| Course | GB527 Global Operations |
|---|---|
| Unit | Unit 10 |
| Paper type | Operations report |
| Length | About 1,180 words, 7 pages double-spaced |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Purdue University Global |
| Program | MBA |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for GB527 Unit 10
Seven Decisions for an Irrigation Valve Plant: A Unit 10 Operations Report With Owners, Dates and Measures
[Student Name]
Purdue University Global
GB527: Global Operations
Unit 10 Operations Report
[Instructor Name]
[Date]
The manufacturer and every figure are composite and illustrative, carried forward from the earlier units; the sources cited are real.
Executive Summary
Platte Valve Works can meet next year's peak demand, cut quality and purchasing costs by more than $200,000 a year and prepare for a Brazilian site, through seven decisions. Four should be made before the January peak: a second machining fixture with line rebalancing, a capacity program for the regulator cell, sealed castings with a weekly leak chart, and a seasonal planning policy for forecasts and imported coils. Two follow in the first quarter: a supply disruption plan and a split of casting purchases between Monterrey and Ohio. The seventh, a Brazilian assembly site in Uberlândia, moves to site visits in the second quarter.
Findings
Lead time is mostly waiting. A custom order spends 17 working days in the plant for 5.8 hours of work, about 2.1 percent value-added time.
The line is limited at 125 valves a day by machining. A second fixture raises the limit to about 147.5, set then by drilling and tapping, and rebalancing could reach about 150.
The regulator cell is short about 92 regulators a week against peak demand of 560, because the plan used design capacity of 686 rather than expected output of 468.
Leaks cost about $221,600 a year, four-fifths of them from casting porosity found only at final test.
Imported solenoid coils need a reorder point of about 4,327, and about 7,211 in peak months, because lead-time variation drives safety stock.
A fifteen-day shipping disruption would stop the line about five days before the coils arrived, and safety stock is the wrong tool for that risk.
Monterrey castings land at about $2.95 a kilogram, below Ohio's $3.54 and Hebei's $3.21.
Uberlândia scores 7.15 for a Brazilian site, ahead of Londrina at 6.85, and the lead survives plausible changes in weights.
A seasonal forecast cuts error to a MAD of about 30 valves, but a tracking signal showed it drifting low after new dealers were added.
Most of the plant's problems trace to one habit: planning with averages and design figures in a business whose demand is seasonal and whose supplies come from far away.
The Seven Decisions
1. Machining fixture and rebalancing. Owner: manufacturing engineer. Date: installed by mid-December. Cost: $38,000 plus programming time. Measure: line output of at least 145 valves a day in January.
2. Regulator cell capacity. Owner: production manager. Date: changeover and efficiency programs by December; Saturday shifts January through April; 300 regulators built ahead in November and December. Cost: about $27,000 for tooling and the efficiency program, plus about $49,000 of peak-season overtime. Measure: expected output of about 575 regulators a week in peak months.
3. Sealed castings and a leak chart. Owner: quality engineer. Date: impregnation from mid-November; weekly p-chart from the same week. Cost: about $28,800 a year. Measure: pressure-test leak rate below 1 percent within three months; expected saving about $131,700 a year.
4. Seasonal planning policy. Owner: materials manager. Date: by late November. Actions: Holt-Winters forecasting updated monthly, a seasonal reorder point for coils from late November to late March, and monthly input from sales on dealer changes. Cost: about $2,100 a year in added holding cost and analyst time. Measure: no coil stockouts in the peak, and a tracking signal within plus or minus four.
5. Supply disruption plan. Owner: purchasing manager. Date: first quarter. Actions: daily monitoring of inbound shipments, an agreement with the Korean supplier for emergency airfreight, qualification of a Mexican coil supplier for about 20 percent of volume, and a warning protocol with the largest customer. Cost: about $20,000 to qualify the second supplier. Measure: any delay over five days detected within two days.
6. Casting sourcing split. Owner: purchasing manager with the quality engineer. Date: 30 percent to Monterrey in the first quarter, 70 percent after two quarters of acceptable quality. Cost: audit and supplier development, about $25,000. Measure: landed cost near $3.13 a kilogram, saving about $86,000 a year, with reject rates at or below Ohio's.
7. Brazilian site. Owner: vice president of operations. Date: site visits and incentive negotiations in the second quarter; decision by the third. Cost: about $60,000 for visits, advisers and legal work before the investment decision. Measure: a confirmed site plan with operating cost within 10 percent of the estimate of about $2.9 million a year.
Why This Sequence
The first four decisions must be in place before the January peak, because that is when capacity, quality and stock shortfalls cost most. The disruption plan and sourcing change carry new risks of their own and should be introduced after the peak begins, when the team can watch them closely. The Brazilian site is a growth decision and can wait until the domestic plant is stable. Goldratt and Cox (2004) argue that improvement should follow the constraint, and the sequence does: first the line's capacity, then the quality and supply problems that would stop it, then expansion.
Measures Dashboard
The plant manager should review a one-page dashboard monthly: line output, regulator output, pressure-test leak rate, coil inventory position against the reorder point, inbound shipment status, landed cost of castings, forecast tracking signal and progress on the Brazilian site.
Numbers That Are Still Assumptions
Several figures behind the plan are estimates and should be checked:
Impregnation's effect: the 80 percent reduction in porosity leaks comes from the foundry's results elsewhere and should be confirmed by sectioning after two months.
Monterrey's quality and duty status: the reject rate comes from one sample lot, and zero duty depends on origin documentation.
Contribution of about $140 a valve, used to value the fixture, depends on mix and pricing.
