Sport Obermeyer
The Sport Obermeyer case is mainly about the production and manufacturing process of a skiwear product. Sport Obermeyer is a high-end fashion skiwear design and manufacturing company located in Aspen, Colorado. It sells the products through department stores and ski shops. The company has a global supply network; however, most of its products are outsourced through the operations in Hong Kong and China which is a joint venture between Obermeyer and its Hong Kong partner. This case describes the information flow through all the members in the supply chain. Wally in Obermeyer needed to make demand forecast and place orders to suppliers before he can get enough information from the market. Before Wally made the decisions, he needed to know how to make forecast as close as possible to the market demand according to the previous record and how to balance orders between operations in Hong Kong and China to make sure the flexible production line and the lowest cost.
Recommendation for how many units of each style Wally should make during the initial phase of production. Assume that all of ten styles in the sample problem are made in HK, and that Wally’s initial production commitment must be at least 10,000 units.
In order to minimize the company’s risk of over stock due to relatively inaccurate demand forecast in the first-phase production, it is a wise idea to order at the minimum i.e. 10,000 units. According to Exhibit 10, the total number of all 10 styles added up to 20,000 units. Therefore the goal is to reduce this by half as well as taking mean and standard deviation of each style into account. Obviously, to produce half of the forecast, it has to produce at lower than the “mean” (Average Forecast) of each style. By taking standard deviation into account, this can be calculated using the formula
“Mean – K*Standard deviation” . Note that the standard deviation in this formula is “2*standard deviation” in the Exhibit 10 as Wally found that the standard
Recommendation for how many units of each style Wally should make during the initial phase of production. Assume that all of ten styles in the sample problem are made in HK, and that Wally’s initial production commitment must be at least 10,000 units.
In order to minimize the company’s risk of over stock due to relatively inaccurate demand forecast in the first-phase production, it is a wise idea to order at the minimum i.e. 10,000 units. According to Exhibit 10, the total number of all 10 styles added up to 20,000 units. Therefore the goal is to reduce this by half as well as taking mean and standard deviation of each style into account. Obviously, to produce half of the forecast, it has to produce at lower than the “mean” (Average Forecast) of each style. By taking standard deviation into account, this can be calculated using the formula
“Mean – K*Standard deviation” . Note that the standard deviation in this formula is “2*standard deviation” in the Exhibit 10 as Wally found that the standard