BUS105: TMA (Tutor Marked Assignment)- Statistics, SUSS, Singapore

The Objective of this TMA

To provide an opportunity for students to apply the materials learnt in the course and to develop/sharpen the necessary technical skills and knowledge of Statistics.

Please note that:

i. The details of this case are fictional. Any resemblance to real-life situations is purely coincidental.

ii. As information is given throughout the case, you are advised to read the entire TMA document before working on the report.

iii. Students should not include the TMA questions in the report.

Background

The new Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) System implemented by the Land Transportation Authority (LTA) charges road usage by tracking vehicle movements. A location sensor in the In-vehicle unit (IU) communicating with the global positioning satellite (GPS) receiver enables the ERP System to determine the vehicle’s location and distance travelled. The system depends on the accuracy of the location sensor which is how close the measured location is to the actual sensor location.

Precision Locator Device (PLD) Pte Ltd designs and sells location sensors. It wishes to supply sensors to LTA for the ERP System. To focus on its core design competency and lower operation costs, PLD outsources its production to a manufacturing contractor: Sunny Electronic Manufacturing (SEM). Another contractor Total Production Services (TPS) recently approached PLD and claimed its manufacturing capability produces higher quality products than SEM. PLD has begun to outsource some productions to TPS.

PLD has designed a location sensor based on a standard industrial model which is known to have location accuracy’s population mean of 2.46 meters and standard deviation of 0.30 meters. PLD management wants to know its location sensor’s performance compared to the industry standard. It also wants to verify TPS’s claim.

Assuming you are a Data Analyst in PLD’s Operations Department. The CEO has assigned you to conduct an analysis for decision-making. You collected data for a sample of sensors produced by SEM and TPS. The data are in the Location Sensor Accuracy Excel file.

Question 1

(a) Using relevant Excel reports, provide a descriptive summary of the PLD sensor location accuracy. You are expected to describe and state relevant descriptive statistics, and use relevant charts to provide visualisations of the distribution of the data. You are also expected to make a preliminary conclusion on the sensor performance.

The PLD location sensor is designed with the industry standard model in mind. Explain whether the probability of receiving the same sample mean in the industry standard model is plausible.

Justify the use of your analysis method. Hence, comment on the PLD sensor’s performance compared to the industry standard model.

(b) Use relevant descriptive statistics and a chart to conduct a preliminary comparison of the sensors produced by the two contractors.

(c) The CEO has requested you to make a short presentation to the management regarding your findings. In particular, the management wants to know the PLD sensor’s performance. They are also interested to know the relative performance of the contractors. Develop a written script for the short presentation. You are expected to provide insightful interpretations of the findings that would be useful to the management. You also hope to use this opportunity to demonstrate to management how quantitative information helps in decision-making. Your script should be less than 300 words. Please indicate the word count at the end of your answer.