doughnuts continue to increase in popularity, DCD must gain a better understanding of its current operational capacity. The DCD case captures three key concepts: capacity analysis, batches/setup times, and Little's Law. In particular, the case works well as a first time introduction to Little's Law. This case is suitable for an undergraduate or MBA introductory operations course, and works well as exam case. The material fits particularly well in a course module on process analysis. An example sequence could include: Pancho's Burrito (OM-1555), NoBull Burger (OM-1479), Dooly County Doughnuts, Czech-Mate (OM-1390), and Stonehaven (HBS 696-048). The material could be complimented with activities such as the face game and a teaching note on process analysis (e.g., OM-1556). \u0000Excerpt \u0000UVA-OM-1572 \u0000Rev. Dec. 13, 2017 \u0000Dooly County Doughnuts \u0000Dewey Johnson sat in his office contemplating the past year of operation of his Dooly County Doughnuts (DCD) shop located in Vienna, Georgia. DCD served walk-in customers, and also made doughnuts to be stocked at local grocery stores and coffee shops. Over the past year, Johnson had spent considerable time trying to increase sales but had not spent much time focused on the operations of the shop. Through his window, he could see the line for doughnuts extending well into the parking lot. While he was pleased with the results of his sales push, he realized he needed to assess his capacity and maybe consider expansion. \u0000Product Sales \u0000Doughnut production at DCD was currently limited to a single 8-hr. shift per day, 7 days per week. During peak hours, Johnson maintained a staff of 3 to 4 employees that was more than capable of running the highly automated process without any additional slowdowns. Currently Johnson sold, on average, 1,100 dozen doughnuts per day of all varieties. \u0000. . .","PeriodicalId":121773,"journal":{"name":"Darden Case: Business Communications (Topic)","volume":"16 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-07-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131755773","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Elleozhang and Weibo","authors":"Siyuan Sun, Siming Xu, Xiang Yu, M. Murray","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2997715","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2997715","url":null,"abstract":"Ella Zhang, a talented fashion designer, established an online presence through Taobao and WeChat in 2013. Over the following four years, she tested online advertising tools and honed her marketing to young urban women in China's first-tier cities, primarily by shifting to the Weibo platform. Through the end of 2016 and beginning of 2017, her sales continued to grow but her marketing expenses were high. The case poses multiple strategic decisions Ella must make to continue her business, ranging from budget to spend on video to raising outside capital. It highlights differences between U.S. and Chinese markets and, specifically, gives U.S. students an introduction to social media in the most populous country in the world. \u0000Excerpt \u0000UVA-M-0944 \u0000Jun. 16, 2017 \u0000ElleoZhang and Weibo \u0000Introducing ElleoZhang \u0000Ella Zhang, a talented fashion designer, sat in Marienbad Cafe in April 2017 debating how best to grow her business. Over the past five years, Zhang has grown her personal brand as a fashion designer and created a loyal customer base through social media. She considered herself an entrepreneur—she'd created a small business in which she designed, promoted, and distributed her own line. Many were more successful than her, but in the highly competitive fashion business, many others had tried and failed…and she was still succeeding. She was determined to continue building her business. \u0000She built her business on Taobao, but the platform had proven to be an expensive place to do business. Taobao was one of the first widely adopted e-commerce platforms in China on which people could sell their own products, and it had helped Zhang build her customer base. Through the end of 2016 and beginning of 2017, her sales continued to grow but her marketing expenses were high. Zhang paid Taobao more than CNY450 per post to rank higher in a keyword search result for a day. Using the site to manage her business in the expensive apparel category (more focused on middle-class consumers, with prices ranging from USD25 to USD120) had become too costly, so she stopped promoting herself there in early 2017. \u0000. . .","PeriodicalId":121773,"journal":{"name":"Darden Case: Business Communications (Topic)","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-07-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129668345","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A Note on Market Definition, Segmentation, and Targeting: Three (of Four) Steps in Developing Marketing Strategy","authors":"M. Moore, Kimberly A. Whitler","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2997714","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2997714","url":null,"abstract":"Marketing strategy, part of the marketing planning process, flows directly from a company's goals and helps define how the marketing organization will