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1. A) Hazel will need to forecast the weather so she can calculate the estimated time spent on each neighbors’ lawn. She also need to do demand and sales forecasting. By doing this, she can evaluate her current sales, growth of the business and also identify the number of part-time workers to be hired.
1. B) The inventory items that Hazel will have is chemicals and fertilizers, lawn mowers, scissors, fuels for the lawn mowers.
Hazel need to set the best reorder quantity to ensure her business runs without disruption and also minimize cost.
1. C) Hazel needs to do scheduling for the worker’s timetable including the workload and who is assigned on specific time, lawn mower maintenance, and the travel time between jobs. Bad weather, failure of equipment, absence of part time worker will disrupt her schedule.
1. D) Quality assurance is very important for Hazel’s business. Customers will want to have their lawns to be taken care of properly. Hazel need to make sure that her business delivers their service as promised. Moreover, as Hazel’s business is fairly new, she will want to attract more customers to grow her business further. Therefore, by maintaining good quality assurance, her reputation and service quality will increase and leading to loyal customers, also attract more potential customer.
1. E) She will need to do regular maintenance for the lawn mowers’ engine, and regular checks for the sharpness of the scissors and blades used. Maintenance on service quality also needs to be done to ensure consistent service being delivered.
2. After the service, the customers will give feedback on the cutting and cleaning of their lawn and also the duration for the service to be completed. They also judge the neatness and also the length of grass, which cannot be too long or too short. Moreover, Hazel’s treatment towards her customer will also be, directly or indirectly, be judged for the service quality.
3. A) Working in a company means she will have fixed income every month. But the downside is the time taken to look for a job may be long. If hazel is working for herself, her can working schedule will be more flexible. This means she can reschedule her working time whenever. But the income generated from running her own business is not fixed.
3. B) Expanding her business means she will generate more profit. But to expand her business, she will need to invest in more capital, leading to higher expenses. As a result, Hazel might need to charge higher to her customer. Customers will be unhappy by the rise in price and will seek other competitor instead.
3. C) By launching a website, Hazel will be able to reach wider customer. Even customer from different neighborhood can use Hazel’s service. This will lead in higher sales and profitability. However, there will be cost incurred in launching a website. There will be need to pay for the web design and other cost related to the website launching.
