Tara oversees materials acquisition for an HVAC company, and she has raised concerns about their year-to-year increases in direct materials cost, and they would like to use analytics to help determine why this happened. What question could Tara ask first to help her start the analysis?
A) Was there a difference in costs between the different vendors we have used?
B) What can we do to prevent this from happening moving forward?
C) What do we expect the vendors we use to charge next year?
D) What was the overall difference in prices year-to-year?

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

This question requires familiarity with different types of analytics and to recognize that Tara would need to use diagnostic analytics to answer this "Why…?" question. Choice A is correct because investigating if there was a difference in costs between the vendors used may help answer why the increase occurred. The remaining choices are incorrect because they each investigate issues other than the one Tara is investigating and may require a different type of analytics.

Tara Oversees Materials Acquisition for an HVAC Company, and She