...The CFO of Flash Memory, Inc. prepares the company's investing and financing plans for the next three years. Flash Memory is a small firm that specializes in the design and manufacture of solid state drives (SSDs) and memory modules for the computer and electronics industries. The company invests aggressively in research and development of new products to stay ahead of the competition. Increased working capital requirements force the CFO to consider alternatives for additional financing. In addition, he must also consider an investment opportunity in a new product line that has the potential to be extremely profitable. Students must prepare financial forecasts, calculate the weighted average cost of capital (WACC), estimate cash flows, and evaluate financing alternatives. This case is especially recommended as a final exam case for a standard MBA-level course in corporate finance. Subjects Include: Capital Budgeting, Cash Flows, Financial Forecasting, Long Term Financing, Net Present Value (NPV), and Weighted Average Cost of Capital (WACC) For the Flash Memory Inc. case you will turn in both a write-up of your analysis and a spreadsheet that contains any financials or calculations you performed. The formal write-up should contain an overview of how you tackled specific issues presented in the case, how you set up the spreadsheet to present you analysis, and a discussion of any assumptions you are making. To guide you through the case, below are a set of questions you will need...
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...Contents INTRODUCTION................................................................................................................................... 1 IDENTIFICATION OF THE MAIN ISSUES OR PROBLEMS............................................................... 2 ANALYSIS OF CASES: ......................................................................................................................... 3 Analysis Of Data ............................................................................................................................. 3 Analysis Of Flexible Budget ............................................................................................................ 4 RECOMMENDATION ........................................................................................................................... 7 Increase Labor’s Wages ................................................................................................................... 7 Giving Reward ................................................................................................................................ 7 Training and Courses ....................................................................................................................... 7 Outsourcing or Sub Contract ............................................................................................................ 8 Overtime Payment ...................................................................................
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...Homework: Flash Memory Case due Friday February 3rd Read the Flash Memory Case It is a light case (not a lot of analysis required) and thus can be considered a practice, or warm-up case. 1. Please forecast 2010, 2011, and 2012 assuming that Flash Memory does not do the new product line. Will Flash memory need financing? Can they do it with Notes payable? Will they end up dealing with the factoring department and what are the implications? After issuing the stocks, the company still needs financing. They can do it with note payable. Since the note payable to account receivable ratio less than 70%, they will end up dealing with the factoring department. And this implicates that issuing stocks is benefit to the company’s financing situation. 2. Assume Flash Memory invests in the new product line. Is it a positive NPV Investment? Given our discussions in class, estimate the WACC of the project (new product line). You will need to evaluate the WACC if Debt is used, or if new equity is issued. If using debt to get money, the WACC will be 9.88%, and the NPV of the project equals 1.44 million. If we issue stocks to get money, the WACC will be 9.66%, and the NPV will be 1.50 million. 3. What would you recommend the board to do concerning the project? Should the project be done, and if so how should it be financed? I will recommend the board to invest the project. And the board should issue new equity to finance the new...
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...Write Endurance in Flash Drives: Measurements and Analysis Simona Boboila Northeastern University 360 Huntington Ave. Boston, MA 02115 simona@ccs.neu.edu Peter Desnoyers Northeastern University 360 Huntington Ave. Boston, MA 02115 pjd@ccs.neu.edu Abstract We examine the write endurance of USB flash drives using a range of approaches: chip-level measurements, reverse engineering, timing analysis, whole-device endurance testing, and simulation. The focus of our investigation is not only measured endurance, but underlying factors at the level of chips and algorithms—both typical and ideal—which determine the endurance of a device. Our chip-level measurements show endurance far in excess of nominal values quoted by manufacturers, by a factor of as much as 100. We reverse engineer specifics of the Flash Translation Layers (FTLs) used by several devices, and find a close correlation between measured whole-device endurance and predictions from reverse-engineered FTL parameters and measured chip endurance values. We present methods based on analysis of operation latency which provide a non-intrusive mechanism for determining FTL parameters. Finally we present Monte Carlo simulation results giving numerical bounds on endurance achievable by any on-line algorithm in the face of arbitrary or malicious access patterns. 1 Introduction In recent years flash memory has entered widespread use, in embedded media players, photography, portable drives, and solid-state disks (SSDs) for...
