MMM267 BUSINESS LOGISTICS

T1 2025

Information Pertaining to the 60% Final Homework Assessment

NATURE OF ASSESSMENT: an open-book homework heavily based on the selected end-of-chapter exercises covered in weekly seminars from Weeks 2 – 6 and Weeks 8 – 10.

DUE DATE AND TIME: The homework document will appear on the Cloud site of the unit under Content -> Assessment Resources -> Assessment 2 (Homework, 60%) at 8AM on Friday, 30th  May 2025  and students will have 5 CALENDAR DAYS to  complete  and  submit  it.  The  submission  deadline  is  8PM  AEST  on Wednesday, 4th June 2025.

SUBMISSION FILE TYPES: The completed homework must be submitted as a single MS-Word file via the designated Cloud submissions folder by the deadline – NO EXCEPIONS.  Students  also  need to  separately upload the Excel  solutions spreadsheet in addition to their main Word file to ensure a complete submission.

EXTENSIONS: Please note that this submission deadline already includes a half- day ‘grace period’ (12 hours). Please be advised that being the final assessment task for the trimester, any request for extensions will impact the result finalization for the unit and timely release of results. Therefore, students who think they will be unable to submit by the deadline of 8PM AEST on 4th  June 2025 are advised to apply in advance to the Faculty for a Special Consideration via StudentConnect.

Students who apply for and are given a Special Consideration to submit their homework at a later date should please understand that they will be given a temporary  “RI”  (Result  Incomplete)  grade  for  this  unit   at  the  time  of scheduled release of T1 results, as any extension to the submission deadline will lead to a delay in the processing of unit results for the concerned students.

PERCENTAGE OF FINAL GRADE: 60%

HURDLE: None

Description/Requirements:

- This is a take-home, open-book task along the lines of an elaborate homework exercise.  There  will  be  some  Excel-based  problems  and  also  some  discussion questions requiring written answers (please refer to the structure posted on Cloud).

- The questions will very closely resemble some of the selected end-of-chapter discussion questions and Excel-based problems in the posted repository document (with  somewhat  different  wordings  and  numerical  information).   Students   are advised to use the solutions spreadsheet posted on Cloud as a ‘template’ for doing the Excel-based exercises on the homework. Students are expected to be able to come up with their own words in forming answers to the writing questions on the homework - these were all discussed in the weekly online/on-campus seminars.

- All prescribed reading materials as well as the internet can be accessed while completing this task. Do note that the Cloud discussion forums will be locked (but still will remain visible), and students MUST complete the task individually.

- The assessment comprises 5 parts of 12 marks each for a total of 60 marks. There will be a number of questions under each part. There is no choice of questions — all the questions have to be attempted. Further breakdown of the marks carried by the components of questions as well as best way to respond will be discussed by the in detail in the closing seminars (campus & Cloud), and further hints/clues provided.

-  The  5  calendar  days’  submission  time-period  is  an  extremely  generous  time consideration. The homework should not normally take beyond a  few hours at most  to  complete  if  students  had  been  on  top  of  the  weekly  end-of-chapter exercises & had diligently attended and engaged with the weekly seminar contents.

- The reason for the extremely generous time to submit the assessment is to allow students to complete the task at a time that suits their personal circumstances.

- On this basis, it is not anticipated that any adjustments will be needed to the 5 calendar days deadline also for students with a Learning Access Plan from DRC.

-  The  8PM  AEST  on  Wednesday,  4th   June  2025  deadline  for  the  final assessment   is   an    absolute   deadline   for   submission.   Student   missing   the submission deadline will have to apply to the Faculty for a Special Consideration by looking up and following the process described on the website given below:

www.deakin.edu.au/students/studying/assessment-and-results/special-consideration

Please consider requesting for a Special Consideration as an absolute last resort as if approved, any extension will automatically mean that your unit result will be significantly delayed due to the very short turnaround time.

How to complete the assessment:

- Each discussion question on the assessment task has to be responded to as if answering an end-of-chapter exercise. Ideally students should have read through the prescribed parts of the relevant chapter and  looked up the relevant week’s lecture slides to form. an answer in their minds before starting to write.

-  Students  should  use the marks  allotted to  a particular  discussion  question to decide on how much to write. A maximum of 300 words is allowed for each of the  6-mark  discussion  questions  on  the  homework,  marker  may  penalize extremely long answers. Furthermore, writing unnecessarily convoluted answers may also be counter-productive in terms of the lost time that could be usefully devoted elsewhere e.g., in preparing for an examination/assessment in another unit.

- While no in-text citations or references need to be provided, please note that Turnitin will be activated for ALL submissions. Therefore, please do not copy large amounts of information from lecture slides, textbook or online sources as this may be picked up by the markers and reported as academic misconduct. It is vitally important that students respond to the assessment questions using their own words.