help the firm achieve its objectives. Marketing strategy is guided by the goals and objectives of the organization, the business unit, or the particular product or service for which the plan is developed. The choice of which marketing strategy (or strategies) to pursue then guides the marketing mix decisions, which, taken together, become the value proposition offered to the target market segment(s). Marketing strategy involves four steps, and this note addresses the first three. \u0000Excerpt \u0000UVA-M-0895 \u0000Rev. Oct. 23, 2017 \u0000A Note on Market Definition, Segmentation, and Targeting: \u0000Three (of Four) Steps in Developing Marketing Strategy \u0000Marketing Strategy \u0000Marketing strategy, part of the marketing planning process, flows directly from a company's goals and helps define how the marketing organization will help the firm achieve its objectives. As a result, marketing strategy is guided by the goals and objectives of the organization, the business unit, or the particular product or service for which the plan is developed. The choice of which marketing strategy (or strategies) to pursue then guides the marketing mix decisions (i.e., the product, distribution, promotion, and price decisions), which, taken together, become the value proposition offered to the target market segment(s). Understanding how the plan impacts the firm financially is the last step in the marketing planning process. \u0000. . .","PeriodicalId":121773,"journal":{"name":"Darden Case: Business Communications (Topic)","volume":"45 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-07-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115777334","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"City Salary Freeze","authors":"P. E. Pfeifer","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2975161","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2975161","url":null,"abstract":"Mayor Anthony Lee has asked his assistant to begin the analysis of a recent survey of city residents to help him decide between freezing the salaries of city employees and cutting back on city services. There is a supplemental spreadsheet available for students (UVA-QA-0794X). \u0000 \u0000Excerpt \u0000 \u0000UVA-QA-0794 \u0000 \u0000Jul. 9, 2012 \u0000 \u0000City Salary Freeze \u0000 \u0000Like the mayors of other major U.S. cities, Mayor Anthony Lee faced a set of difficult budget choices. The recent recession had lowered total tax revenues, and the fiscally conservative Republican was committed to making commensurate cuts in the city budget. Ever mindful of his campaign promise to serve the collective will of the people, Lee turned to the city's annual resident survey for guidance. \u0000 \u0000At the risk of oversimplifying the situation, Lee saw it as a choice between services and salaries. The city either needed to cut back on the services it provided (e.g., police, fire, parks, sanitation, etc.) or freeze the salaries of its employees. A recent attempt to freeze city salaries had been unsuccessful, in part, due to the massive and effective public relations campaign launched by Services Employees International Union Local 712, the city's largest public employees union. If a salary freeze was to be implemented for the upcoming year, Lee hoped the recent survey would provide him the ammunition needed to support it. \u0000 \u0000Political reality (Lee desperately wanted to be reelected for a second term) meant that the “collective will of the people” actually connoted “people who vote” and, more cynically, people who could help reelect Lee. Consequently, he would pay the most attention to those residents who claimed no party preference (NPP) and the least attention to residents claiming to be Democrats. \u0000 \u0000. . .","PeriodicalId":121773,"journal":{"name":"Darden Case: Business Communications (Topic)","volume":"5 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121049009","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The IQ Experiment","authors":"P. E. Pfeifer, Anton Ovchinnikov","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2975138","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2975138","url":null,"abstract":"This case describes an IQ experiment in which 66 students, under the direction of their professor, used Excel to generate simulated IQs. The instructions were such that the generated IQs should have come from a normal distribution with a mean of 100 and standard deviation of 15. The sample average IQ, however, was 104.3. Students are asked to use their data-analysis skills to make sense of the results. The data set also contains gender (male or female) and fall section (A, B, C, D, or E) for each student, which allow for additional statistical analyses (tests of equality of means). \u0000 \u0000Excerpt \u0000 \u0000UVA-QA-0770 \u0000 \u0000Aug. 31, 2011 \u0000 \u0000The IQ Experiment \u0000 \u0000In a classroom experiment, the professor instructed the class to enter the following function into Excel for the purpose of generating IQs from a normal distribution with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15: \u0000 \u0000=ROUND(NORM.INV(RAND(),100,15),0) \u0000 \u0000“Instruments designed to measure real IQs,” the professor had