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...System in Mobile Multimedia Devices 1 New Techniques for Real-Time FAT File System in Mobile Multimedia Devices Sunhwa Park and Seong-Young Ohm Abstract — Flash memory has become the most important storage media in the mobile multimedia products such as MP3 players, mobile phones, and digital cameras. Most mobile multimedia devices, however, use one of the conventional FAT file systems slightly modified for flash memory environments. Our analysis shows that theses file systems have some restriction in recording a live multimedia stream stably because they have irregular write response times. In this paper, we have considered the problems of the existing FAT file system and propose two new techniques to solve the problems. The first technique called Sector Reservation method reduces internal overhead effectively. And the other method called ACPA avoids the periodic cluster allocation of the conventional FAT file system and removes the frequent modifications on the file allocation table in the FAT file system. To evaluate our new techniques, we implemented a prototype Real-Time FAT file system on ARM9 board with our two novel techniques. The experimental results show that our system achieves our goal successfully in that its write response times are very deterministic and more uniform1. Index Terms — Flash memory, FAT file system, FTL, Mobile multimedia device. I. INTRODUCTION One of the distinct trends in recent years is the growth of mobile multimedia devices. Tiny MP3...
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...reading the Danshui Plant No.2 case, we can see that there is no enough information to evaluate the performance of the pant for the first three contracts to assembly Apple iPhone 4. Analysis of the issue To get a clear picture a flexible budget was prepared for the month end of August 2010. (Shown in the table below) From the flexible that is prepared it can seen the performance of Danshui Plant NO.2 is not good enough as what it suppose to be. The budget show that Danshui has unfavorable variance in the assembly the flash memory part, variable tools and supplies, assembly and packing, shipping nad the last one on the supervision. As for the flash memory it has been stated that Samsung had raised the price by $2.00 which had been cover by the Apple as their neutralized the profit which supposedly to give a favorable variance. But for the budget it can seen that the flash memory is showing an unfavorable variance. This is due to lack of skills during the installation the labour which had lead wastage as they need to replace the damage flash memory with the new one. The replacement of the flash memory due wastage had increased the cost that is expected which had lead to unfavorable variance. Variable supplies and tools show an unfavorable variance has it has connection with installation of parts in the iPhone 4 especially on the flash memory installation part. .so when the labour done a wastage or reckless job during the installation of flash memory or any parts of iPhone 4, it will...
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...Academic year: 2013-2014 Technological review about MICROCONTROLLER CONFIGURED FOR EXTERNAL MEMORY DECRYPTION Abstract This article will address the publication "MICROCONTROLLER CONFIGURED FOR EXTERNAL MEMORY DECRYPTION" in technological and systematic perspective. First, there will be a brief description of the structure and functioning of the microcontroller. Then, we'll try to answer some questions that can pass through the mind when reading the publication. At the end the Article could also offer suggestions or other perspectives for future research. Description of the existent system The microcontroller of the present study is used in an infrastructure called "Advanced Metering Infrastructure" to measure the energy consumption. The infrastructure is represented as a network of several nodes interconnected by RF radio links or power line communication, where one of these nodes called "Root Node" connects the remaining nodes to the central station called Central Office via a network such as the Internet. Central Office contains a data management system for processing data received from different nodes, it is meant by the processing of these data: analysis, filtering, extraction, projection, simulation and naturally backup and archiving. The Central Office may be in one geographic location or at multiple sites in the case of a distributed context, or completely removed in case of highly decentralized context. The node is composed of a transceiver, a meter and a processing...
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...reading the Danshui Plant No.2 case, we can see that there is no enough information to evaluate the performance of the pant for the first three contracts to assembly Apple iPhone 4. Analysis of the issue To get a clear picture a flexible budget was prepared for the month end of August 2010. (Shown in the table below) From the flexible that is prepared it can seen the performance of Danshui Plant NO.2 is not good enough as what it suppose to be. The budget show that Danshui has unfavorable variance in the assembly the flash memory part, variable tools and supplies, assembly and packing, shipping nad the last one on the supervision. As for the flash memory it has been stated that Samsung had raised the price by $2.00 which had been cover by the Apple as their neutralized the profit which supposedly to give a favorable variance. But for the budget it can seen that the flash memory is showing an unfavorable variance. This is due to lack of skills during the installation the labour which had lead wastage as they need to replace the damage flash memory with the new one. The replacement of the flash memory due wastage had increased the cost that is expected which had lead to unfavorable variance. Variable supplies and tools show an unfavorable variance has it has connection with installation of parts in the iPhone 4 especially on the flash memory installation part. .so when the labour done a wastage or reckless job during the installation of flash memory or any parts of iPhone 4, it...
