ISDS 3115 Final Exam Conceptual Practice Questions
The critical path of a network is the
longest time path through the network.
Among the ethical and social challenges facing operations managers are
maintaining a sustainable environment
Which of the following appears to provide the best opportunity for increases in productivity?
management
Which of the following is the best example of competing on low-cost leadership?
a firm produces its product with less raw material waste than its competitor.
The tracking signal is the
ratio of cumulative error/MAD
Time-series patterns that repeat themselves after a period of days or weeks are called
seasonality
A firm can effectively use its operations functions to yield competitive advantage through all of the following except
setting equipment utilization goals
Forecasts are usually classified into three categories including:
short-range, medium-range, and long-range
What is the amount of time an individual activity in a network can be delayed without delaying the entire project?
slack time
SWOT analysis refers to
strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats
Which of the following smoothing constants would make an exponential smoothing forecast equivalent to a naïve forecast?
1.0
Two car wash employees are paid $7.50 an hour each and are capable of washing 12 cars per hour, using $1 of water and $2 of soap and other cleaning supplies. What is the multifactor productivity of this operation?
12/ (7.5+7.5+1+2)= 12/18=0.667
A foundry produces manhole covers. If 120 covers are produced in a 10-hour shift, the productivity of the line is
120/10=12
A law firm has a staff of four employees working 8 hours a day for a total payroll cost of $640. In addition, the law firm has overhead expenses of $800 per day. Due to a recent software change, the same employees are able to process 14 case files a day rather than 8 using the old software system. What is the multifactor productivity of this revised operation?
14/ (800+640)=0.0097
Gibson Valves produces cast bronze valves on an assembly line. If 1600 valves are produced in an 8-hour shift, the productivity of the line is
1600/8=200
A Six Sigma program has how many defects per million?
3.4
Companies with the highest levels of quality are about how many times more productive than their competitors with the lowest quality levels?
5x
An insurance adjuster processes the claims of six policy holders in an eight hour work day. The adjuster uses $5 in gasoline and $3 in forms and office supplies to complete the work. What is her labor productivity?
6/8=0.75
The service sector makes up approximately what percentage of all jobs in the United States?
80%
Which of the following is correct? A) KSFs are often necessary, but not sufficient for competitive advantage. B) KSFs are often important, but not necessary for competitive advantage. C) KSFs are both necessary and sufficient for competitive advantage.
A) KSFs are often necessary, but not sufficient for competitive advantage.
A successful TQM program incorporates all of the following except: A) centralized decision-making authority B) benchmarking C) continuous improvement
A) centralized decision-making authority
Which of these statements regarding time-cost tradeoffs in CPM networks is true? A) crashing shortens the project duration by assigning more resources to one or more of the critical tasks. B) crashing a project often reduces the length of long-duration, but noncritical, activities. C) crashing is not possible unless there are multiple critical paths.
A) crashing shortens the project duration by assigning more resources to one or more of the critical tasks.
Which of the following is not part of value-chain analysis? A) financial management B) product research C) human resources
A) financial management
Which of the following is true? A) functional strategies are shaped by corporate strategy. B) corporate strategy is shaped by functional strategies. C) functional missions are combined to become the corporate mission.
A) functional strategies are shaped by corporate strategy.
Which of the following statements about time-series forecasting is true? A) it is based on the assumption that the analysis of past demand helps predict future demand. B) it is based on the assumption that future demand will be the same as past demand. C) because it accounts for trends, cycles, and seasonal patterns, it is always more powerful than associative forecasting.
A) it is based on the assumption that the analysis of past demand helps predict future demand.
Which of the following statements regarding PERT analysis is true? A) only critical activities contribute to the project variances. B) project variance is the sum of all activity variance. C) each activity has two estimates of its duration.
A) only critical activities contribute to the project variances.
Which of the following is false regarding control charts? A) values above the upper control limit always imply that the product's quality is exceeding expectations. B) control charts are built so that new data can be quickly compared to past performance data. C) control charts graphically present data.
A) values above the upper control limit always imply that the product's quality is exceeding expectations.
Which of the following uses three types of participants: decision makers, staff personnel, and respondents?
Delphi method
The EF of an activity is the:
ES + activity time
The person who introduced standardized, interchangeable parts was
Eli Whitney
The "father" of scientific management is
Frederick W. Taylor
Which of the following statements regarding Gantt charts is true?
Gantt charts are visual devices that show the duration of activities in a project.
What is the only internationally recognized quality standard?
ISO 9000
The LS of an activity is the:
LF - Activity time
Which time-series model assumes that demand in the next period will be equal to the most recent period's demand?
Naïve approach
A device or technique that ensures production of a good unit every time is a
Poka-yoke
A simple CPM network has five activities, A, B, C, D, and E. A is an immediate predecessor of C and of D. B is also an immediate predecessor of C and of D. C and D are both immediate predecessors of E. Given the above scenario, which of the following is correct?
There are four paths in this network.
