Rochem Ltd
This case examines an equipment purchase decision as faced by a small food preservatives manufacturing company. The text is a description of a meeting between four managers concerned with the decision and presents their evidence to the management committee together with their personal views as to which of two alternative machines ought to be bought. No conclusion is reached in the case.

Some notes on the Rochem Ltd case exercise

The equipment purchase decision in general
It is unusual for facilities to be chosen on one criterion only. For example, if a piece of equipment is needed immediately and only one model or make is available without considerable delivery delays, then the criterion of availability has predominated. Normally, however, in addition to availability there are two other groups of criteria which are used: technical and financial.

Technical criteria
The most obvious technical criterion is capability that is, can the equipment do the job required of it? Certainly this criterion can be used as an initial screening test to eliminate obviously unsuitable equipment, but often there will be several which ostensibly meet the criterion. It may be that the capability requirements are difficult to define or predict, or that none of the alternative machines completely fulfils the requirements.
As well as absolute capability, variation in capability can be important, variation both in the sense of reliability, and the process variability in performance which the machine displays. The relative reliability of alternative machines is usually difficult to predict in advance of purchase.
However, if manufacturers are prepared to give service guarantees then this can alleviate some of the cost of repair although not the inconvenience of the facility not being available. Most processes exhibit some variability in performance and a certain