explained, “were set up to produce IQs with exactly that distribution.” \u0000 \u0000. . .","PeriodicalId":121773,"journal":{"name":"Darden Case: Business Communications (Topic)","volume":"54 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127292578","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Salmones Puyuhuapi (a)","authors":"P. E. Pfeifer, R. Echeverria","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2975123","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2975123","url":null,"abstract":"This case series is appropriate for undergraduate, MBA, executive education, and MBAExec audiences but is specifically designed for decision analysis, a first-year MBA core course. In the A case, Osvaldo Correa, CEO of Salmones Puyuhuapi (SP), must decide how to respond to news that the ISA virus has infected a competitor's salmon farming site. The alternatives include harvesting SP's 900,000 salmon two months early, waiting for the fish to grow and risk losing fish to the virus, and vaccinating the fish. The A case evaluates the “harvest now” alternative using normally distributed fish weights. The B case provides probabilities for the various virus outcomes. The C case gives vaccination cost information and discloses the fact that vaccination will reduce growth. Although the case is written in English, the comments of the three managers are given in their native Spanish with an (imperfect) English translation provided in an exhibit. The idea here is to give students some small opportunity to work with others who speak a different language. \u0000 \u0000Excerpt \u0000 \u0000UVA-QA-0749 \u0000 \u0000Rev. Jan. 3, 2012 \u0000 \u0000Salmones Puyuhuapi (A) \u0000 \u0000Osvaldo Correa, CEO of Salmones Puyuhuapi (SP), was in a tense meeting with bank officials negotiating the terms of his firm's line of credit when he received a text on his BlackBerry. The news was not good. Correa tried to remain calm in front of the bankers as he read the terse message about a suspected outbreak of the infectious salmon anemia (ISA) virus in a competitor's salmon farm. Correa knew that if the virus were to spread to his firm's Jacaf Fjord site in northern Patagonia, Chile, it could wipe out his nearly one million salmon two months before they were to be harvested. That would have a devastating impact on his firm's cash flows. Excusing himself to go to “the services” (the only excuse he could come up with), Correa e-mailed his assistant to set up a meeting later that day with Jorge Richards, his operations manager, and Sergio Rivas, the company's veterinarian. \u0000 \u0000Salmon Farming in Chile \u0000 \u0000Chile was a relatively small country of nearly 16 million inhabitants whose economy was driven principally by mining, agribusiness, forestry, and aquaculture. In particular, the salmon industry, although relatively new, had been wildly successful. The industry was established in the early 1980s to take advantage of natural conditions in the south of the country (moderate sea temperatures, sheltered sites, and ideal salinity levels). It achieved nearly 20 years of 42% annualized growth, allowing it to join Norway as the world's largest salmon producers. In 2006, these two countries shared 78% of global production. Salmon farms, which thrived in the southern regions of Chile, dominated the local economies and led to high rates of employment. \u0000 \u0000. . .","PeriodicalId":121773,"journal":{"name":"Darden Case: Business Communications (Topic)","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126029765","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Pelayo Family Plays Roulette","authors":"S. Bodily, P. E. Pfeifer, Manel Baucells","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2975190","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2975190","url":null,"abstract":"The Pelayo family has been studying roulette wheels and collecting data on tens of thousands of spins. Now the Pelayos have identified a wheel that they want to bet on, which has six numbers that have a 1/30 probability of winning instead of 1/37. They have staked EUR1,000 on this wheel. The question is: How much should they bet in order to have the most capital after 200 rounds? Log utility is used to compare alternatives and find an optimal bet. \u0000Excerpt \u0000UVA-QA-0850 \u0000Rev. Nov. 28, 2016 \u0000The Pelayo Family Plays Roulette \u0000“Table 17 has the roulette wheel we'll play. Maybe it's bent!” Gonzalo Garcia-Pelayo, the patriarch of the Pelayo family, announced. The Pelayo clan, marking tens of thousands of spin numbers for six hours a night over the course of two weeks, had identified this table at the Casino Gran Madrid (Figure1) as their best opportunity. \u0000It appeared that table 17 had six favorable numbers. “Three numbers on each side have a probability of 1/30,” Ivan, one of Gonzalo's sons, said. “Let's play with EUR1,000 for 200 rounds and put equal amounts of money on those six numbers when we play.” Ivan was excited to get started. \u0000“Well, we want to avoid the risk of losing the entire EUR1,000 and to have as much as possible at the end of the 200 rounds,” Gonzalo responded. “I calculated that if we bet EUR1 on each of the six favored slots, we get an expected payout