Greaves Brewery is a small producer of lagers and ales located m Trinidad. Alex Benson, the purchasing agent, IS trying to determine how many reusable bottles to order from Greaves Brewery's German glass supplier. The decision this year is complicated by the possibility that a new bottle design could be introduced that would make all existing bottle inventories obsolete. In the past, however, Benson had delayed production by not ordering enough bottles to keep up with demand. The case provides an opportunity to employ a number of forecasting methods and the challenge of integrating the forecast with the bottle purchase-quantity decision.

The case study should consist of a three to five page paper, double-spaced pages of narrative in 12-point font. Exhibits in the form of calculations, tables, charts, graphs, etc., may be added to the five page narrative to enhance your discussion.

See “Case Analysis and Presentation” for guidance

1. Investigate the potential to apply various time series forecasting approaches, including exponential smoothing.

2. Discuss the benefits and limitations of time series forecasting for this application.

3. Introduce the challenges involved in managing reusable inventories that spend most of their time in the possession of customers.

4. How many thousand cases will Greaves Brewery sell in the next year?

5. Map the flow of reusable bottles.

6. Use the map, the forecast and other relevant case facts to predict the brewery's new bottle requirements for the coming year.

7. As Alex Benson, what is your decision? How many bottles will you order? Will you consider alternate solutions to ordering only once per year?

Note the Following:

The case presents 50 periods of monthly sales, plus annual sales for six prior years. Two observations can be made:
• Growth has been pretty much linear. The linear trend