MIST 5750 TESTS + QUIZZES

In the "Lean Manufacturing" video we watched in class (i.e., envelopes stuffing), we learned that...

"One piece flow" usually leads to a better cycle time

How many flow objects should one strive not to go over in a given business process?

30

At Smoothie King in Atlanta, customers order (on average) 60 smoothies an hour. A smoothie takes about 5 minutes to make. How many smoothies are being made, on average, at any point in time?

5 smoothies

Which of the following statements is NOT true?

A BPMN diagram involving two or more pools is called a collaboration diagram A white-box pool is one where activities, events, gateways and data objects are represented (i.e., not hidden) A data object is for persistent data that must be kept beyond the duration of a process instance (Correct Response) BPMN allows for the state of a data object to be expressed in square brackets

Which of the following statements is NOT true?

A BPMN diagram involving two or more pools is called a collaboration diagram A white-box pool is one where activities, events, gateways and data objects are represented (i.e., not hidden) A data object is for persistent data that must be kept beyond the duration of a process instance(Correct Response) BPMN allows for the state of a data object to be expressed in square brackets

A BPMN diagram that features two or more pools is called ________. This diagram portrays how the two processes interact with each other.

A Collaboration diagram

What is "KAIZEN"?

A Japanese term used to describe continuous improvement.

Which of the following statements is NOT true?

A message flow can connect a task in a pool to the boundary of another pool The source of a message flow may be a task The target of a message flow may be a task A message flow can connect a task in a pool to another task in the same pool (Correct Answer)

Which of the following statements about BPMN is TRUE?

A sub-process cannot have intermediate interrupting events on its boundary. Start events can either throw or catch. End events with a trigger can only throw (not catch). (Correct Response) A terminate event can either be an intermediate or an end event. Signal events cannot be used to communicate between participants within a pool.

A task or a sub-process that is "global" (a.k.a. "call activity") can be invoked in other process models. It is represented by:

A thick border.

The only difference between calculating cycle time and calculating cost relates to the treatment of...

AND-blocks

John wants to set up a sub-process, but he is unsure which one to use. He knows that the sub-process will have multiple tasks that may be repeated and/or happen without a specific pattern. Which of the following is the sub-process that John should use?

Ad-Hoc Sub-process

The tilde symbol is used to represent a/an:

Ad-hoc sub-process

Which statement is FALSE about BPMN activities?

An activity is a piece of work performed in a business process. A sub-process is an activity that can be further decomposed in other activities. A task is an activity that is considered atomic within a given business process. A given activity can be located on the common boundary of two swimlanes. (Correct Response) An activity should be named "verb noun".

Which of the following statements is NOT true?

An activity should be named with a verb in the imperative form followed by a noun The oblique cut on a sequence flow indicates the default flow Within a given process instance, only one of the sequence flows following a splitting exclusive gateway can be activated A message flow can target a gateway(Correct Response)

When I accept a token on my input flow, I emit a token on each one of my output flows. Each of these tokens is received by an Intermediate Event which waits for its trigger; whichever of these Events is triggered first "wins", and the token passes through that Event - all the other waiting tokens are consumed. Who am I?

An event-based gateway

Which of the following does not follow BPMN conventions?

An inclusive gateway with only two outgoing sequence flows A parallel gateway followed by two outgoing sequence flows leading to sub-processes A parallel gateway followed by more than two outgoing sequence flows An event-base gateway followed by two outgoing sequence flows leading to sub-processes (Correct Response) An exclusive gateway with more than two outgoing sequence flows

Which of the following is FALSE about the "Timer Event"?

An intermediate timer event can be on the output flow of an Event-based gateway. An intermediate timer event can interrupt an activity if it is on its boundary. A standalone intermediate timer event represents a 'delay' in the flow of a process. Timer events can end a process. (Correct Response) Timer events can start a process.

Which of the following is NOT a process discovery method?

Asking domain experts to explain how they do their jobs Running simulations of the current process to determine where the bottlenecks are (Correct Response) Observing people at work Analyzing computer logs showing how the organization dealt with its clients or customers in the past Assembling all of the people associated with a process in the same room to discuss the process

Which of the following statements about BPM is FALSE?

BPM is about creating the best model to represent an organization's data. (Correct Response) BPM is a management practice that provides for governance of a business's process environment toward the goal of improving agility and operational performance. BPM stands for Business Process Management. BPM is a systematic approach to improving a company's business processes. BPM is a disciplined approach to identify, design, execute, document, measure, monitor, and control both automated and non-automated business processes.

Chapter 1 describes the differences between BPR and BPM. In a nutshell, it can be said that:

BPR should be seen as a subset of techniques that can be used in the context of BPM

Which is NOT an "ingredient" (i.e., building block) of a business process?

Decision point (gateway) Event Entity (Correct Response) Activity

According to Mr. Shindelman, what source of waste leads to many others, and is thus the most important

Defects

"Rejected Order" is a good name for a task

False

A delay can be represented by an intermediate timer event on the boundary of an activity.

False

A message flow may connect to a gateway, but only if this gateway is in another pool

False

Only one event can be attached to the boundary of an activity

False

TRUE or FALSE: "Six Sigma" is a quality control approach invented by Toyota.

False

TRUE or FALSE: A sequence flow can be used to communicate between two pools, if it is done via an intermediate message event.

