UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL PUNJAB

FALL 2022

Course Title: PRODUCTION MANAGEMENT

Course Code: MGMT 4753

Assignment No. 1

Course Instructor: Sarfraz Rashid

Section: A Program: BBA Date:09-11-2022

Time Allowed: 1 week Maximum Marks: 10

Program Objective:1,2,3 Course Objective:1,2 Course Learning Objective:1,2,3

TO BE FILLED IN BY THE STUDENT

Student Name: Mujeeb Zafar Registration No:L1f19bbbam006 Sr. No:

Page 1 of 7 Quiz
 CASE STUDIES Cougar Mountain:

 Those of you who are skiers or snowboarders know that some resorts have
“high-speed” chair lifts. These lifts are called “detachable” because the chair
detaches from the main cable just before loading people. Once the
passengers are “on board,” the chair reattaches to the main cable and
“rockets” to the top at a much faster speed than the traditional “fixed-grip”
counterparts that remain firmly attached to the main cable. Cougar
Mountain, a medium-sized and profitable ski resort, currently has a
traditional fixed-grip quad lift that takes guests from the main lodge at the
bottom of the mountain up to the peak. While it prides itself on the quality of
its terrain and friendly service, Cougar Mountain’s owner, Jessica Powder, is
concerned that the traditional (a.k.a., slow) lift will start to deter its
established guests from returning year after year. It is time for it to consider
replacing the traditional lift with a high-speed quad. Jessica asked her chief
operating officer, Doug Bowl, to collect some data on the current lift and the
proposed new one. Once he had the data, listed in Table 2.6, he met with
Jessica and Mark Ketting, who is responsible for Cougar’s sales and
advertising. Mark immediately started the conversation by saying, ,
“Customers are going to love that their ride time will be cut in half by the
new lift. But there must be a mistake in Doug’s data. If the new lift doubles
the speed at which skiers travel up the mountain then it must be that it can
unload more skiers at the top at a faster rate! Shouldn’t the unloading
capacity double?” Doug responded, “I think the table is correct because from
what I have observed, people are not able to load onto a detachable lift any
faster than on a fixed-grip lift.” Jessica jumped in, “Doug, assuming you are
right, and I am not sure you are, does that mean the only difference between
a fixed-grip and a detachable lift is that one moves faster than the other?”
 Who do you think is correct, Mark (the unload capacity should be twice as
high) or Doug (the two lifts have the same capacity)?
 Can you give a response to Jessica—is there any other difference between
the two lifts?

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Q#1: Who do you think is correct, Mark (the unload capacity should be twice
as high) or Doug (the two lifts have the same capacity)?

Ans: I think Doug is correct that the “two lifts have the same capacity”.

Reason why: Capacity should remain same because no of boarding person

remain same in both type of lift .First most similar remarks is that when ski hills
declare a new fixed gripped lift is, "Why didn't you put in a high-speed lift instead?"
So I took some time to discuss the differences between these two types of lifts and
why some resorts across the Midwest choose fixed gripped chairlifts rather than
detachable high speeds .The following differences make it clear that;

1. Planning Criteria. Different ski areas have different planning criteria, but

at Cougar Mountain  the criteria is a nine minute ride. If a lift is shorter than 4,300
feet, it’s a perfect candidate for a fixed grip chair. And, depending upon the terrain, a
longer ride can also be desirable, if it gives skiers and riders a needed rest.

2. Mountain Capacity. While many high-speed lifts are high-capacity, they don’t

have to be. According to Victor Cougar Mountain   has many low-capacity, high-
speed lifts. As he puts it, “We want to deliver people to the top fast, but we don’t
want to overload the terrain.” Fixed grip or detachable, planners make a conscious
decision about how to disperse skiers.

Q#2: Can you give a response to Jessica—is there any other difference
between the two lifts?

Ans: Yes, I give response to Jessica because there are huge differences
between these two lifts.
Pros/Cons: Cost:
The first, the probably more obvious element at play, is cost. As you could probably
guess, highspeed lifts are much more expensive when compared to their fixed
gripped counterparts. How much more expensive? Well, that depends on the
installation, but at least double the cost but typically even more than that.

For example, in 2017, Giants Ridge installed two quad lifts, one a high speed and
the other quad was a fixed grip. At the time of installation, the fixed-grip cost about
1.4 million dollars to install versus the high-speed, around 3.5 million dollars.

As you can imagine, that's a hard bill to swallow for a small ski resort. Would you
rather have two, maybe even three lifts, or just one highspeed?

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Pros/Cons: Maintenance:
But that's not where the increased costs stop because high speeds are much more
expensive to maintain throughout their service life. Given their more complex
terminals and components, high-speed lifts require more expensive parts and
maintenance, making them more costly to operate throughout their life.

Giants Ridge Mountain Operations Manager, Benjamin Bartz, estimated that they
spend about five times the money to maintain their highspeed lift compared to their
fixed-grip quad. But it doesn't even stop there.

