One warehouse or two, San Antonio alone against San Antonio plus an Atlanta third-party site, costed and given a trigger: this finished MT236 distribution network memo for Unit 7. Searches like "mt 236 unit 7 assignment example", "mt236 unit 7 sample" and "mt236 unit 7 example" land here.
What a finished MT236 Unit 7 distribution network memo looks like
Three memo pages: a heading block, then a recommendation in two sentences, then one cost table. The recommendation: keep a single warehouse in San Antonio, and revisit when Southeast online orders pass about 4,500 a year. The table compares annual costs for two networks. Serving everything from Texas costs about $54,480: $7,680 in LTL freight to the new chain's Charlotte warehouse, $41,040 in parcel postage at $11.40 an order to Southeast customers, and $5,760 in picking. The two-site network costs about $56,120: restocking freight, a shorter chain delivery, parcel at $8.10 an order, storage, handling, $3.10 picking fees and a $400 monthly account charge. A paragraph notes that ground delivery to Southeast customers would fall from about four days to two, a benefit the table does not price.
How a MT236 Unit 7 example is structured
The owner deciding whether to sign a warehouse contract is the reader, so the recommendation opens the page and the reasoning follows. The question is framed as a count of sites and their locations, and the memo explains why only two options are costed: a third site would serve volume the firm does not have. Costs are built from the firm's own counts, orders and pallets per year, with each rate labeled as a quote or an estimate. Fixed and per-order costs are kept apart, which is what makes the break-even calculable: the second site saves $1.80 per Southeast order and adds fixed costs, so the memo divides one by the other. Unpriced effects get a paragraph each, faster delivery on one side and the extra safety stock two locations require on the other. It ends on a trigger and the date of the next review.
Not yet, with a number attached
The recommendation fits in two sentences at the top: stay with one warehouse, and reopen the question when Southeast online orders reach about 4,500 a year, measured as a trailing three-month rate.
Two networks, one table
Freight to the chain, parcel postage, picking, storage, handling and the third-party account fee are set out for both options, each rate tagged with where it came from and when it was quoted.
A dollar eighty per order
Parcel from Atlanta saves $3.30 an order, but third-party picking costs $1.50 more than picking in-house. The net saving of $1.80 must cover the second site's fixed costs before the site pays for itself.
Speed nobody priced
Ground delivery to Georgia and the Carolinas would drop from about four days to two. The memo notes that faster delivery may lift online sales, and declines to invent a figure for how much.
Stock that two sites would need
Splitting inventory between two locations raises the safety stock needed for the same service level. The memo flags it as a cost that would push the break-even higher, not lower.
Where marks go in MT236 Unit 7
Answering where with a map and a feeling, a warehouse near customers because that seems efficient, is how most network memos fall short, since nothing has been costed against the network already in place. Many Unit 7 prompts ask for a facility count and locations, and a memo that never counts shipments, orders or pallets cannot answer either part. Facilities added for speed, their fixed costs never priced, are marked down almost as often. Forgetting that inventory split across sites needs more safety stock than one pooled stock is a common conceptual error. Some sections grade the memo form itself, and an answer buried on page two draws that deduction. Advice lacking a trigger for its own review reads as permanent, though the volumes behind it will change.
Get a MT236 Unit 7 example written to your instructions
Outline the network question your Unit 7 case poses, with current sites, customer regions and volumes, and include the prompt and its rubric. A first custom memo is free and back within 24-48h, both options costed from those volumes and the recommendation tied to a trigger. Rates missing from the case are filled with stated estimates that are easy to replace.
MT236 Unit 7 questions, answered
How many options should a network memo compare?
Two or three realistic ones is typical. Comparing every possible configuration spreads the analysis thin, while comparing a favored option against nothing proves little. The example compares the current single site with one specific alternative because the firm's volume cannot justify more, and it says so in a sentence so the reader knows the narrowing was deliberate.
What is the square root law for inventory?
A rule of thumb stating that total safety stock rises roughly with the square root of the number of stocking locations, assuming demand is split evenly and independently. Moving from one site to two raises it by about 40 percent. It is an approximation, but it explains why adding warehouses costs more inventory, not merely more rent.
Does the memo need a map?
A simple one helps when locations and customer regions are unfamiliar to the reader, and some sections expect it. Keep it small and labeled: current site, proposed site and the main customer areas. The cost table does the persuading and the map supports it. A memo relying on the map alone, with no figures, tends to lose most of the analysis credit.