write an Executive Summary and Conclusion and Recommendation for this research paper

You  have  just  been  appointed  to  the  Project  Analysis  Team  operating  out  of  the  Adelaide  office  of
Diatribe  Ltd  an  Australian  publicly  listed  company. One  of  your  first  projects  is  to  analyse  three
issues facing the company.
The requirement for all project analyses within the corporation is to prepare a comprehensive
report  of  the  issues  being  addressed.  The  report  itself  contains  the  written  components  of  the
analysis,  namely  assumptions  employed,  summary  of  the  results,  support  in  the  form  of  academic
references of the use of the technique employed and conclusions/recommendations drawn from the
results.
Appendices are  always  included  in  reports  prepared  at  Diatribe.  These  appendices will
include  all  calculations  undertaken, clearly  set  out  in  a  way  that  the  steps  and  logic  are  easily
followed. At times it is necessary to offer explanation as to why specific steps/calculations have been
performed.
The  executives  at Diatribe  generally  have  a  good  understanding  of  statistical  techniques  and
recognise  that  any  answer  provided  will  never  equate  to  certainty,  however  they  do  believe  they
should  be  able  to  form  some  conclusions  with  a  95%  level  of  confidence.  When  executives  are
reviewing  project  analyses  supplied  by  project  teams  such  as  your  team,  the  raw  data  is  never
provided unless requested.

Issue 1
Companies  in  the  same  industry  as  Diatribe  had  traditionally  relied  on  manual  labour  to  move
product  through  the  manufacturing  process.  Diatribe  has  been  no  different,  employing  dozens  of
workers  to  help  move  product  through  the  various  manufacturing  steps.  Some  competitors,
however,  were  now  using  mechanical  devices  to  move  these  same  products  without  the  need  for
manual  intervention.  By  adopting  this  approach  it  is  believed  cost  savings  and  more  efficient
throughputs are able to be achieved.
As  South  Australia  has  the  two  smallest  plants  in  the  organisation-preparing  product,  Diatribe
decided  to  use  the  state  as  a  test  bench  in  order  to  determine  the  effectiveness  of  this  new
approach. Data was collected for sixty production days, with the Strathalbyn plant operating under
the  old  manual  system  for  the  entire  period  and  the  other  plant,  Tea  Tree  Gully,  having  the  new
operating  system  installed,  though  there  was  a  problem  with  the  installation  and  it  was  not
Page 2 of 3

operational for the first ten days of the review. It is expected, for the new system to be cost effective,
that mean daily output will increase by at least 5%. Page 2 of 5

Issue 2
As part of Diatribe’s general improvement of processes  within  South  Australia  the  company  is
contemplating whether is should submit an application for the BusinessSA awards. Anecdotally it is
suggested  that  even  though  companies  may  not  win  the  award  there  is  a  noticeable  level  of
improvement  in  performance,  if  return  on  investment  is  used  an  indicator  of  performance.  Before
submitting  an  application  the  company  has  decided  to  review  data  on  previous  applicants  to
determine if there is any information to indicate that it is a good idea (or not).

Issue3
One  of  the  continuing  tasks  for  the  project  analysis  team  is  the  review  of  proposed  operational
changes  to  determine  whether  they  would  be  of  benefit  to  the  company.  As  part  of  this  ongoing
review, the project analysis team has received a proposal from the Marketing Department.
The Marketing Department has analysed the performance of its new on-line shopping methodology
as compared to the existing techniques of retailers shopping at the Company’s warehouse or
phoning  in  their  orders.  They  believe  that the  on-line  system  is  an  outstanding  success  and  they
suggest that the company should immediately eliminate the phone ordering system now operating
at the Company.

Note that  the  Harvard  System  of  referencing  is  preferred.  Additionally,  discussion  of  information
that  is  not  required  (ie  irrelevant)  will  lose  marks.  General  report  formatting  requirements  of  any
good report will be expected.
Approximately 65% of the assignment mark has been allocated to the discussion and analysis of the
data, with issue 2 only contributing approximately 15% of the 65%. All assignments will be assessed
in there entirety therefore precise mark allocations for any specific section would be inappropriate.