Because high-speed lifts are more complex machines, they require more
mechanical and electrical knowledge to maintain and repair, which is harder to find in
today's labor market. These staff members also come at premium wages.

And you might be thinking, we'll ya, but highspeed lifts move more people up the
hill… but what if I told you they didn't.

Pros/Cons: Uphill Capacity

Uphill capacity is a term used to measure how many skiers a lift can move up the hill
in a given hour. This figure assumes perfect loading and no stoppages. But believe it
or not, a highspeed quad can move just as many people uphill in an hour as a fixed
gripped quad.

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And this might seem like it doesn't make any sense, but it all starts to come together
when you think about it logically. Although highspeed lifts move almost twice the
speed as fixed grip chairs, they cannot fit as many chairs on the line due to the
increased speed.

For example, at Giants Ridge, their fixed-grip quad has 100 chairs versus their
highspeed, which has only 50 chairs. That said, the uphill capacity of both of these
quads is the same at roughly 2400 skiers per hour.

Now, this assumes full lift speed, perfect loading, and no stoppage, and as we all
know, this is more common among fixed-grip chairlifts, but you get the idea -
highspeed lifts don't necessarily move more people up the hill, but they do more
them faster. And this can be both a pro and con.

Pros/Cons: Moving Skiers Faster

This speed is a massive benefit to skiers and riders on the less crowded days. They
can lap chairs in roughly half the time of a fixed-grip chairlift, gaining more laps and
vertical feet. But on really crowded days, the increased speed creates more crowds
in line and on the hill.

These crowds form because high-speed lifts have fewer chairs but move the same
amount of people per hour - meaning skiers are spending more time waiting or on
the hill instead of riding the chairlift.

For example, if we had 400 skiers skiing the fixed-grip quad at Giants ridge, we
would be able to fit roughly 200 of them consistently going uphill on the lift, which
would leave about 200 skiers waiting in line or on the hill.

If we compare that to having 400 skiers skiing the highspeed quad, we would be able
to fit roughly 100 of them consistently going uphill on the lift, leaving 300 waiting in
line or on the hill. So 100 extra skiers compared to the fixed grip lift.

Now to counter-argue this point, it's rare that ski hills are cranking out maxim uphill
capacity outside of just a couple of days a year, but when you look at this from an
owner's standpoint - you can start to see why fixed grips make a little more sense for
smaller hills.

Pro/Cons: Terminal Size

Page 5 of 7 Quiz
And speaking of smaller hills, one thing many don't realize is that the terminals of a
highspeed lift are much larger when compared to a fixed grip lift. The increased size
is due to the added components needed to remove the chairs from the haul line in
the terminal.

Swinging on back over to Giants Ridge - if we look at their lower terminal for their
fixed-grip quad, it measures about 35ft in length with the lift shack and about 32ft
wide. Riding over to their highspeed quad, this measures about 70ft long and 50ft
wide. This means the Highspeed terminal is almost three times the square footage
per terminal. Given how tight a lot of our smaller ski hills can be - highspeed
terminals would sometimes just not fit or dominate the top of the hill.

If a smaller were to install a highspeed, they might even have to level off land at the
top of the hill to make room for the unloading terminal, possibly knocking off some
critical vertical feet. Hey, every foot counts!

This is not a concern for some of our larger resorts, but it is something many people
don't think about when they see high speeds.

Pro/Cons: Impact of Installing a Highspeed

Another element that many skiers forget about is how installing a highspeed can
change the dynamic of a ski hill. For example, if a ski hill has just one highspeed lift
or receives its first highspeed lift - this will naturally cause more skiers and riders to
ski that lift and the area it services. This would then cause other areas to be less
skied, and the area with the high speed will see increased traffic.

This increase in traffic could be good, but it could also be bad. A few things ski areas
have to consider are; do we have enough snowmaking on those runs that will see
more traffic? Do we need to widen runs to accommodate a more significant flow of
skiers? Are our buildings and infrastructure able to handle that increased flow?

And even as silly as this sounds, will this base area highspeed make the ski hill look
more crowded than there is? Because I mean perception is everything.

Final Thoughts
So as you can see, there is a lot more that goes into choosing a lift than many of us
think about. High speeds are incredible for high-traffic ski areas that have the space
and financials to justify them, but the truth is - a lot of Midwest ski hills wouldn't gain
enough to justify such an investment.

Page 6 of 7 Quiz
But there you guys have it, a few reasons why Midwest hills tend to install fixed grip
lifts over highspeed detachable. Massive shoutout to Bennijmain at Giants Ridge for
helping me throw this together. But until next time, I hope all of you have a great
week, pray for snow, and we'll see you out there!

REFRENCE

https://www.midwestskiers.com/post/fixed-grip-highspeed-why-so-many-midwest-hills-go-fixed

Page 7 of 7 Quiz