Case—Suncrest AgriBusiness Company: Exploiting the Flexibility of Backup Capacity

[摘要] “I hope it is not one of those things that is too good to be true,” said Snodley to himself on the way to his office. Flavio Snodley had been working with Suncrest for the last 15 years. During this time, he had pushed for using data-driven methods to make decisions at Suncrest. Most recently, he had supported Suncrest’s acquisition of a midsize firm in Chile. This acquisition was driven by two factors. First, Chile was a rapidly growing market for seed corn and provided a revenue diversification opportunity for Suncrest. The second motivation was closer to home. In the last few years, Snodley had led an analytics group that supported an annual seed corn production plan for the U.S. market. It had, however, become clear in the last two very dry summers that seed corn production was risky and dependent on the vagaries of weather. William Buckhead, a senior vice president and Snodley’s boss, was frustrated over his helplessness. “I thought we learnt our lesson two years back that weather could play the spoilsport when producing seed.We used a much larger area of land to produce seed this year, but the summer was worse this year and yields were even lower. We again have too little inventory to be competitive. I wish I could go back in time and redo the plan.” Snodley hoped that the acquisition in Chile would help mitigate this risk.

[学科分类] 数学（综合）

[关键词] agriculture;random yield;operational flexibility