To succeed in building a competitive advantage, a company's strategy must aim at select one:
a. charging a premium price for a superior product or service
b. externally providing buyers with what they perceive as superior value
c. internally performing value chain activities differently than rivals and building resources and capabilities that they cannot readily match
d. becoming the market share leader and having more distinctive competencies than rivals
e. both b and c

Imagine us is a startup that offers high definition 3d prenatal ultrasounds for high-end customers. the service process includes four activities that are conducted in the sequence described below. (the time required for each activity is shown in parentheses): activity 1: welcome a patient and explain the procedure. (20 minutes)activity 2: prep the patient (e.g., show them to the room, apply ultrasound gel). (17 minutes) (*your id number represents the amount of time needed to complete this task)activity 3: take images. (5 minutes)activity 4: discuss diagnostic with patient. (20 minutes)at each location there are employees (servers) s1, s2, and s3. the assignment of tasks to servers is the following: s1 does activities 1 and 2.s2 does activity 3.s3 does activity 4.a. what is the capacity of this process (in customers per hour)? b. suppose 3 patients arrive every hour on average. ignoring any “start of day” or “end of day” effects, what are the utilizations of all three servers (%)? c. suppose each activity can be done by any server and any server can do any set of activities. however, each activity is done by only one server. for example, a possible assignment includes: s1 does activity 1, s2 does activity 2, and s3 does activities 3 and 4. of course, the original assignment of servers to activities is also feasible. what is the maximum capacity of the process (in customers per hour)? d. now consider the capacity measures in (c) and (a), what is the percentage change? why can you improve capacity without using additional resources? (there is no free lunch, right? )note: for all hw assignments, show your process of getting the results. only providing the final answers is not acceptable and will get 0%. if necessary, use a separate sheet of paper to show your work.

Varto company has 9,400 units of its sole product in inventory that it produced last year at a cost of $23 each. this year’s model is superior to last year’s, and the 9,400 units cannot be sold at last year’s regular selling price of $42 each. varto has two alternatives for these items: (1) they can be sold to a wholesaler for $8 each, or (2) they can be reworked at a cost of $251,100 and then sold for $34 each. prepare an analysis to determine whether varto should sell the products as is or rework them and then sell them.

Consider a firm with a contract to sell an asset for $149,000 four years from now. the asset costs $85,000 to produce today. a. given a relevant discount rate of 14 percent per year, calculate the profit the firm will make on this asset. (a loss should be indicated by a minus sign. do not round intermediate calculations and round your answer to 2 decimal places, e.g., 32.16.) b. at what rate does the firm just break even?