101 The only company I have worked for is the United States Army so with the limited experience in anything other than military, I chose the Army as my company. The Army has vast amount of areas that need improving and choosing areas that deal with management improvements were relatively easy. Through the years, the Army has expanded and decreased its ranks based on the possible threat around the world. Because of these extreme expansions and contractions, the Army’s evaluation of personnel and getting the right leader to the right position has not always been done with the best-qualified individuals. The Army continues to strive to improve processes and procedures, but is lacking on the way they prepare leaders for selected jobs. I would like to develop a process improvement plan for the Army because the need to recognize top performers and get them to the right jobs with the right training. The Army builds, produces, and develops leaders at every level to take on a myriad of responsibilities but it is the jobs they are assigned that often are not suited for their talents. Additionally, career development is another area that lacks the necessary focus to prepare future leaders and supervisors with the tools needed to be successful. The Army has career paths developed for a broad general guideline for secession. Many times these path are not the ones that will get you promoted or prepare you for the next position or level. The use of knowledge management databases are often overlooked or not used. The introduction of computers into our daily lives has helped and hurt the process of getting information out to a massive audience. We have databases filled with knowledge and data and is rarely accessed. Because of rapid changes within each field and the data is so great, it would take considerable amount of time to access and locate the needed materiel. Changing the way we use data and information may be the key that unlocks improvements in personnel actions and career development. 102 Collapse The organization that I have chosen for my process improvement plan is an organization within the Army Reserves. I work for the Army Reserves as a Department of Defense civilian employee. I support approximately 270 personnel with their administrative needs. There is also an Army Reserve Personnel Action Center (ARPAC) that is located in my building that supports my organization along with four others. The purpose of the ARPAC is to support/improve the readiness of the units and personnel that are assigned to the units they support The ARPAC needs an improvement plan to their hiring process. They are not as effective as they could be because they don’t have all of the employees they are authorized. The ARPAC is authorized seven employees but only have two. I think most of us know and can relate to the importance of having a full staff within an organization. The workload is distributed evenly when you have a full staff.

1. 101
The only company I have worked for is the United States Army
so with the limited experience in anything other than military, I
chose the Army as my company. The Army has vast amount of
areas that need improving and choosing areas that deal with
management improvements were relatively easy. Through the
years, the Army has expanded and decreased its ranks based on
the possible threat around the world. Because of these extreme
expansions and contractions, the Army’s evaluation of
personnel and getting the right leader to the right position has
not always been done with the best-qualified individuals. The
Army continues to strive to improve processes and procedures,
but is lacking on the way they prepare leaders for selected jobs.
I would like to develop a process improvement plan for the
Army because the need to recognize top performers and get
them to the right jobs with the right training. The Army builds,
produces, and develops leaders at every level to take on a
myriad of responsibilities but it is the jobs they are assigned
that often are not suited for their talents.
Additionally, career development is another area that
lacks the necessary focus to prepare future leaders and
supervisors with the tools needed to be successful. The Army
has career paths developed for a broad general guideline for
secession. Many times these path are not the ones that will get
you promoted or prepare you for the next position or level.
The use of knowledge management databases are often
overlooked or not used. The introduction of computers into our
daily lives has helped and hurt the process of getting
information out to a massive audience. We have databases
filled with knowledge and data and is rarely accessed. Because
of rapid changes within each field and the data is so great, it
would take considerable amount of time to access and locate the
needed materiel. Changing the way we use data and
information may be the key that unlocks improvements in

2. personnel actions and career development.
102
Collapse
The organization that I have chosen for my process
improvement plan is an organization within the Army Reserves.
I work for the Army Reserves as a Department of Defense
civilian employee. I support approximately 270 personnel with
their administrative needs. There is also an Army Reserve
Personnel Action Center (ARPAC) that is located in my
building that supports my organization along with four others.
The purpose of the ARPAC is to support/improve the readiness
of the units and personnel that are assigned to the units they
support
The ARPAC needs an improvement plan to their hiring process.
They are not as effective as they could be because they don’t
have all of the employees they are authorized. The ARPAC is
authorized seven employees but only have two. I think most of
us know and can relate to the importance of having a full staff
within an organization. The workload is distributed evenly when
you have a full staff.
Some of the issues with not having a full staff of employees
within any organization are the employees being overworked
which can lead to more stress and the work is not completed.
With the organization in my building, the work is getting done
but at an extremely slow rate. For example, actions are sent
through e-mail correspondence and they reply when the action
is completed; the turnaround from the action requested to being
completed is approximately two to three weeks.
103
Why do you plan to develop What company are you planning to
use for your process improvement plan?
NuStar Energy is a petroleum company with two business
aspects, pipeline management and terminals operation. I’m a
terminal operator where we receive, store, blend and issue
petroleum products. The terminal where I work has asphalt, gas,
diesel and #6 oil. We receive the products by tankers, rail cars

