Description
You will conduct a 30-minute interview with a business professional who has experience with Forecasting and Inventory Management. During the interview, ask permission to submit their first name, last name, and email address as elements of your interview summary, in case your professor wants to check-in with them on their thoughts of the interview.
As the person conducting the interview, you should dress professionally for the interview, and be prepared with some initial research of the person you are interviewing (review their LinkedIn profile) as well as, their organization (online research, corporate website, etc.). The point is to show up as a business professional, and to be properly prepared and engaged for the interview. You will be asking the questions, and you should be prepared to be an active listener and to ask pertinent follow-on questions.
The three main question sets you are to ask, allowing about 10 minutes of discussion each, are:
Question Set 1: (Forecasting) Does your organization use both qualitative and quantitative forecasting methods? What methods do you use to support your business with forecasting (examples: regression analysis, Delphi Method)? Is there a special team focused on forecasting, or is it a responsibility of each professional within your organization?
Question Set 2: (Inventory Management) How does your organization implement inventory management? What types of information systems does your organization utilize to support effective inventory management? Does your organization implement JIT, Just-In-Time, or some other form of lean applied to inventory?
Question Set 3: (Reflection on Operations Management) Take a moment to share and reflect, with the professional you interview, on what you have learned during our term, focused on operations management. After reflection, continue to discussion with the following questions. How does operations management ensure the “mission happens” for a successful organization? How does the “puzzle pieces” of various traditional areas of business connect within your organization? Does your organization have a vertical (mechanistic) or horizontal (organic) organizational structure? Do you have a top “lesson learned” related to effective operations for a business?
To successfully complete this interview, review the rubric prior to the interview and ensure you
complete all required elements. However, in general, you will be composing 2-pages of meeting
minute format summary of the interview, highlighting who you selected to interview, their contact
information, the three responses, any other follow-on questions or key points, and then close with a
summary and your reflection on what you learned in relation to the course topics.
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Explanation & Answer
Attached.
Running head: INTERVIEW ON FORECASTING AND INVENTORY
Interview on forecasting and inventory
Name
Institution
1
Interviewee
Dennis Williamson
INVENTORY MANAGEMENT SPECIALIST
Tekas Products Incorporated
265 Boston Road
North Billerica, MA 01862
(978) 856-398
Question Set 1
As the Inventory Specialist in your organization do you use both qualitative and
quantitative forecasting methods?
“Yes, we use both qualitative and quantitative forecast approach in our organization because we
feel that a little bit of both provides a thorough and better picture of where we need to be as a
business at a defined time.”
What quantitative method do you use?
“We use the graphical method of plotting data on a spread sheet and developing graphs. The
graphs provide us with the visuals of the patterns and trends and thus we can determine the
future demands”
What methods do you use to support your business with forecasting (examples: regression
analysis, Delphi Method)?
“We use the Delphi Method. We find it effective when we combine a series of expert opinions.
Various experts provide their views, and we take the results of the arguments and develop a
decision on where the opinions of the experts merge.”
Why this method?
“We appreciate the method because we have seen the positive results that the company has been
able to gain by applying it. Since we are a young organization, we do not have enough
information about the markets, so we depend on the knowledge and judgment of the experts with
some of them having worked in more prominent organizations for many years.”
Can you explain how you carry out the process?
“As I said earlier on while answering your first question, we combine quantitative and qualitative
approaches to achieve a convincing forecast. The expert's Feedback from experts is usually
provided w...