A major manufacturer of popular beverages has appointed a local distributor to serve a specific territory. The demand for the beverages has a pronounced seasonal pattern. The distributor performs well overall, but is repeatedly unable to keep up with fulfilling many customer orders during peak demand periods. The distributor's current delivery capability is stretched to deliver 60 tons of merchandise per day whereas the season's peak demand periods need a daily delivery capability of up to 100 tons. The distributor is under pressure to fully meet the year-round market demand in order to stay in business. The distributor's management wants to identify and consider more cost-effective options as resorting to adding more trucks and drivers would not be economically feasible. A business analyst (BA) has spent several days observing and measuring the warehouse activities to understand the situation and to gain insights into possible solutions. The delivery workflow is a four- step process: (1) picking the orders and assembling them on trays, (2) bringing the trays to the loading bay, (3) loading the orders into trucks, and (4) delivering the orders to customers. As the following table illustrates, overall performance depends is dependent on five major resources:

(1) the workers who pick the orders and load them into trucks, (2) the tallyers who check the orders, (3) the drivers, (4) the trucks, and (5) eight loading bays (LBs). What is the company's primary business objective in this scenario?

Question

A major manufacturer of popular beverages has appointed a local distributor to serve a specific territory. The demand for the beverages has a pronounced seasonal pattern. The distributor performs well overall, but is repeatedly unable to keep up with fulfilling many customer orders during peak demand periods. The distributor's current delivery capability is stretched to deliver 60 tons of merchandise per day whereas the season's peak demand periods need a daily delivery capability of up to 100 tons. The distributor is under pressure to fully meet the year-round market demand in order to stay in business. The distributor's management wants to identify and consider more cost-effective options as resorting to adding more trucks and drivers would not be economically feasible. A business analyst (BA) has spent several days observing and measuring the warehouse activities to understand the situation and to gain insights into possible solutions. The delivery workflow is a four- step process: (1) picking the orders and assembling them on trays, (2) bringing the trays to the loading bay, (3) loading the orders into trucks, and (4) delivering the orders to customers. As the following table illustrates, overall performance depends is dependent on five major resources:

(1) the workers who pick the orders and load them into trucks, (2) the tallyers who check the orders, (3) the drivers, (4) the trucks, and (5) eight loading bays (LBs). What is the company's primary business objective in this scenario?

Accepted Answer

C. Satisfy the customer The scenario explicitly states the distributor is under pressure to fully meet year-round market demand in order to stay in business, which directly equates to satisfying customers through consistent order fulfillment. In business analysis, the primary business need is the underlying problem the organization must solve to remain viable, and here that is closing the gap between delivery capability (60 tons) and peak demand (100 tons) so customers receive their orders.

Answer

A. Make more profit Increased profit is a potential downstream outcome, but the stated driver is operational fulfillment capability, not revenue generation.

Answer

B. Defeat competitors No competitors are referenced or implied in the scenario, making defeating competitors an unsupported and irrelevant business objective.

Answer

D. Stabilize its performance Stabilizing performance is a means to an end rather than the goal itself - the reason to stabilize is to reliably satisfy customers, not stabilization for its own sake.

A major manufacturer of popular beverages has appointed a local distributor to serve a specific territory. The demand for the beverages has a pronounced seasonal pattern. The distributor performs well

Question

Exhibit

Options

How the community answered

Why each option

Topics

Community Discussion