3. and trucks and issue the end products to customers with
allocations for specified products such as truck drivers getting
gas and diesel for delivery to gas stations.
a process improvement plan for this company?
My collateral position is Process Safety Management
Coordinator, PSM for short, and I conduct monthly meetings
with management or operators to identify and address the
different ways we do business to see where we can make
improvements. For instance, we’ve identified safety issues to
address such as adding walkways across piping to gain safe
access to equipment. We’ve also done things like streamlining a
specific operation to eliminate redundant or unnecessary steps.
We’ve made great strides in the last 5 years and we have a lot
more improvement to make.
What are some examples of known deficient processes?
One area that needs improvement is training. There are multiple
operations that we conduct daily which require industry
knowledge as well as sight specific knowledge in order to be a
well rounded operator. This is important because we operate
with 3 or 4 people per shift doing multiple jobs at once so if
you lack knowledge in a specific operation you are limited in
your job scope. The main problems that exist right now are no
formal training program, no way to track what knowledge an
operator has and a lack of encouragement for those less
motivated to learn. Currently knowledge is passed down from
senior operators to the junior operators and not everyone get the
same training. “GOGs and SOPs remove the ambiguity from
tasks, or work performance steps, and allow staff to be trained
to a standardized level across functional areas.” (Bryant, R.J.,
2013). We have SOP’s and they’re beneficial but not all
variables of operation are captured in them A detailed training
program could correct these problems.

4. MAT540 Homework
Week 1
Page 1 of 3
MAT540
Week 1 Homework
Chapter 1
1. The Retread Tire Company recaps tires. The fixed annual cost
of the recapping operation is
$65,000. The variable cost of recapping a tire is $7.5. The
company charges$25 to recap a tire.
a. For an annual volume of 15, 000 tire, determine the total
cost, total revenue, and profit.
b. Determine the annual break-even volume for the Retread Tire
Company operation.
2. Evergreen Fertilizer Company produces fertilizer. The
company’s fixed monthly cost is $25,000,
and its variable cost per pound of fertilizer is $0.20. Evergreen
sells the fertilizer for $0.45 per
pound. Determine the monthly break-even volume for the
company.
3. If Evergreen Fertilizer Company in problem 2 changes the
price of its fertilizer from $0.45 per

5. pound to $0.55 per pound, what effect will the change have on
the break-even volume?
4. If Evergreen Fertilizer Company increases its advertising
expenditure by $10,000 per year, what
effect will the increase have on the break-even volume
computed in problem 2?
5. Annie McCoy, a student at Tech, plans to open a hot dog
stand inside Tech’s football stadium
during home games. There are 6 home games scheduled for the
upcoming season. She must pay the
Tech athletic department a vendor’s fee of $3,000 for the
season. Her stand and other equipment
will cost her $3,500 for the season. She estimates that each hot
dog she sells will cost her $0.40. she
has talked to friends at other universities who sell hot dogs at
games. Based on their information
and the athletic department’s forecast that each game will sell
out, she anticipates that she will sell
approximately 1,500 hot dogs during each game.
a. What price should she charge for a hot dog in order to break
even?
b. What factors might occur during the season that would alter
the volume sold and thus the

6. break-even price Annie might charge?
6. The college of business at Kerouac University is planning to
begin an online MBA program. The
initial start-up cost for computing equipment, facilities, course
development and staff recruitment
and development is $400,000. The college plans to charge
tuition of $20,000 per student per year.
However, the university administration will charge the college
$10,000 per student for the first 100
students enrolled each year for administrative costs and its
share of the tuition payments.
a. How many students does the college need to enroll in the first
year to break-even?
b. If the college can enroll 80 students the first year, how much
profit will it make?
MAT540 Homework
Week 1
Page 2 of 3
c. The college believes it can increase tuition to $25,000, but
doing so would reduce enrollment to
50. Should the college consider doing this?

