I need a project paper on Operations Management

Project Guidelines.docx

I need it within 2 days. The due of this paper is on Saturday. So I need it on Friday. If you can do it as soon as possible, I will pay more for it.  10 pages is required.

Overview:  For this project, you will prepare a proposal, present and write a paper that involves designing, conducting, and analyzing results from your own experiment to test the sensory discrimination of one of your friends. Choose a friend who claims to be able to tell the difference between two very similar objects. You are free to choose the two objects, however here are some ideas to get you thinking along the right lines: Coke vs. Pepsi, Regular vs. Decaf coffee, Sweet ‘n’ Low vs. Equal sweetener, butter vs. margarine, or Ghirardelli chocolate vs. Hershey’s chocolate. Which you choose depends on whoever your “expert” testing subject is. You will need to find an expert on your own, and will need to supply your own materials. The cost of your experiment will obviously depend primarily on the objects to be tested; testing to see if the subject can discern between bottled water and tap water will only cost a couple dollars, testing to see if the subject can discern between different brands of caviar will get pricey fast!

Grading:  The project is worth 30% of the course grade – or a full letter grade. 

Advice:  Projects thrown together at the last minute are obvious and will be graded accordingly.  If you pick an interesting test and make progress gradually throughout the remainder of the term, you will learn a lot of maybe have fun along the way.

Project Description: Provide an overview of your project and include the following

·  What is the idea you want to test?

·  Who is your subject?

·  What are you testing?

While something simple like butter vs. margarine or bottled water vs. tap water is a reasonable topic, students who have been more creative in their subject selection have found this paper to be rather enjoyable. Some examples of creative subjects:

Testing to see is one call tell the difference between freshly grated parmesan cheese and the Kraft brand parmesan cheese (in the green tube). 

One individual’s wife maintained that the white candies from a box of Good ‘N’ Plenty candy did not taste as good as the pink candies. The test was to see if his wife could tell the difference.

One individual had a friend who ran a wine tasting social group. She tested whether or not her friend could discern between red and white wine by bouquet alone.

Note that this does not say that one of the more “creative” ideas will necessarily make for a better experiment, paper, or grade. You are more likely, however, to enjoy the process of conducting the experiment and analyzing the data should you put serious thought into your test subject.

·  Project Objectives:  Provide a list of key objectives of your project.

·  Constraints:  What will constrain your project in terms of resources, time or scope?  Please specifically address the following as well.

·   How will you handle ethical guidelines?  Look at the ethical guidelines below. Are any of them applicable to your project? If not, explain why. If so, how will you address them?

  (1). Do not test somebody against their will! Let the subject know in advance the details of what you will be doing.

  (2). If your product/products are restricted in your locale (e.g. alcohol, tobacco, etc) ensure that all people involved with the direct experimentation are LEGALLY allowed to handle these products in your state/locality. For example, if you are testing that the subject can tell the difference between regular and non-alcoholic beer, the experimenter, subject, and any assistants the experimenter may have on hand must be over the age of 21.

  (3). Ensure that you are using any products you are testing responsibly. For example, make sure that your subject isn’t allergic to the ingredients to either of your products. If alcohol is involved, take steps to avoid inebriation (both for safety reasons AND experimental reasons–the trials are no longer independent if the subject is in a different “state” at the beginning of each trial–ideally, your subject’s “state” will be identical at the start of each trial). If you are testing if the subject can tell the difference between bottled water and local tap water, design your experiment in such a way that the subject isn’t in any danger of hyper-hydration (water intoxication).

·  Assumptions.  Please mention any assumptions (explicit or implicit) in your project.  Include at a minimum how you will keep your tests independent (see below):

·  How will you handle special issues?  You also want to keep in mind that you may have some special issues that may arise due to the nature of the product/products you are testing, such as how to ensure the trials are independent or special testing procedures (blindfolds, earplugs, etc.)?

Consider both what you are testing and how you are testing it. Does the test directly address your question? Or are there other possible interpretations of a positive result? As an example, say your subject claims to be able to tell the difference between Coca Cola and generic cola. So you go to Wal-Mart and pick up a 2 liter bottle of Coke and a 2 liter bottle of Sam’s Choice cola, administer your trials, and find that your subject can indeed tell the difference. Now, have you demonstrated that your subject can differentiate between Coke and generic cola or just between Coke and Sam’s Choice cola? (hint–you may want to design your project to avoid this very issue!)