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...TERM PAPER NAND and NOR Flash Memory -by Shashank Chaudhay 2010EE10480 Abstract- This term paper is an introduction to the flash memory devices both NAND and NOR. This includes - history of flash memory - how it works - NOR flash memory type - NAND flash memory type - differences between them - limitations of flash memory 1. Introduction Two main technologies dominate the non-volatile flash memory market today: NOR and NAND. Flash memory (both NOR and NAND types) was invented by Dr. Fujio Masuoka while working for Toshiba circa 1980. According to Toshiba, the name "flash" was suggested by Dr. Masuoka's colleague, Mr. Shōji Ariizumi, because the erasure process of the memory contents reminded him of the flash of a camera. NOR flash was first introduced in market by Intel in 1988, revolutionizing a market that was then dominated by EPROM and EEPROM devices. NAND flash architecture was introduced in the market by Toshiba in 1989.Most hardware engineers are not familiar with the differences between these two technologies. In fact, they usually refer to NOR architecture as “flash”, unaware of NAND flash technology and its many benefits over NOR. This is mainly due to the fact that most flash devices are used to store and run code (usually small), for which NOR flash is the default choice. Unlike Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM), Flash memory is non-volatile. Non-volatile memory retains data even without being powered-on. For example, when a computer...
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...Overview: Apple Corporation released iPhone 4 on June 24, 2010 and sold more than 1.7 million units in the first three days. To prepare for the launch of the new product, Apple contracted with the Danshui Plant No. 2 to assemble the new iPhones. Danshui Plant No.2, a contract manufacturer in southern China that assembles electronic products for companies wishing to save on labor costs, received a one-year contract starting on June 1, 2010 with the Apple Corporation to assemble 2.4 million iPhone 4s. In the first three months of the contract it became obvious that the plant was unable to assemble the expected 200,000 iPhones per month and was operating at a loss. Although the plant is known for hiring semi-skilled workers, the new iPhone contract required a complex assembly process entirely based on handwork by 325 workers, with 140 steps involving 100 components during 5 days. To anticipate the need for qualified workers, Danshui had raised their factory wages by almost 30%. But even with the wage increase, Danshui was not able to hire enough qualified workers to assemble the complex new product. Another issue was that, based on original modeling, Danshui was actually operating at a loss and was unable to fill the expected 200,000 per month iPhone quota in the first three months. To begin analyzing the root causes for the shortfall, the controller had considered preparing a “flexible budget” to provide a more realistic comparison of the performance to the budget. If the...
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...Danshui Plant No.2 The following case focuses on Danshui, a contract manufacturer that assembled electronic products. Danshui is currently in the third of a 12 months’ contract to assemble 2.4 million units of Apple’s iPhone 4. Monthly production target for Danshui is 200,000 units but three months’ study reflects that Danshui may not meet this target in 12 months and would also overrun the cost barrier thus landing in an unprofitable situation. Plant controller, Jianye Ma presented her analysis for August production to the plant manager, Wentao Chen. According to this report, the main difficult the plant is facing is being able to hire enough people to get the production to the 200000 units per month budgeted, despite having increased wages by a 30%. Questions 1. A. Total expected Cost – 41,140,000$ for 200,000 units ------------------------------------------------- Cost per unit – 205.70$ B. Actual Cost – 3,8148,000$ for 180,000 units ------------------------------------------------- Cost per unit – 211.91$ 2. The flexible budget variances can be seen in Appendix1. According to the results, there is an overall unfavourable variance of 1048.2$. this means, that even if production has been 180,000 instead of 200,000, there is still a variance NOT EXPLAINED by the reduction in volume. The colours in appendix one represent whether the impact of the variance is positive (green) or negative (red). It can be seen, that assembly and packaging represents the highest...