- Students are strongly recommended to use the posted Excel solutions spreadsheet to complete the Excel-based exercises on the homework, and must then upload that solutions spreadsheet separately, in addition to the Word file containing the written responses to the discussion exercises on the homework. YOU MUST ALSO TYPE IN ONLY THE FINAL RESULTS OF ALL THE EXCEL EXERCISES ON THE HOMEWORK   IN   THE   SAME   MS   WORD    SUBMISSION   DOCUMENT WHERE   YOU    RECORD   YOUR    RESPONSES   TO    THE   DISCUSSION QUESTIONS. ALSO, YOU ARE ASKED TO INCLUDE JUST ONE OR TWO SENTENCES   EXPLAINING   THE   BUSINESS    SIGNIFICANCE   OF    THE NUMERICAL RESULTS THAT YOU OBTAIN FOR THE EXCEL EXERCISES — PLEASE REFER TO THE EXAMPLE PROVIDED BELOW. YOU DO NOT NEED  TO  COPY  AND  PASTE  ANY  OF  THE  EXCEL  WORKINGS  INTO YOUR  WORD  FILE   -   JUST  PLEASE  MAKE   SURE  THAT  YOU  HAVE NOTED THE CORRECT QUESTION NUMBERS FOR ALL THE EXERCISES.

Example:

Part A  -  Q1.  DBS café purchases  its  takeaway  containers from  a  third-party supplier. DBS delivers an average of 450 takeaway orders each month (assume demand is known and certain). Containers cost one dollar each, and each order costs $22.75 to process. Because of limited storage space, the DBS café manager wants to charge inventory holding at 15 percent of the cost.  The lead time is 3 days, and the café is open for business 360 days per year, assuming 30 days per month. Determine the economic order quantity (EOQ) of number of containers to order, reorder point assuming no safety stock, and the annual total inventory cost.

(Hint: Refer to Q67from Week 6 to work through this exercise)

If you see an Excel-based homework exercise like the one above, all you will need to do in that case is open up the Excel solutions spreadsheet and look at the worksheet named “Week 6 – Chapter 12” to locate the solution for Q67. Then , simply replace the  input data  in that solution spreadsheet with the corresponding data from the homework exercise. If you can do so correctly, then the solution spreadsheet will straightaway give you the values for the EOQ and reorder point without needing you to do anything with the formula or Excel functions for either of those. Note that you do  not  necessarily  need  to  use  the   Goal  Seek   part  of  the  solution  for   EOQ calculation  unless  the  homework  problem  specifically  asks  you.  Once  you  have replaced the existing data in that Excel solution with the corresponding data in the homework exercise, you could then simply just copy in the EOQ number obtained from “EOQ (using formula)” into the blank cell next to “EOQ (using Goal Seek)” . As soon as you do that, all the “#DIV/0!” notifications will disappear and you will get the correct  numbers  for  each  of  “Annual  ordering  cost”,  “Annual  holding  cost”  and “Annual total inventory cost” again without needing to know any of those formulae.

If you have correctly inputted all the relevant data into the Q67 solution in Week 6, your solutions worksheet should straightaway yield the following numerical results:

DO NOT COPY AND PASTE THE EXCEL SOLUTION INTO YOUR WORD FILE — type the numerical results only, with one or two lines of explanation. So, in the Word file (i.e., the same Word file that will contain your written responses to the discussion exercises in the homework), you only need to write as follows:

Part A — Q1: EOQ = 1280 containers, Reorder point = 45 containers, ATIC ≈ $192

DBS café should order EOQ=1280 containers in each order, as that order quantity will optimize between the overall ordering and holding costs, thus yielding the lowest possible total inventory  cost. Any other ordering quantity will result in either a higher ordering cost or a higher holding cost and hence, a higher total cost.

DBS  café  should  place  its  order  every  time  the   inventory  position  hits  45 containers as this is the minimum number of containers it must have at hand to get through the 3-day lead time without running out of containers to serve customers.

Structure and formatting:

- There is no strict guidance on formatting the answers to the assessment questions. Students will need to use their own discretion in ensuring readability of their work. Please therefore try and avoid unusual font styles, too big/too small font sizes etc.

- While there is no word limit, please bear in mind the advice provided in the previous section regarding the need to avoid writing unnecessarily long answers.

- For most of the Excel-based exercises on the homework, students will mainly just need to replace the existing data in the provided Excel solutions spreadsheet with the corresponding data from the homework exercise. Each homework exercise will clearly tell you which seminar exercise from which week to use as a template. For the Excel-based exercises on the homework, please note that the attempted answers will earn part-marks if and only if in the marker’s opinion, all data were correctly inputted into the relevant solved exercise in the Excel solutions spreadsheet.