Question

Continue using your fictitious company (Grace and Son�s Sugar Ltd), and continue to develop the company profile and operating information. Identify how your company uses forecasting for purposes of capacity planning. Identify different kinds of capacity and capacity constraints. How is forecasting used to generate short­term and longterm information about demand that affects capacity? What are some options that the company has in terms of increasing its capacity? NOTE: in RETAIL businesses with physical locations where customers are served, capacity can be measured in terms of size of the facility and THROUGHPUT OF CUSTOMERS. If you have a retail business, such as a convenience store or restaurant, you should consider your what your average throughput is ­ how many customers do you serve per day, week, month, or year. What is your current Max Possible throughput ­ how many customers can you serve with your current capacity? Often there is a trade­off in size of the facility for backroom inventory or kitchen, displaying inventory to customers or seating, and customer space such as aisles and checkouts or bar space and waiting areas. You should consider all of these in your capacity analysis. This paper should be approximately three to five pages in length counting the intro, body, and summary. You should include references and cite them properly in the paper. Generally, at least three references should be used. Assignment Expectations: � First discuss the recap your company and add any additional information about it that will add necessary and/or interesting information as background to the discussion of capacity and forecasting. � Identify at least two types of capacity and the constraints that act on them now and in the future. � Discuss the types of forecasting methods that your company uses. How do they generate shortterm and long­term demand forecasts? � Besides using the forecasts for capacity planning, are there other uses of these forecasts? � Determine and discuss some options that the company has in terms of relaxing or eliminating constraints and increasing capacity