Cases in Engineering Economy

1. New Office Equipment: Student develops requirements with little given data for activities to be supported by new copier machines. Organizational thinking required. 2. Budgeting Issues: Strategies for a group's operating budget request. One focus is ethics. 3. Wildcat Oil in Kasakstan: Rough order of magnitude estimation of total facility cost and annual revenue. Option for NPV and different size facility. 4. Balder-Dash Inc.: Standard cost and allocated costs vs. true marginal cost (IE's). 5. Can Crusher: Basic time value of money, costs, and breakeven analysis. 6. Lease a Lot: Compares leasing and ownership. Results show importance of separating financing and investing decisions. 7. The Board Looks to You: Bond valuation with realistic business details including early-call premium. Medium difficulty. Good example of employer taking a small fact and making big assumptions about individual talents--why engineering students must keep learning. 8. Picking a Price: Simplified real estate analysis. Demonstrates analysis to screen before acquiring more data and further decision-making. 9. Recycling?: Financial analysis supports recycling cardboard and selling unusable pallets to recycler. 10. The Cutting Edge: Make vs. buy and machine selection. 11. Harbor Delivery Service: Annual comparison of diesel vs. gasoline engines. 12. Buying a Dream: Compare three alternative mortgages for a first-time home buyer. 13. Guaranteed Return: Risk vs. expected return and choice of interest rate. 14. Northern Gushers: Incremental oil production investment with possible double-root. 15. Pave the Stockpile Area?: Sensitivity analysis for IRR. 16. Great White Hall: Proposal comparison using B/C analysis for RFP with unclear specifications. 17. A Free Lunch?: Is proposal too good-to-be true from two perspectives? Realistic (unordered) statement of facts. 18. Gravity-Free High: New product with development stages and probability of failure. 19. Crummy Castings: Decision tree problem with modest ambiguity. Options create more challenging problems. 20. New World Mining: Includes inflation. Funding agency vs. national perspective. Simulation option to analyze uncertainty. 21. Glowing in the Dark: Expected return and variance for facility of minimal size, of that plus preparation for later expansion, and of the full-size now. 22. City Car: Decision tree analysis. Includes discussion of strategy and risk. Some assumptions must be made. 23. Washing Away: Levee height and probability of flood damage. 24. Sinkemfast: Decision tree with assumptions required for realistic comparisons. Info supports creation of new, better alternatives. 25. Raster Blaster: Questions to guide students. Includes breakeven analysis. 26. Molehill & Mountain Movers: Compare depreciation methods with option for inflation. 27. To Use or Not To Use?: Focus is treatment of sunk costs. More complicated than most. Some discoveries in the data gathering process. Solution uses equation rather than cash flow table. 28. Olives in Your Backyard: Emphasizes taxes and sensitivity analysis. 29. New Fangled Manufacturing: Emphasizes taxes and sensitivity analysis. 30. Supersonic Service?: Breakeven and sensitivity analysis. 31. Freeflight Superdiscs: Inflation and sensitivity analysis for three alternatives. Includes taxes. 32. Mr. Speedy: Includes two memos using different inappropriate financial comparisons. Choose optimal life for replacement of vehicles. 33. Piping Plus: Data from case intro, three memos, income statement, and balance sheet. Computer improvement in a professional services firm. Assumptions will lead to an instructive variety of results. 34. R&D Device at EBP: Equipment replacement cost comparison with unequal lives. Continuing demand requires careful analysis statement by the student because of detailed cost data. Before or after-tax. 35. Northern Windows: Tax affected energy conservation project for a home with simplifying assumptions made clear. Includes inflation. 36. Brown's Nursery (Part A): After-tax analysis of expansion opportunity. 37. Brown's Nursery (Part B): Adds inflation. 38. West Muskegon Mach. & Manuf.: More complex inflation and tax problem with sunk cost and leverage. 39. Uncertain Demand at WM3: Includes inflation, taxes, and uncertainty. 40. Olympic Bid Perspectives: Public sector with data and questions from 3 perspectives. 41. Metropolitan Highway: Realistic variety of benefits and costs. Requires that assumptions be made. 42. Protecting the Public: P(injury) and fraction of contact wearers must be "guestimated." Considers opportunity losses to other venues in visitor-days. 43. Bridging the Gap: Difficulty ranges from comparing three alternative bridges with different lives to considering growth in traffic and uncertain construction costs. 44. Sunnyside - Up or Not?: Uncertain growth rates over 30 years and setting utility rates. 45. Transmission Intertie: Electric power project with primary and secondary benefits. 46. Aero Tech: Capital budgeting with memos for three different approaches to ranking. 47. Bigstate Highway Department: Capital budgeting including mutually exclusive alternatives. Includes uncertain value of a life. 48. Dot Puff Project Selection: Public sector capital budgeting with added constraint on man-years required. 49. The Arbitrator: Includes two memos of suggested solutions for four projects with nine alternatives. Data presented in text discussion rather than tabulated. 50. Capital Planning Consultants: Capital budgeting including mutually exclusive alternatives. Includes uncertainties in first cost, annual benefit, and lives. 51. Refrigerator Magnet Company: Capital budgeting including mutually exclusive alternatives. 52. Aunt Allee's Jams and Jellies: Product costing needs activity based costs. 53. Problems in Pasta Land: Long case statement. Includes taxes and limited uncertainty. 54. Whirlwind Exploration Company: Modeling required economic size for development of an oil field. Detailed data in tables.