Brazilian costs and scores, which rest on the team's judgment before site visits.
Heizer et al. (2020) note that operations plans should be revised as data replace assumptions, and each of these figures has an owner responsible for checking it.
Risks
The plan asks a lot of a small team in the months before the peak. If the fixture installation slips, Saturday shifts at machining become the fallback. If the Monterrey foundry's quality falls short, Ohio's 30 percent share can be raised again quickly. If demand falls in a dry year with low crop prices, the regulator overtime and the Brazilian site should be reconsidered. Chopra and Meindl (2019) emphasize keeping options in supply chain plans, and the plan keeps several: Ohio as a second source, Saturday shifts instead of a fourth lathe, and site visits before a commitment in Brazil.
Conclusion
The term's analysis found a plant that plans with averages in a seasonal business and depends on distant suppliers it does not watch closely. The seven decisions address both, in an order set by the January peak, and each has an owner and a measure that will show within months whether it worked.
References
Chopra, S., & Meindl, P. (2019). Supply chain management: Strategy, planning, and operation (7th ed.). Pearson.
Goldratt, E. M., & Cox, J. (2004). The goal: A process of ongoing improvement (3rd rev. ed.). North River Press.
Heizer, J., Render, B., & Munson, C. (2020). Operations management: Sustainability and supply chain management (13th ed.). Pearson.
GB527 Unit 10 instructions, in plain terms
The final GB527 assignment asks you to combine the term's separate analyses in a single operations report with a sequenced plan. Open with an executive summary that lists the decisions. Condense each earlier finding into a short paragraph with its key figure. Present a limited number of decisions, giving each a responsible person, a deadline, its cost and a success measure. Explain the sequence. Set out a dashboard for monitoring, identify which figures are still assumptions and how they will be checked, and discuss risks with fallbacks. Expect about ten to twelve pages in report format with the term's calculations in appendices, citing operations and supply chain sources in APA 7.
How this GB527 Unit 10 example is built
The executive summary lists seven decisions in three timing groups. Findings condense nine analyses, from 2.1 percent value-added time to a forecast MAD of about 30, and the highlighted sentence traces most problems to planning with averages in a seasonal business with distant supplies. The seven decisions give owners, dates, costs and measures, from the $38,000 fixture to $60,000 of site work in Brazil. A section explains the sequence around the January peak, citing Goldratt and Cox on following the constraint. A monthly dashboard follows. A section lists the figures still assumed, citing Heizer and colleagues, and risks with fallbacks cite Chopra and Meindl on keeping options. A conclusion closes the report.
GB527 Unit 10 rubric: what earns full points
GB527 rubric points for this report go to decisions that can be acted on and a sequence that follows the business's needs. An executive summary that lists the decisions earns early credit. Findings condensed with their figures show command of the term's work. Each decision needs a named owner, a deadline, a price and a success measure, which carries significant weight. Explaining the sequence shows judgment. A dashboard that the manager can review monthly shows practicality. Distinguishing measured findings from assumptions, with checks for each, shows honesty. Risks with fallbacks complete it. Chopra and Meindl, Goldratt and Cox and the Heizer operations text are the report's APA 7 references.
Common GB527 Unit 10 mistakes, and how to avoid them
Many GB527 Unit 10 reports summarize each earlier assignment in turn and end with general recommendations. Others list actions without owners, dates or measures, so nobody can tell whether they worked. A frequent gap is the sequence: decisions compete for the same people and months, and the report should say what comes first and why. Some writers present estimates as facts. Lead with the decisions, condense findings with figures, give each decision a responsible person, a deadline, a price and a measure, explain the order, set a dashboard, flag assumptions and plan fallbacks. Naming a common cause behind the findings helps the reader see why the decisions belong together.
Get a GB527 Unit 10 example written to your instructions
Gather the analyses you completed across the term, or a summary of their findings, and add the Unit 10 instructions with the rubric. Leading with actions, each given an owner, date, cost and measure, the report arrives free as a first custom sample in 24-48h, with assumptions collected where they can be challenged. The paper above is an original model document written by our desk, not a submitted student paper and not an official Purdue University Global document.
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- GB527 Unit 3: Capacity Calculation
- GB527 Unit 4: Quality Improvement Memo
- GB527 Unit 5: Inventory Model
- GB527 Unit 6: Seminar Reflection
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GB527 Unit 10 questions, answered
Should the final report repeat all my calculations?
Summarize them in the body and keep the full workings in appendices. The body needs each key figure and what it means for a decision; the appendices let a grader verify the arithmetic. Repeating every setup in the main text buries the plan, which is the thing the report exists to deliver.
What if my earlier units contradict each other?
Reconcile them before writing, and say so. Demand figures, capacities and costs often shift between assignments as data improves. Use the latest defensible numbers throughout the report and add a short note explaining any change from earlier work. Graders tend to reward the correction and penalize an inconsistency left in place.
How detailed should the action plan be?
Detailed enough that someone else could start on Monday. Each action needs an owner by role, a start date, a cost or resource estimate and the measure showing it worked. A timeline or simple Gantt-style table helps where actions depend on each other, as when one decision waits on data another produces.
Where can I find a free GB527 Unit 10 sample paper?
This page carries a full GB527 Unit 10 operations report for an irrigation valve maker, with condensed findings, seven decisions each tied to a responsible person and a measure, a dashboard and APA 7 references.
Why are four decisions placed before the January peak?
The fixture, the regulator capacity program, sealed castings and the seasonal planning policy all address problems that cost most in peak months, so they must be working before demand rises.