Universal Distributors Universal Distributors,a Major Retailing and Mail Order Operation,has Been in Been

Essay

Universal Distributors
Universal Distributors,a major retailing and mail order operation,has been in business for the past 10 years.During that time,the mail order operations have grown from a sideline to represent over 80% of the company's annual sales.Of course,the company has suffered growing pains.There were times when overloaded or faulty computer programs resulted in lost sales,and the scheduling of temporary workers to augment the permanent staff during peak periods has always been a problem.
Peter Ben Ezra,manager of mail order operations,has developed procedures for handling most problems.However,he is still trying to improve the scheduling of temporary workers to take telephone orders from customers.Under the current system,he keeps a permanent staff of 60 employees who handle the basics;the number of temporary workers needed for the next day is determined by Ben Ezra each afternoon based on his estimate of the upcoming telephone volume.
Mr.Ben Ezra has decided to try regression analysis as a way to improve the hiring of temporary workers.By summarizing the daily labor hours into weekly totals for the past year,Ben Ezra was able to determine the number of workers that were used each week.In addition,he listed the number of orders that had been processed each week.After entering the data into a spreadsheet,Ben Ezra ran two regressions.Regression #1 related the total workers (permanent staff plus temporary workers)to the number of orders received,and Regression #2 related only temporary workers to the number of orders received.The output of these analyses is presented below.
Regression Equation: W = a + bT
Where: W = Workers
T = Telephone Orders