In teaching the process and concepts related to the planning and control of operations, many different tools are discussed independently of each other. Due to the complexity of the planning process it is difficult to bring many of these tools together into a practical problem for the students to solve. Fortunately, with a computer the mechanical computations of the tools can be eliminated, and a practical problem can be developed for the students to solve. The project described in this note illustrates how model building, optimization, simulation, and decision rules for variance investigation can be used in the planning and control of the operations of a manufacturing firm. One of the major limitations of the project is the time a student has to wait for the output once he has submitted the budget cards. In the application described in this note most students could achieve only two runs a day. Eventually, this deficiency will be overcome when the PROFPLAN programs is adopted for use with cathode ray tubes. With this adaptation, once the student has developed his initial budget, he will be able to change the input variables and receive the results of the change almost instantly.

The article presents the hypothesis that, both the Market Parity and the Investment Value method adequately discriminate between those convertible bonds that ultimately will convert from those that will not convert. When applying the Market Parity method in this study, the ratio of conversion value to market value of the bond was developed for four dates. The shorter period of two weeks and the longer period of two months were chosen for this study to provide a time period long enough so that the value of the bonds could be determined in the market. The offering price for the bond was used to determine the market parity ratio at, offering dates. The relative ranking of a given bond changed somewhat when computing the market parity ratio as of different dates. The first test is concerned with determining whether this variability in ranking was significant. The authors remark that, when implementing the Investment Value method, it is necessary to determine what the market value of the convertible security would be if the conversion option were not present.

Donald H. Ebbeler, James B. McDonald, An Analysis of the Properties of the Exact Finite Sample Distribution of a Nonconsistent GCL Structural Variance Estimator, Econometrica, Vol. 41, No. 1 (Jan., 1973), pp. 59-65