Question: East Coast Manufacturing, Inc. plans to place a new production facility in the Hartford, Philadelphia or Baltimore. Six location factors are significant: Cost per product unit, labor availability, union activities, local transportation, proximity to alike industry and proximity to the raw materials. The weighting of such factors, the scale for all factors and the scores for each location are illustrated below. Different SME’s (subject matter experts) scored each of the non-economic factors. Therefore, unfortunately, the scores for non-economic factors are scaled in a different way. The scales are described on the table. On scale, the maximum score is always the best value. For illustration for the scale 1-5, the best value is 5. For each of Non-economic factors, it is feasible to score the maximum.
For the given, compute all the outcomes to three decimal place.
a) By using the factor scoring (or equivalent the factor rating) approach, which site do you propose? Explain why?
b) With everything else remaining similar as in the problem statement, what should the cost per product unit for Philadelphia be so that its total factor score is equivalent to the total factor score for the Hartford?