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...Samsung Case After reviewing Samsung’s current position in the semiconductor and memory chip industry, Swift Consulting has come up with a full analysis on the threats and opportunities facing the company. The primary threat facing the firm is the entry and growth of Chinese semiconductor companies. To respond to this threat, it is our assessment that Samsung should allocate less production to capacity to Dynamic Random Access Memory, and increase production and research to the more rapidly growing higher end Dynamic Random Access Memory, Static Random Access Memory and Flash memory markets. When Samsung entered the memory chip market, they gained market share by initially taking a loss on DRAM, because the company believed they would see future profit. The Chinese companies are following the same strategy to gain ground in the industry by their ability to produce at a high level, and sustain a loss. Samsung’s biggest threat in the semiconductor industry is the Chinese company Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation. By licensing agreements with German based Infineon, Japan based Eplida, subsidies from the Chinese government and private investment; SMIC has had profit increase of over $300 Million from 2002 to 2003. The secondary threat in facing Samsung is that China is expected to become the world’s second largest purchaser of semiconductors, after the United States. SMIC and the Chinese markets are deeply invested in lower end DRAM. By extensive research...
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...Corporation is an American company that designs, develops and manufactures flash memory storage devices and software. (2) SanDisk is the third largest manufacturer of flash memory in the world and has manufactured storage products used in data centers and embedded in smartphones, tablets and PCs. SanDisk is a top producer of data storage products based on flash memory, which retains data even when power is interrupted. Its products are sold to four primary end markets - mobile, consumer electronics, computing, and enterprise and hyper scale data centers. (1) In business to business marketing, customer experience drives loyalty and to sustain superior customer experience, B2B firms must provide purposeful leadership, distinguished brand values, employee engagement, and customer interaction. Firms that can build a systematic process gathering, analyzing data, and taking action on customer insights will be more successful in long term relationships. One of the qualities of SanDisk is that it believes in a customer focused cultural transformation vision that makes its B2B sales a success. As the case study made by IG states, SanDisk is a client centric organization, proactively providing support and solution to its customers by engaging. In its company culture, SanDisk is taking customer experience as a journey by identifying issues that are impacting customer’s business outcomes. By developing data capture, analysis and reporting system that integrates customer experience data and insight...
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...DANSHUI PLANT NO. 2 CONTENTS | PAGE | 1.0 Introduction | | 2.0 Main issue | | 3.0 Problem statement | | 4.0 Data Analysis 4.1 Breakeven analysis 4.2 Total cost variance analysis 4.3 Flexible budget performance analysis 4.4 Variance analysis | | 5.0 Strategies, interpretations, recommendations and justifications | | 6.0 Conclusion | | 7.0 References | | 1.0 INTRODUCTION Danshui Plant No. 2 in southern China has a one-year contract with Apple Inc. to assemble 2.4 million iPhones. In the first three months of the contract, the plant is unable to assemble as many phones as expected and is operating at a loss. The plant manager must analyze the budget and prepare a summary of monthly operations to help identify the source of performance problems. The plant has had difficulty hiring enough workers despite raising wages over 30%. In addition, the assembly process for an iPhone is complicated, with 140 steps involving over 100 components. The plant manager considers whether a flexible budget would be more useful for uncovering problems than the static budget currently being used. Wentao Chen, manager of Danshui was anxious upon reviewing the monthly operation’s performance for August as in the third month of the contract, production was only about 180,000 units. Meanwhile, Jianye Ma, the plant controller requested a summary of monthly operations for August as soon after the end of the month as possible. 2.0 MAIN ISSUE Danshui Plant manager Wentao...
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...Introduction Danshui Plant No.2 is a contract manufacturer locating in southern China and was assembles electronic products for companies wishing to save labor costs and they are using semiskilled labor for less than 1 dollar an hour. In August 2010, Danshui Plant No.2 in southern China has a 1 year contract in the period between 1 June 2010 and 31 May 2011 with Apple incorporation to assemble the Apple iPhone 4. Based on the contract, Danshui need to assemble 2.4 million iPhones within 1 year. However, Wentao Chen, manager of Danshui Plant No.2 was anxious about the plant is not able to assemble 2.4 million as their expected and is operating at a loss when the third month of the contract. Their current production was only 180,000 units per months compared to their planned monthly budget is 200,000 units. Therefore, manager was called the plant controller to analyze the budget and request a summary of monthly operations for August as soon after the end of the month as possible in order to identify the source of performance problem. Problem statement In the contract between Apple and Danshui Plant No.2, Danshui need to assemble 2.4 million iPhone within 1 year. This means that Danshui need to produce 200,000 units iPhone 4 per month but now in the third month of the contract they only produce 180,000 per month. Therefore, there are unable to assemble the iPhone 4 within 1 year this may because of they are lack of qualified labor. Danshui Plant No.2 are employs those semiskilled...
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