gain of EUR0.20 for each EUR1 bet. That's not bad for a few seconds of play. The work will be to decide how much to bet on a round. Based on the minimum bet, we have to stop if our stake gets below EUR6.” \u0000. . .","PeriodicalId":121773,"journal":{"name":"Darden Case: Business Communications (Topic)","volume":"10 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115106332","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Design Thinking at Great Lakes: The Search for Growth","authors":"M. Moore","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2975245","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2975245","url":null,"abstract":"This document is one of three available case-based simulations used as the basis for a multisession course on design thinking. The course emphasizes deep user understanding, iteration, and a focus on the possibilities as a way to enhance value creation for stakeholders. Please refer to the course teaching guide to view the additional essential pedagogical tools available to the course instructor—including several hours of video content and a set of posters that summarize ethnographic interview findings for each simulation scenario.In this case, the CEO of Great Lakes (GL), a Fortune 200 company and one of the world's largest dairy cooperatives, reflects on the challenges and opportunities the company faces as it considers how to tap into a bigger slice of the lucrative market for snack foods for Millennials, an area GL's research had identified as a promising first target. Students play the role of members of a handpicked innovation team chartered to explore and develop profitable revenue growth opportunities. \u0000Excerpt \u0000UVA-S-0248 \u0000Rev. Apr. 17, 2017 \u0000Design Thinking at Great Lakes: The Search for Growth \u0000Chris Pollen, the CEO of Great Lakes (GL), a Fortune 200 company and one of the world's largest dairy cooperatives, prepared to convene the first meeting of the team he had handpicked to lead innovation efforts directed at finding profitable revenue growth at GL. In preparation, he reflected on the challenges and the opportunities the company faced as it considered how to tap into a bigger slice of the lucrative market for snack foods, the area GL's research had identified as a promising first target. \u0000Founded in 1921, GL was the second-largest member-owned cooperative in the United States. It owned the nation's number-one brand of butter and deli cheeses (utilizing more than 12billion gallons of milk annually) and was a leader in animal nutrition as well as crop protection and seed distribution. GL had built an extensive set of farm-to-market capabilities, including a private fleet of more than 1,700 refrigerated trucks, and had invested heavily in research and development. GL had a tradition of adding value through innovation in both products and packaging. For example, a line of lower-fat deli cheese was introduced to respond to health concerns, as butter was mixed with vegetable oil. In response to consumers' calls for convenience, pre-sliced cheese was added to the line, and butter was sold in smaller sticks. In addition, GL licensed its name to Martin Foods for the distribution of milk, sour cream, yogurt, and other dairy products. \u0000Times were good: over the past seven years, sales had doubled and profits had quadrupled. Dairy accounted for as much as 30% of the company's revenue. Per capita butter consumption in the United States had reached its highest point in 40 years. Driving this resurgence were two sweeping trends: shoppers' intensified search for natural ingredients and a spike in interest in gourmet cooking that led more home cook","PeriodicalId":121773,"journal":{"name":"Darden Case: Business Communications (Topic)","volume":"11 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115656190","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Danaher Corporation: The Hach Sl1000 Portable Parallel Water Analyzer","authors":"M. Lipson","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2975249","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2975249","url":null,"abstract":"The Hach subsidiary of global science and technology leader Danaher Corporation was about to introduce an innovative handheld water quality testing device: the SL1000 Portable Parallel Analyzer. There were, however, some critical decisions left regarding how best to bring it to market. Olaf Boettger, the Business Unit Director of Hach's Laboratory Solutions division, needed to decide on the exact timing of the launch and how the PPA would be priced and promoted. Boettger's decisions would impact a wide range of stakeholders inside and outside of the company, and he must carefully weigh a series of tradeoffs and concerns. Danaher's Business System, a culture emphasizing continuous improvement as well as a set of tools or structures that drive performance, provides him with the structure to frame these decisions. This case was used successfully as an introductory case at the start of the Darden Business School MBA program and would be useful in any class to emphasize the need for an “enterprise perspective.” \u0000Excerpt \u0000UVA-S-0261 \u0000May 26, 2016 \u0000Danaher Corporation: \u0000The Hach SL1000 