The CEO, knowing that professional logistics expertise has been missing from her organization, has asked you to prepare a PowerPoint Presentation of 10–15 slides for the rest of the senior and middle management teams. In it, she has asked that you pick a mass merchandiser with international retail locations that your firm may be delivering to.

The heart of the PowerPoint should be an overview of the steps that are needed to make a good location decision, whether it is for an additional manufacturing facility in some other state or country, or a new distribution center location in another state or country.

She asked that you use this made-up data to base your presentation on. Being a stickler for formatting, she requires that you do the following:

• Use a colored background for your slides
• Have few words but lots of eye-catching graphics, clip art, or pictures on each slide
• Have speaker notes of 100–200 words for each slide
• Assume the presentation should last 30–45 minutes and should have 10–15 slides

The data to base the presentation on is as follows:

1. The retailer has 200 retail locations all over the United States.
2. Right now, all shipments come from the East Coast manufacturing plant finished goods warehouse.
3. Western United States sales growth rates are expected to be double that of the Eastern United States.
4. The retailer has a total of 50 stores located outside of the United States, mostly in Europe, where population growth is averaging 1% a year.
5. It has no retail locations in India, China, or Mexico, where on average, population growth is averaging 10% into the future.
6. Your product is a “high-cube” product, like a refrigerator or color television.
7. The raw materials for your manufacturing facility are also high-cube and have a lot of cardboard packaging (which takes up space) to protect the high-dollar value components that the factory buys.

Finally, the CEO reminds you that this presentation is meant to be a how-to guide for the overall decision-making process that you will be using in your future assignments.