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Specialty Toys Essay

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Case Problem: Specialty Toys
Specialty Toys, Inc., sells a variety of new and innovative children’s toys. Management learned that the preholiday season is the best time to introduce a new toy, because many families use this time to look for new ideas for December holiday gifts. When Specialty discovers a new toy with good market potential, it chooses an October market entry date.
In order to get toys in its stores by October, Specialty places one-time orders with its manufacturers in June or July of each year. Demand for children’s toys can be highly volatile. If a new toy catches on, a sense of shortage in the marketplace often increases the demand to high levels and large profits can be realized. However, new toys can also flop, …show more content…

The product management team asks you for an analysis of the stock-out probabilities for various order quantities, an estimate of the profit potential, and to help make an order quantity recommendation. Specialty expects to sell Weather Teddy for $24 based on a cost of $16 per unit. If inventory remains after the holiday season, Specialty will sell all surplus inventory for $5 per unit. After reviewing the sales history of similar products, Specialty’s senior sales forecaster predicted an expected demand of 20,000 units with a .95 probability that demand would be between 10,000 and 30,000 units.
Managerial Report
Prepare a managerial report that addresses the following issues and recommends an order quantity for the Weather Teddy product.
1. Use the sales forecaster’s prediction to describe a normal probability distribution that can be used to approximate the demand distribution. Sketch the distribution and show its mean and standard deviation.

2. Compute the probability of a stock-out for the order quantities suggested by members of the management team.
3. Compute the projected profit for the order quantities suggested by the management team under three scenarios: worst case in which sales = 10,000 units, most likely case in which sales = 20,000 units, and best case in which sales = 30,000 units.
4. Provide your own recommendation for an order quantity and note the associated profit projections. Provide a

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