7. Chapter 11
7. The following probabilities for grades in management science
have been determined based on past
records:
Grade Probability
A 0.1
B 0.2
C 0.4
D 0.2
F 0.10
1.00
The grades are assigned on a 4.0 scale, where an A is a 4.0, a B
a 3.0, and so on. Determine the
expected grade and variance for the course.
8. An investment firm is considering two alternative
investments, A and B, under two possible future
sets of economic conditions good and poor. There is a .60
probability of good economic conditions
occurring and a .40 probability of poor economic conditions
occurring. The expected gains and

8. losses under each economic type of conditions are shown in the
following table:
Investment
Economic Conditions
Good Poor
A $380,000 -$100,000
B $130,000 $85,000
Using the expected value of each investment alternative,
determine which should be selected.
9. The weight of the bags of fertilizer is normally distributed,
with a mean of 45 pounds and a
standard deviation of 5 pounds. What is the probability that a
bag of fertilizer will weigh between
38 and 50 pounds?
MAT540 Homework
Week 1
Page 3 of 3
10. The polo Development Firm is building a shopping center.
It has informed renters that their rental
spaces will be ready for occupancy in 18 months. If the
expected time until the shopping center is

9. completed is estimated to be 15 months, with a standard
deviation of 5 months, what is the
probability that the renters will not be able to occupy in 18
months?
11. The manager of the local National Video Store sells
videocassette recorders at discount prices. If
the store does not have a video recorder in stock when a
customer wants to buy one, it will lose the
sale because the customer will purchase a recorder from one of
the many local competitors. The
problem is that the cost of renting warehouse space to keep
enough recorders in inventory to meet
all demand is excessively high. The manager has determined
that if 85% of customer demand for
recorders can be met, then the combined cost of lost sales and
inventory will be minimized. The
manager has estimated that monthly demand for recorders is
normally distributed, with a mean of
175 recorders and a standard deviation of 55. Determine the
number of recorders the manager
should order each month to meet 85% of customer demand.

10. Chapter_1Homework #1Fix CostVariable Costsales volumesale
PriceRevenueTotal CostProfitRevenueQ1 -
A650007.51500025Total CostProfitFix CostVariable Costsales
priceBreak-even quantitiesQ1 - B650007.525Break-even:
Revenue = Total CostFix CostVariable Costsales priceBreak-
even quantitiesQ2 250000.20.45Fix CostVariable Costsales
priceBreak-even quantitiesEffectsQ3 250000.20.550Fix Cost &
AdvertisingVariable Costsales priceBreak-even
quantitiesEffectsQ425833.333330.20.450Q13Monthly fix Cost
& adv.Fix Cost (vender's fee & equipment)Variable Costsales
priceBreak-even quantitiesQ5 - A65000.49000Q5 - BFix Cost
Variable Costsales priceBreak-even quantitiesQ6 -
A4000001000020000Fix CostVariable Costsales volumesale
PriceProfitQ6 - B400000100008020000Fix CostVariable
Costsales volumesale PriceProfitNoteQ6 -
C400000100005025000Please give your answers in YELLOW
boxes
Chapter_11Q7GradeScaleProbabilityExpected
ValueVarianceA40.1B30.2C20.4D10.2F00.11Expected
GradeCourse VarianceQ8Economic
ConditionsInvestmentGoodPoorProbability0.450.55A:A$380,00
0($100,000)B:B130,00085,000Choose investment A or
B?Q9DistributionMeanStandard deviationLower weight
limitUpper weight LimitProbabilityUpper
limitNormal4553850Lower LimitProbability(in between upper
and lower limits)Note: probability from the upper limit to -
infinity is 0.7734Q10DistributionMeanStandard
deviationOccupiedProbability NOT
occupiedNormal15518OccupuiedNot
occupiedQ11DistributionMeanStandard
deviationProbabilityNumber of recorders
orderedNormal175550.85