The shipping company manager wants to determine the best routes for the trucks to take to reach their destinations. this problem can be solved using the:

Acompany that makes shopping carts for supermarkets and other stores recently purchased some new equipment that reduces the labor content of the jobs needed to produce the shopping carts. prior to buying the new equipment, the company used 6 workers, who produced an average of 79 carts per hour. workers receive $16 per hour, and machine coast was $49 per hour. with the new equipment, it was possible to transfer one of the workers to another department, and equipment cost increased by $11 per hour while output increased by four carts per hour. a) compute the multifactor productivity (mfp) (labor plus equipment) under the prior to buying the new equipment. the mfp (carts/$) = (round to 4 decimal places). b) compute the productivity changes between the prior to and after buying the new equipment. the productivity growth = % (round to 2 decimal places)

Amanufacturer has paid an engineering firm $200,000 to design a new plant, and it will cost another $2 million to build the plant. in the meantime, however, the manufacturer has learned of a foreign company that offers to build an equivalent plant for $2,100,000. what should the manufacturer do?

Rate of return douglas keel, a financial analyst for orange industries, wishes to estimate the rate of return for two similar-risk investments, x and y. douglas's research indicates that the immediate past returns will serve as reasonable estimates of future returns. a year earlier, investment x had a market value of $27 comma 000; and investment y had a market value of $46 comma 000. during the year, investment x generated cash flow of $2 comma 025 and investment y generated cash flow of $ 6 comma 770. the current market values of investments x and y are $28 comma 582 and $46 comma 000, respectively. a. calculate the expected rate of return on investments x and y using the most recent year's data. b. assuming that the two investments are equally risky, which one should douglas recommend? why?