Great Pumpkin Inc., wants to purchase a vending machine for their common room and chooses dimensions of cost, reliability, and flexibility as critical. They evaluate three different vending machine companies and rate their performance on each criterion on a scale from 1 (poor) to 5 (excellent). Which company should Great Pumpkin choose

Question Completion:

Dimension    Importance   Spike  Olaf  Andy

Cost                 4                  1           5       3

Reliability         2                 5           2       3

Cost                 3                 3           3       4

Great Pumpkin Inc.

Great Pumpkin should choose Olaf Manufacturing with the highest weighted score of 33.

Explanation:

a) Data and Calculations:

Dimension    Importance   Spike      Olaf             Andy

Cost                 4                 4 (1*4)     20 (5*4)      12 (3*4)

Reliability         2                10 (5*2)     4 (2*2)        6 (3*2)

Cost                 3                 9 (3*3)      9 (3*3)       12 (4*3)

Total weighted scores    23             33               30

b) Based on the total weighted scores, Olaf Manufacturing performed best among the three companies.  It should be chosen.  To obtain the weighted scores for each company, the scale it obtains under each dimension is multiplied by the importance of the dimension.  This is done for each dimension and each company before the total weighted scores are obtained and the company with the highest score is adjudged the winner.