False

TRUE or FALSE: A splitting event-based gateway must be paired with a merging event-based gateway.

False

TRUE or FALSE: An end event is always catching.

False

TRUE or FALSE: An event represents work performed in a business process.

False

TRUE or FALSE: If an intermediate event with a dashed double border is placed on the boundary of a task, this task will be aborted if this event is triggered.

False

TRUE or FALSE: Six Sigma improves efficiency, whereas Lean reduces variation in outputs.

False

TRUE or FALSE: The production process includes all the steps needed to acquire/procure material.

False

TRUE or FALSE: Transportation losses (a type of waste) have to do with unnecessary movement of people.

False

TRUE or FALSE: When a token arrives at an exclusive merge gateway (X-join), it is held until another token arrives.

False

True or False? A domain expert typically has good modeling skills

False

True or False? Process discovery is defined as the act of gathering information to create the "to be" model

False

Chapter 1 describes one of the breakthrough events for the development of BPM, i.e., how one company's purchasing process was redesigned to be as efficient as another company's purchasing process. The two companies were:

Ford and Mazda

Which of the following is NOT a challenge related to process discovery?

Fragmented process knowledge Domain experts typically think of processes on a case level Process analysts typically do not possess adequate facilitation skills (Correct Answer) Domain experts are typically not familiar with business process modeling languages

The "integrated" process puts together the processes of...

Fulfillment, Production, Procurement

Which statement about inclusive gateways is FALSE?

In some cases, all of the sequence flows outgoing from a splitting inclusive gateway may be executed. The circle (O) inside the gateway is the symbol representing an inclusive gateway. The merging inclusive gateway paired with a splitting inclusive gateway may have the X symbol within it. (Correct Response) An alternative notation to an inclusive gateway is the use conditional sequence flows. A sequence flow outgoing from a splitting inclusive gateway may lead to an event.

Which statement about the "default" sequence flow is FALSE?

It has a slash symbol on it. It does not make sense to have a default sequence flow on a sequence flow coming from an AND-split. It provides an automatic escape mechanism in case all other conditions evaluate to false. It will always be taken.(Correct Response) It is never required.

Which statement about cycle time efficiency is TRUE ?

It is equivalent to total cycle time minus waiting time It is calculated by the ratio: Cycle Time / Theoretical Cycle Time A value approaching 0 indicates that there is little room for improving the cycle time All these statements are false (Correct Answer) Its unit of measure is time (minutes, hours, etc.)

Which statement about Value-Added Analysis is FALSE...

It requires each activity to be classified as VA, NVA, or BVA Its goal is to minimize/eliminate BVA activities (Correct Response) NVA activities include handovers VA activities produce value to the customer It is a qualitative analysis technique

Which process discovery technique has the potential drawback of people behaving differently?

Observation

Which of the following statements best describes the "silo effect"?

People in different functional areas want to make their groups look better and will sometimes undermine the performance of other groups. People in different functional areas focus solely on their part of the process, without regard to the consequences for the other components of the process.(Correct Response) People in different functional areas specialize in different parts of the process, thus eliminating redundancy, which makes the overall process more efficient. Some functional groups in a process are unnecessary and are only included because of organizational politics. Some functional groups in a process are more efficient than other functional groups.

The BPM lifecycle involves the following activities in the following order:

Process Identification - Process Discovery - Process Analysis - Process Redesign - Process Implementation - Process Monitoring and Control

During which stage of the BPM Lifecycle is the "to be" model defined?

Process Redesign

Checking the "As-Is" process model for correctness and completeness involves checking

Semantic quality

The three types of process model quality assurance are

Syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic

What statement about the start and end events within a sub-process is TRUE?

The sub-process should start with one none start event, and have as many end events as necessary. (Correct Response) The start event is not needed, but the end event(s) is/are. They are not needed, except within an ad-hoc sub-process. An end event is not needed, but there should be at least one start event.

A "group" is a BPMN artefact that allows one to organize and highlight parts of a business process in order to increase its comprehensibility

True

A "token" can move along sequence flows, but not along message flows

True

If a start event has a trigger, it has to be of the catching type.

True

TRUE or FALSE: "Cycle time" includes waiting time.

True

TRUE or FALSE: If an activity (or task) has two input sequence flows, it is the same as if the activity (or task) were preceded by a merging exclusive gateway.

True

TRUE or FALSE: Intermediate boundary events are always catching, never throwing.

True

TRUE or FALSE: Little's Law only applies to stable processes, where average inflow = average outflow

True

TRUE or FALSE: The behavior of a throwing intermediate message event is the following: it receives a token, and then it emits a message to a different pool.

True

The association that links a text annotation to a task has no direction

True

Which of the following is NOT a source of waste according to Lean thinking?

Waiting. Unnecessary processing. Underproduction. (Correct Response) Inventory/Storage. All answers are sources of waste.

Which of the following techniques is useful to find the root cause of an issue?

Why-why Diagram

If an activity (or task) has two output sequence flows, it is the same as if the activity (or task) was followed by an:

XOR-join XOR-split AND-split (Correct Answer) AND-join

If an activity (or task) has two input sequence flows, it is the same as if the activity (or task) was preceded by a/an:

XOR-join (Correct Answer) AND-join AND-split XOR-split

The task type that is used to represent work done by a person with the assistance of automation is called:

user(Correct Answer) manual automated Incorrect Response hybrid