Prof. Howard Weiss shares his insights with us monthly. Dr. Weiss recently retired from Temple U.
Scrub Daddy Inc., the maker of smiley-faced scouring pads featured on ABC’s Shark Tank reality show, is moving into a recently acquired South Jersey office-and warehouse building from its current home in Delaware County.
As mentioned in Figure 8.1 of your Heizer/Render/Munson textbook, one location factor is the size of the site. Size has become more important than it previously was because employees need to maintain a safe distance from each other due to COVID-19. In the case of Scrub Daddy, the size of their new facility is large enough to accommodate the 65 employees who currently are located in three facilities in a different suburb of Philadelphia.
Another factor that may, in general, be important is risk assessment based on natural hazards as opposed to the political risks listed in the figure. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has prepared the National Risk Index (NRI) which identifies risks by county based on the following 18 natural hazards: Avalanche, Coastal Flooding, Cold Wave, Drought, Earthquake, Hail, Heat Wave, Hurricane, Ice Storm, Landslide, Lightning, Riverine Flooding, Strong Wind, Tornado, Tsunami, Volcanic Activity, Wildfire, and Winter Weather
FEMA (https://www.fema.gov/flood-maps/products-tools/national-risk-index) essentially performed a Factor Rating on these 18 factors for each county in the U.S. For each factor, the county scores were scaled from 0 to 100. FEMA assigned equal weights to each of the 18 factors and simply computed the sum of the 18 hazard scores for each county.
Classroom Discussion Questions
- What are the advantages and disadvantages of consolidating all of your employees in one location?
- Does using equal weights on the 18 factors make sense for individual organizations?