The person who is most noted for his contributions to quality control in operations management was
W. Edwards Deming
Total quality management emphasizes
a commitment to quality that goes beyond internal company issues to suppliers and customers
"Making it right the first time" is
a manufacturing-based definition of quality
Which of the following will more likely locate near their customers?
a medical clinic
What is a Pareto chart?
a problem-solving tool to organize errors and identify solutions
Quality "lies in the eyes of the beholder" is
a user-based definition of quality
A strategy is
an action plan to achieve the mission
Dummy activities
are used when two activities have identical starting and ending events.
In a PERT network, non-critical activities that have little slack need to be monitored closely
because near-critical paths could become critical paths with small delays in these activities
The last four weekly values of sales were 80, 100, 105, and 90 units. The last four forecasts were 60, 80, 95, and 75 units. These forecasts illustrate:
bias (bias is a form of measurement error that occurs when forecasts are consistently greater or less than actual values)
Which of the following is least likely to be a cost leadership competitive advantage?
broad product line
The Beta distribution is used in project management to
calculate expected activity times
The ability of an organization to produce goods or services that have some uniqueness in their characteristics is
competing on differentiation
The degree or strength of a relationship between two variables is shown by the
correlation coefficient
Which of the following is the best example of a pure service? *Pure services are intangible
counseling
Which of the determinants of service quality involves having the customer's best interests at heart?
credibility
The fundamental purpose of an organization's mission statement is to
define the purpose of the organization
A forecast that projects a company's sales is a:
demand forecast
Which of the following is determined during the forward pass?
early start
Which of the following is not a typical service attribute?
easy to store
Building high-morale organizations and building communication networks that include employees are both elements of
employee empowerment
The ability of an organization to produce services that, by utilizing the consumers' five senses, have some uniqueness in their characteristics is
experience differentiation
Quantitative methods of forecasting include
exponential smoothing
One of Britain's largest children's hospital's working with Ferrari Racing is an example of
external benchmarking; external benchmarking occurs when one firm tries to model their performance off of other successful firms
Which of the four major categories of quality costs is particularly hard to quantify?
external failure costs
Which of the following international operations strategies involves a high degree of centralization?
global strategy
Which is not true regarding differences between goods and services?
goods tend to have higher customer interaction than services
Porter's Five Forces Model is used to evaluate competition based on which 5 aspects?
immediate rivals, potential entrants, customers, suppliers, and substitute products
The capital investment each year in the United States usually
increases
Productivity increases when
inputs decrease while outputs remain the same
Which of the following is not one of the basic functions of the management process?
inspecting
In which of the four major categories of quality costs would the costs associated with scrap and rework belong?
internal failure
For a given product demand, the time-series trend equation is 53 - 4X. The negative sign on the slope of the equation:
is an indication that product demand is declining
With respect to PERT and CPM, slack
is the amount of time a task may be delayed without changing the overall project completion time.
Which of the following statements concerning the operations management decision is relevant to services?
labor standards vary depending on customer requirements.
Three critical productivity variables are
labor, capital, and management
Which of the following OM strategic decisions pertains to the sensible location of processes and materials in relation to each other?
layout design
An activity map
links competitive advantage, key success factors, and supporting activities
Forecasts used for new product planning, capital expenditures, facility location or expansion, and R&D typically utilize a
long-range time horizon
Which of the following is not one of the 10 strategic OM decisions listed in the text?
marketing
The three major business functions necessary to all organizations are
marketing, finance/accounting and production/operations
The "four Ms" of cause-and-effect diagrams are
material, machinery, manpower, and methods
Standardization is an appropriate strategy in which stage of the product life cycle?
maturity
The primary purpose of the mean absolute deviation (MAD) in forecasting is to
measure forecast accuracy
Which of the international operations strategies involves a focus on cost reductions and high local responsiveness?
multi-domestic
The total of all outputs produced by the transformation process divided by the total of the inputs is
multi-factor productivity
Which of the following is a basic assumption of PERT?
no activity in the network must be repeated.
A firm producing a good is more likely to have which set of the following characteristics compared to a firm providing a service?
objective quality standards, tangible product, and located away from customers
Pareto charts are used to
organize errors, problems, or defects
An international business is a firm that
participates in international trade or investment
The three phases involved in the management of large projects are:
planning, scheduling, and controlling
An operations task performed at Hard Rock Café is
preparing employee schedules
ISO 9000 seeks standardization in terms of
procedures to manage quality
Which is not true regarding the differences between goods and services?
tangible goods are generally produced and consumed simultaneously; services are not
A regression model is used to forecast sales based on advertising dollars spent. The regression line is y=500+35x and the coefficient of determination is .90. Which is the best statement about this forecasting model?
the correlation between sales and advertising is positive.
Which of the following activities takes place most immediately once the organization's mission has been developed?
the functional areas develop their supporting missions.
Productivity measurement is complicated by
the lack of precise units of measurement
The difference between a multinational corporation (MNC) and an international business is that
the multinational firm owns or operates facilities in a variety of countries
The service sector has lower productivity improvements than the manufacturing sector because
the service sector is usually more labor intensive than the manufacturing sector
PERT analysis computes the variance of the total project completion time as:
the sum of the variances of all activities on the critical path.
Increases in productivity are difficult to achieve if
the task is more personal
Which of the following international operations strategies allows a firm to pursue all three operations strategies?
transnational strategy
WBS stands for which of the following project management tools?
work breakdown structure