UV2493 Version 1.5 DIAMOND CHEMICALS PLC (A): THE MERSEYSIDE PROJECT Late one afternoon in January 2001, Frank Greystock told Lucy Morris, “No one seems satisfied with the analysis so far, but the suggested changes could kill the project. If solid projects like this can’t swim past the corporate piranhas, the company will never modernize.” Morris was plant manager of Diamond Chemicals’ Merseyside Works in Liverpool, England. Her controller, Frank Greystock, was discussing a capital project that Morris wanted to propose to senior management. The project consisted of a (British pounds) £9-million expenditure to renovate and rationalize the polypropylene production line at the Merseyside plant in order to make up for deferred maintenance …show more content…
The strategic-analysis staff estimated that, in addition to numerous small producers, seven major competitors manufactured polypropylene in Diamond Chemicals’ market region. Their plants operated at various cost levels. Exhibit 1 presents a comparison of plant sizes and indexed costs. The Proposed Capital Program Morris had assumed responsibility for the Merseyside Works only 12 months previously, following a rapid rise from the entry position of shift engineer nine years before. When she assumed responsibility, she undertook a detailed review of the operations and discovered significant opportunities for improvement in polypropylene production. Some of those opportunities stemmed from the deferral of maintenance over the preceding five years. In an effort to enhance the operating results of the Works, the previous manager had limited capital expenditures to only the most essential. Now, what previously had been routine and deferrable was becoming essential. Other opportunities stemmed from correcting the antiquated plant design in ways that would save energy and improve the process flow: (1) relocating and modernizing tank-car unloading areas, which would enable the process flow to be streamlined; (2) refurbishing the polymerization tank to achieve higher pressures and thus greater throughput; and (3) renovating the compounding plant to increase extrusion throughput and obtain energy savings. Purchased by mingming zhu
Tucker Hansson, the owner of Hansson Private Label, is struggling in whether to execute the $50 million investment proposed by his manufacturing team. Under this situation, the subject of this report is to evaluate the potential investment of expanding production capacity at Hansson Private Label (HBL) and make a recommendation to Tucker Hansson. In this report, I will specifically focus on analyses of the project’s free cash flows (FCFs), weighted average cost of capital (WACC) and net present value (NPV). With a sensitivity analysis, it can help us to observe how change in some key project variables
The number of significant costs is small. The major ones are: advertising, Market Research and product development. However, concentrate producers
* Diamond is the strongest natural mineral known by a man. It is a crystalline form of carbon.
In order to meet customer demands for higher product quality, to comply with federally-mandated environmental regulations, and to reduce production costs, HCC must spend $2,000,000 within the next three years to upgrade equipment. The upgrade is expected to result in production efficiencies that will lower material and labor costs by reducing defective products, process waste, in-process inventory, and production man-hours through simplified work processes. It has been over a decade since significant modifications were made to the production facilities. Those changes were mostly technical in nature and did not substantially alter work processes or reduce overall employment. The average productivity gain in the industry for the past five years has been 3% per year. Financing for the loan to purchase the equipment
In the case of Mendel Paper Company which produces four basic paper products lines at one of its plants: computer paper, napkins, place mats, and poster board. Although the plant superintendent, Marlene Herbert is pleases with increased sales he is also concerned about the costs. The superintendent is concerned with the high fixed cost of production, the increases in fixed overhead and even variable overhead. He feels that the production of place mat should be discontinued. His reason for the discontinuation is that the special printing is driving up the variable overhead to the point where the company may not find it profitable to continue with the line. After reviewing the future predictions of the
The investment requested is £12 million. Strategic and operating benefits were summarized in our previous memo to you. We have made, however, some changes to our investment analyses, which appear below.
Polysar Limited is Canada’s largest chemical company. Its Rubber Group accounts for 46% of Polysar’s sales. The primary products for this group are butyl and halobutyl and the principal customers for these products are tire manufacturers. The rubber Group has two divisions: NASA (North America & South America) and EROW (Europe & elsewhere). There is product transferring between NASA and EROW and the Vice President of NASA is required to present the performance results to the Board of Directors and explain why the bottom line is lower than expected.
The prices of the deferral option and option to switch are zero and £0.11 million respectively. The total NPV of the upgrade is £8.32 million. The incremental earnings per share of the upgrade is £ 0.0172, the payback period is 4.23 years, and the internal rate of return is 24.3%.
Wriston’s Detroit plant is no longer a viable operation due to long-term capital underinvestment and product-process mismatch. It is recommended that the plant be phased out of operations over a five-year period with production and staff gradually shifted to a new plant to be built in the Detroit area. Further, it is also recommended that division accounting procedures and evaluation mechanisms be modified to allocate revenues/costs allowing for the synergistic benefits of Detroit’s products, and to recognize inherent manufacturing complexities, respectively. Issues Detroit’s production is unique when compared to other Wriston plants. Runs are typically lowvolume, involve significant set-up time, and vary significantly due to the sheer
That being said, we would agree with the Treasury Staff to realize inflation, but with a different method.
Being able to increase productivity and revenues has always been the greatest challenge of any manager, and the manager of RL Wolfe, a plastic pipe manufacturer, was not an exception. Because of the low-efficiency percentage RL Wolfe had in comparison to their its competitors, John Amasi, director of Production and Engineering , had no other choice then came up with a new way of improving RL Wolfe production methods.
The purpose of this report is to analyze the opportunity to produce plastic components for cartridge production and choose the best alternative. It is predicted that the annual demand growth is a triangular distribution with a minimum of 5%, most likely of 17% and a maximum of 25%. Due to the continuous growth in the demand, the alternatives cannot be compared using just the data for 2010. An analysis is carried out for the time period 2011 to 2015 and the present worth of the net income is considered as the criteria to select the alternative. The analysis basically can be divided into 5 steps:
Lima was one of Treadway’s best plants in terms of productivity and quality control because it updated its equipment and utilized new technology. However, currently, Lima undergoes dramatic changes: job dissatisfaction and high turnover at the foreman level. Moreover, misfortunes never come singly. The entire manufacturer industry is facing some huge challenges including drastic increase in raw material costs and fierce global competition. The director of human resources in Lima plant, Ashley Wall, intended to analyze the issues and make a action plan to address these problems. Ashley needs to do five steps.
One of America’s largest forest products/paper firms with sales of $6.5Billion in 1983 and a net income of $105 million. The case study revolves around Atlantic Corporation’s intention to add linerboard capacity. In order to achieve this goal, they started looking at viable solutions, including purchasing and acquiring mill and box plants instead of through construction and fabrication of new plants and equipment. This included the possible acquisition of Royal Paper’s “crown jewels”, that is, the Monticello mill and the corrugated box plants.
In the late 1980’s to the mid 1990’s the plant struggled to meet budgetary goals and was faced with potential closure. These struggles stemmed from the plants inability to increase efficiency and reduce cost. Reducing labor