Supplemental Information on Running Your Experiment

1.  First, you should brainstorm to find a friend who is either a self-proclaimed expert or has some food/beverage related idiosyncrasy.

2.  Determine a protocol for administering the test:

·  What should be done about random variations in the items to be tested? For example, how do you prevent temperature change in the product, or to make sure each cup of coffee is equally sweet or has the same amount of cream? Before conducting your experiment, carefully lay out the procedure for administering the test, such as how the coffee will be made, how the wine will be decanted, and so forth. This is related to the important issue of ensuring that each trial is independent (i.e. the previous trials aren’t tainting your taster’s sense of taste). If you have ever been to a wine tasting, you’ll notice that you can tell the difference between the first few sips of wine, but once you get to the 11th and 12th glass, it’s all sort of a blur (and not due to inebriation!). Carefully consider how you will attempt to overcome this problem.

·   How many trials should be used in the test? In what order should the items be presented? Should the experiment be run in one sitting or spaced out over a number of days? Done properly, the experiment should be designed such that if the expert has no expert skills, the result will be wholly governed by chance. The number and ordering of the trials should allow an expert to prove his or her abilities while simultaneously preventing a fraud from succeeding. You will want to keep the binomial distribution in mind when making these decisions.

·  What conclusion could be drawn from a perfect score or from a test with one or more errors? For the design you are considering, list all possible results of the experiment. For each possible result, decide in advance what conclusion you will make if it occurs. In determining this mapping of outcomes to conclusions, consider the probability that someone with no powers of discrimination could wind up with each outcome. You may want to make adjustments in your design to increase the sensitivity of your experiment. For example, if someone can’t distinguish decaf coffee from regular, then just by guessing, he/she should still be right half of the time and there will be a small chance, which you should calculate, of being right 100% of the time. On the other hand, if the taster possesses some, but not perfect, skill in differentiation, he or she will make some mistakes.

3. Write out an instruction sheet for your experimental process. Conduct a “dress rehearsal” on somebody other than your subject to work out kinks in the process. After the practice run, determine whether or not you want to make changes in your instruction sheet to address any problems that arose. This practice run is an extremely important step; many people make big mistakes in their first attempt and historically, students who have taken this step seriously have scored much more highly on this project than those who do not.

4. You should now be ready to run your experiment. Record your results CAREFULLY, and note any unusual occurrences in the experimental process. It may be a good idea to keep track of the order in which the samples are served to your subject.

5. Numerically, summarize the results and analyze the data. Do they support or contradict the claim that the subject possesses no sensory discrimination? Use your list of all possible events and subsequent actions to come to a conclusion. Discuss the reasons behind the decision that you have made.

6. What changes would you make to your experimental process if you had the opportunity to do it again? Why didn’t you pick these issues up when you did your practice run?

Written Report Guidelines

1.  Due Date:  See Syllabus

2.  Length:  +/-10 pages (to include title and appendices if used).

3.  Content: 

a.  Purpose of the study.  The purpose of the study formally explains why the study was important to conduct and write the null and alternative hypotheses of the study .

b.  Method.  The Method section explains how the study was conducted to collect data. The section should include the following:

1.  Participants of the study. Who are they? Where did you get the participants for the study? Which sampling design was used to select the participants?

2.  Experimental design. Which experimental/sampling design was used in the study? 

3.  Data Collection. Explain the method used to collect data. 

4.  Data Analysis. For hypothesis testing, explain how you planned to calculate the data. 

5.  Step-by-step procedure. Explain the explicit steps from beginning to end for conducting the study. If another researcher wants to replicate the study, the directions must contain precise information for conducting the study. 

c.  Data Analysis. Show the results of your data analysis, including tables and charts as necessary. You should also discuss, in plain English, the results of the data calculation, both in terms of magnitude and significance.

d.  Discussion.  Discuss what you learned from the data collected. Did the results support or not support the null hypothesis?

e.  Learning points.  Please include 3-5 key learning points that you have gained either from the experiment or your project process.  These can include learning something you didn’t know and/or what you would do differently if you conducted this type of experiment again. 

f.  Please run a spell/grammar check of your final report.

g.  Appendix 

·  Place the charts, tables, and other relevant documents in an appendix at the end of your paper. Your paper should contain text, plus any additional charts/tables/graphs found in the appendix.

 
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