Portable Parallel Water Analyzer \u0000Early in April 2014, the Hach subsidiary of global science and technology leader Danaher Corporation (Danaher) was about to introduce an innovative handheld water quality testing device: the SL1000 Portable Parallel Analyzer (PPA). Development of the PPA had been guided by extensive market analysis and executed under Danaher's rigorous product development system. It had cleared a number of important hurdles including an earlier proposal review to determine whether to proceed with the significant investments required to develop the device and build a production line to produce it. There were, however, some critical decisions left regarding how best to bring the PPA to market, and responsibility for these decisions rested with Olaf Boettger, the Business Unit Director of Hach's Laboratory Solutions division. \u0000The remaining decisions focused on two areas: the exact timing of the launch and how the PPA would be priced and promoted. As for timing, the device itself was ready for market—it could easily and reliably indicate the presence of selected chemicals where selection was made by inserting up to four of a suite of prepackaged chemical reagents, specifically designed for the PPA (the Hach-patented Chemkey™ cartridges). There were many good reasons to bring the innovation to market as soon as possible, not the least of which was to start generating a return on significant capital investments. But although five of the seven planned Chemkey cartridges were ready for production, the two that were experiencing challenges in development were vital to one desirable segment of customers. Furthermore, even though the device and cartridges functioned well and approval by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for use in regulatory reporting contexts was expected, that approval had not yet been given. \u0000. . .","PeriodicalId":121773,"journal":{"name":"Darden Case: Business Communications (Topic)","volume":"14 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123868327","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Using Binary Variables to Represent Logical Conditions in Optimization Models","authors":"Anton Ovchinnikov","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2975153","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2975153","url":null,"abstract":"Logical conditions that link different elements of a business decision are very common in managerial practice. For example, a firm can ship only to and from warehouses that are open; patients needing MRIs can only get service in clinics that have MRI equipment; regarding an old power plant, one can decide to close it or retrofit it, but one obviously cannot retrofit a closed plant. The list goes on. In quantitative modeling of such situations, a natural step is to use IF statements such as IF(a warehouse in city N is open, then we can ship to/from it; otherwise no shipments can be made in/out of a warehouse in N). In optimization models, however, IF statements lead to non-linearity with all the associated challenges. Fortunately, nearly all logical conditions can be modeled linearly using binary variables. This note describes some helpful modeling techniques for doing that. \u0000Excerpt \u0000UVA-QA-0786 \u0000Apr. 11, 2012 \u0000Using binary variables to represent logical \u0000conditions in optimization MODELS \u0000Logical conditions that link different elements of a business decision are very common in managerial practice. For example, a firm can ship only to and from warehouses that are open; patients needing MRIs can only get service in clinics that have MRI equipment; regarding an old power plant, one can decide to close it or retrofit it, but one obviously cannot retrofit a closed plant. The list goes on. In quantitative modeling of such situations, a natural step is to use IF statements such as IF(a warehouse in city N is open, then we can ship to/from it; otherwise no shipments can be made in/out of a warehouse in N). In optimization models, however, IF statements lead to non-linearity with all the associated challenges. Fortunately, nearly all logical conditions can be modeled linearly using binary variables. This note describes some helpful modeling techniques for doing that. \u0000What Are Binary Variables? \u0000A binary variable is one that can take two values: 1 (which traditionally stood for “True”) or 0 (which stood for “False”). The actual meanings for 1 and 0 can be context-specific: “yes/no,” “open/closed,” “have MRI/does not have MRI,” “good/bad,” “small/large,” and so on without restriction. \u0000Binary representations are at the heart of computing and, as surprising as it may be, any digital object—number, text, this electronic file, digital image, sound recording, video, and everything else you see, hear, or do on your computer/smartphone/tablet—is wholly composed of zeros and ones. Logical conditions in optimization modeling are no different. \u0000. . .","PeriodicalId":121773,"journal":{"name":"Darden Case: Business Communications (Topic)","volume":"78 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-06-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132342602","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}