Marcy's, Inc., operates department stores located primarily in the Southwest, Southeast, and Midwest. In its 2016 third-quarter report, the company reported Cost of Goods Sold of $2,100 million, ending inventory for the third quarter of $3,200 million, and ending inventory for the previous quarter of $2,800 million. Estimate merchandise purchases for the third quarter.

1. what are the unique operational challenges to delivering fresh meals? 2. why is speed of delivery so important for delivered meals? what variety of options contribute to this performance metric? 3. how could operations management concepts be utilized to improve the performance of freshly? 4. what are your typical product delivery times? what would be required to speed these up? 5. what are your delivery batch quantities? how could you reduce batch size and reduce delivery cost simultaneously using operations management concepts?