Service utility is rapidly becoming the most important utility for many as they face competition from direct marketing forces, such as the internet and catalogs.

Carey company is borrowing $225,000 for one year at 9.5 percent from second intrastate bank. the bank requires a 15 percent compensating balance. the principal refers to funds the firm can effectively utilize (amount borrowed − compensating balance). a. what is the effective rate of interest? (use a 360-day year. input your answer as a percent rounded to 2 decimal places.) b. what would the effective rate be if carey were required to make 12 equal monthly payments to retire the loan?

Aproduction line has three machines a, b, and c, with reliabilities of .96, .86, and .85, respectively. the machines are arranged so that if one breaks down, the others must shut down. engineers are weighing two alternative designs for increasing the line’s reliability. plan 1 involves adding an identical backup line, and plan 2 involves providing a backup for each machine. in either case, three machines (a, b, and c) would be used with reliabilities equal to the original three. a. compute overall system reliability under plan 1. (round your intermediate calculations and final answer to 4 decimal places.) reliability b. compute overall system reliability under plan 2. (round your intermediate calculations and final answer to 4 decimal places.) reliability c. which plan will provide the higher reliability? plan2plan1

Lead time for one of your fastest-moving products is 20 days. demand during this period averages 90 units per day.a) what would be an appropriate reorder point? ) how does your answer change if demand during lead time doubles? ) how does your answer change if demand during lead time drops in half?