Case Study: The Groundhog's New Clothes (Mini-Case)

This case study integrates professional ethical dilemmas in the context of a quantitative production planning problem. The lean objectives are to increase awareness of ethical dilemmas specific to operations research and management science, understand outcomes and trade-offs of decisions, and develop reasoning ability to justify a final solution to the situation. Dilemmas embedded in the case's production planning problem provide an opportunity  to practice a technical analysis such as optimization. This case emphasizes the role of mathematical models and other forms of quantitative analysis in decision environments that include qualitative concerns such as worker loyalty and environmental responsibility that cannot easily be modeled explicitly.

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