Frequency distributions and histograms for the data in the Customer Survey worksheet

QUESTION

CASE: PERFORMANCE LAWN EQUIPMENT

We use a a fictitious company, Performance Lawn Equipment (PLE), within a case exercise for applying different tools and techniques. To put the case in perspective, we first provide some background about the company, so that the applications of business analytic tools will be more meaningful.

PLE, headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri, is a privately owned designer and producer of traditional lawn mowers used by homeowners. In the past ten years, PLE has added another key product, a medium-size diesel power lawn tractor with front and rear power takeoffs, Class I three-point hitches, four-wheel drive, power steering, and full hydraulics. This equipment is built primarily for a niche market consisting of large estates, including golf and country clubs, resorts, private estates, city parks, large commercial complexes, lawn care service providers, private homeowners with five or more acres, and govemment (federal, state, and local) parks, building complexes, and military bases. PLE provides most of the products to dealerships, which, in turn, sell directly to end users. PLE employs 1,660 people world- wide. About half the workforce is based in St. Louis; the remainder is split among their manufacturing plants.

In the United States, the focus of sales is on the eastern seaboard, California, the Southeast, and the south central states, which have the greatest concentration of customers. Outside the United States, PL E’s sales include a European market, a growing South American market, and developing markets in the Pacific Rim and China.

Both end users and dealers have been established as important customers for PLE. Collection and analysis of end-user data showed that satisfaction with the products depends on high quality, easy attachment/dismount of implements, low maintenance, price value, and service.

For dealers, key requirements are high quality, parts and feature availability, rapid restock, discounts, and timeliness of support.

PLE has several key suppliers: Mitsitsiu, Inc., the sole source of all diesel engines; LANTO Axles, Inc., which provides tractor axles; Schorst Fabrication, which provides subassemblies; Cuberillo, Inc, supplier of trans- missions; and Specialty Machining, Inc., a supplier of precision machine parts.

To help manage the company, PLE managers have developed a balanced scorecard of measures. These data, which are summarized shortly, are stored in the form of a Microsoft Excel workbook (Performance Lawn Equipment) accompanying this book. The database con- tains various measures captured on a monthly or quarterly basis and is used by various managers to evaluate business performance. Data for each of the key measures are stored in a separate worksheet. A summary of these worksheets is given next:

• Dealer Satisfaction, measured on a scale of 1-5 (1 = poor,2 = less than average, 3 = average, 4 = above average, and5 = excellent). Each year, dealers in each region are surveyed about their overall satisfaction with PLE. The worksheet contains summary data from surveys for the past five years.
• End-User Satisfaction, measured on the same scale as dealers. Each year, 100 users from each region are surveyed. The worksheet contains summary data fo the past five years.
• Customer Survey, results from a survey for customer rat- ings of specific attributes of PL E tractors: quality, ease of use, price, and service on the same l- -5 scale. This sheet contains 200 observations of customer ratings.
• Complaints, which shows the number of complaints registered by all customers each month in each of PLE’s five regions (North America, South America, Europe, the Pacific, and China).
• Mower Unit Sales and Tractor Unit Sales, which pro- vide sales by product by region on a monthly basis. Unit sales for each region are aggregated to obtain world sales figures.
• Industry Mower Total Sales and Industry Tractor Total Sales, which list the number of units sold by all producers by region.
• Unit Production Costs, which provides monthly account- ing estimates of the variable cost per unit for manufactur- ing tractors and mowers over the past five years.
• Operating and Interest Expenses, which provides monthly administrative, depreciation, and interest expenses at the corporate level.
• On- Time Delivery, which provides the number of deliveries made each month from each of PLE’s major suppliers, the number on time, and the percent on time. Defects After Delivery, which shows the number of defects in supplier-provided material found in all ship- ments received from suppliers.
• Time to Pay Suppliers, which provides measurements in days from the time the invoice is received until pay- ment is sent.
• Response Time, which gives samples of the times taken by PLE customer-service personnel to respond to service calls by quarter over the past two years.
• Employee Satisfaction, which provides data for the past four years of internal surveys of employees to determine their overall satisfaction with their jobs, using the same scale used for customers. Employees are surveyed quarterly, and results are stratified by employee category: design and production, manage- rial, and sales/administrative support.

In addition to these business measures, the PLE database contains worksheets with data from special studies:

• Engines, which lists 50 samples of the time required to produce a lawn mower blade using a new technology. Transmission Costs, which provides the results of 30 samples each for the current process used to produce tractor transmissions and two proposed new processes.
• Blade Weight, which provides samples of mower blade weights to evaluate the consistency of the pro- duction process.
• Mower Test, which lists test results of mower func- tional performance after assembly for 30 samples of 100 units each.
• Employee Retention, data from a study of employee duration (length of hire) with PLE. The 40 subjects were identified by reviewing hires from ten years prior and identifying those who were involved in managerial positions (either hired into management or promoted into management) at some time in this ten- year period.
• Shipping Cost, which gives the unit shipping cost for mowers and tractors from existing and proposed plants for a supply chain design study.
• Fixed Cost, which lists the fixed cost to expand exist- ing plants or build new facilities, also as part of the supply chain design study. .
• Purchasing Survey, which provides data obtained from a third-party survey of purchasing managers of customers of Performance I awn Care.

Elizabeth Burke has received several questions from, the PLE managers regarding quality, customer satisfaction, and operational performance. She would like you to summarize some data from the Performanee Lawn Equipment Database using statistical tools and analysis:

1. Frequency distributions and histograms for the data in the Customer Survey worksheet
2. Descriptive statistical measures for engine production time in the worksheet Engines
3. A frequency distribution and histogram for the blade weight samples in the worksheet Blade Weight
4. Correlations among the satisfaction survey variables in the worksheet Purchasing Survey (Highlight Correlations above +.5 and below -.5)

Write a report that clearly shows these results and explain the key insights specifically for the correlation analysis.

1. Use the performance lawn equipment data set from data set folder in Blackboard
2. Submit the assignment in a pdf file in Blackboard Assignment Folder
3. 1 submission per group
4. No more than 3 pages
5. In class, 2 members from each group will explain their findings: 5 mins per group

Assignment Criteria

ANSWER