MBA 6040 Key Points
Chapter 4
3D printing and additive manufacturing can rapidly produce prototypes or unique products from a 3D digital design. Rather than replace traditional manufacturing it will complement it. Product designs can be transmitted and products can be printed where they are needed.
Chapter 3
3D printing, or additive manufacturing is useful for creating product prototypes. The speed and flexibility of this new technology enhances product design opportunities.
Chapter 10
A forecasting method should be selected on the basis of five factors: user and system sophistication, time and resources available, use or decision characteristics, data availability, and data pattern
Chapter 5
A front office service is defined by simultaneous production and consumption. This makes it possible to store a service for later use, and a service often must be located near customers, with the exception of technology-delivered services such as communication and electricity. The customer is part of the service process during production and may introduce inefficiencies, but at the same time sales opportunities
Chapter 7
A kanban system is used to pull parts through the production system. A fixed number of containers is provided for each part, thus limiting the amount of work-in-process inventory. The pull system can also be applied in service operations by providing only what is needed when it is needed by the customer.
Chapter 7
A lean system requires cross-trained workers who can perform multiple tasks. A flexible workforce will require changing the way workers are selected, trained, evaluated, and rewarded
Chapter 6
A prerequisite to process-flow analysis is definition of the system to be analyzed. Systems definition requires isolation of the system of interest from its environment by defining a boundary, customers, outputs, inputs, suppliers, and process flows.
Chapter 9
A process is capable when it can consistently meet its specifications with high probability. this requires that the specification width (USL-LSL) is greater than the process variation width for a process that is centered.
Chapter 11
Aggregate planning is concerned with matching supply and demand over the medium time range. There are many options or factors for managing or changing supply and demand
Chapter 5
Back office services can be buffered form the uncertainty introduced by customers and therefore can be designed for higher efficiency
Chapter 10
Big data analytics are allowing firms to develop more sophisticated forecasts, using both internal and external data. Big data analytics requires data, computing capabilities, and expertise.
Chapter 11
Both economies and diseconomies of scale should be considered in setting an optimal facility size. The type of facility selected is focused on product, market, process, or general-purpose needs
Chapter 10
CPFR is a method used to share and improve forecasts between customers and suppliers along the supply chain and thereby reduce forecasting errors
Chapter 10
Causal forecasting analytics include regression, econometric models, input-output models, and simulation models. These methods are used in an attempt to establish a cause-and-effect relationship between demand and other variables. Causal methods can help in predicting turning points in time-series data and are therefore most useful for medium-to-long range forecasting
Chapter 9
Companies are now combining lean and six sigma process improvement approaches. While these approaches both start with current customer needs, they are different in their objectives, organization, methods, and types of projects. However, they are complementary in seeking process improvement and can be used in an integrated fashion
Chapter 3
Concurrent engineering uses overlapping phases for product design rather than a sequential approach. Typically, an NPD team is formed with representation from all major functions (marketing, engineering, operations, and finance/accounting) to ensure cross-functional integration.
Chapter 5
Customer contact depends on the duration and degree of interaction between the provider and customer. Generally, high-contact services are performed in the front office; low-contact services are performed away from the customer in the back office. In addition to contact, the degree of uncertainty introduced by the customer will have an impact on efficiency within the service system
Chapter 10
Different decisions require different forecasting methods, including the following in operations: process design, capacity planning, aggregate planning, scheduling, and inventory management. Some of the decisions outside of operations that require forecasts are long-range marketing programs, pricing, new product and new service introduction, cost estimating and capital budgeting. The available methods may be classified as qualitative, time series, and casual methods
Chapter 12
Dispatching is used to decide on the priority of jobs as they pass through the factory or service process. Various dispatching rules can be used to decide which job or activity to process next at each work center.
Chapter 4
Environmental concerns are a major challenge related to process design. when making decisions about processes, firms must consider whether they will develop structural processes to prevent or control pollution or use pollution practices to manage these matters. Process decisions must account for plans to recycle and remanufacture products.
Chapter 9
Every function in the company can benefit from the application of quality control and improvement. Other functions outside operations, and suppliers and customers outside the company, will also benefit when quality control and improvement principles are used.
Chapter 11
Facilities decisions are long-range in the hierarchy of capacity decisions. A facility strategy should be implemented rather than a series of incremental facility decisions. A facilities strategy answers the questions of how much, how large, where, when, and what type of capacity is needed.
Chapter 12
Finite capacity scheduling is used to schedule multiple jobs through a number of different work centers. The jobs are scheduling in a manner similar to Gannt charting except that each work center may have multiple machines (or resources). In finite schedule, efforts are made to improve job flow through bottlenecks by splitting jobs, alternative routings, overtime, and other methods.
Chapter 8
Five dimensions define service quality: tangibles, dependability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy. These measures can be obtained by surveying customers.
Chapter 4
Focused operations are used to separate products and processes that have different requirements in terms of the production process or the markets served. Each type of process or product family should be assigned to a different facility or plant-within-a-plant
Chapter 10
Four of the most important qualitative methods are Delphi, market surveys, life-cycle analogy, and informed judgement. These methods are most useful when historical data are not reliable when predicting the future. Qualitative methods are used primarily for long-or-medium range forecasting involving process design, facilities planning, and marketing programs
Chapter 12
Gantt charting is the simplest for of schedule. It is used to schedule jobs one at a time according to the resources available. Gantt charting will determine the waiting time of each job, job completion dates, resource (machine) utilization, and the makespan of all jobs.
Chapter 8
ISO 9000 process certification is based on a set of standards meeting customer requirements and continuous improvement. It requires well-defined and documented procedures along with trained operators who implement them to ensure a quality process, a consistent quality product, and improvement.
Chapter 7
In manufacturing, smooth flow is ensured by a stable and level master schedule. This requires consistent daily production within the master schedule and mixed model assembly. Takt time matches the rate of output with the average demand rate in the market
Chapter 2
In many situations the basis of competition is not the firm but the entire supply chain. Supply chain strategy is an extension of operations strategy that considers not only the firm but also the strategies and capabilities of its supply chain partners
Chapter 9
It is preferable to use statistical process control instead of inspection whenever possible, because SPC is prevention-oriented. SPC can be used for internal quality control and achieving a certified-supplier status, which requires a stable production process
Chapter 7
Kaizen emphasizes continuous improvement. Kaizen events are used to implement lean thinking improvements quickly in one week or less on a particular process.
Chapter 7
Lean concepts, principles, and techniques can be applied to design, manufacturing, distribution, and the supply chain
Chapter 7
Lean thinking is a way of thinking about processes that includes five tenets: specify customer value, improve the value stream, flow the product or service, pull from the customer, and strive for perfection
Chapter 4
Mass customization is the ability to make a customized product at approximately the same cost as a mass-produced product. This can be done for some products by using flexible automation, robotics, modular design, and information systems. There are three types of mass customization: modular production/assemble-to-order, fast changeover, and postponement
Chapter 3
Modular design is used to minimize the number of different parts needed to make a product line of related products. This can be done by designing standard modules and considering only the combinations of options that have significant market demand.
Chapter 7
New supplier relationships must be established to make lean production successful. Frequent deliveries and reliable quality are required. Often, long-term single-source contracts will be negotiated with suppliers.
Chapter 1
Operations and Supply Chain Management focuses on decisions for the production, sourcing, and delivery of the firm's products and services. These decisions are intended to maximize firm profitability and the value inherent in goods or services delivered to customers throughout the entire supply chain
Chapter 1
Operations and Supply chain decisions are often cross functional in nature. Decisions may impact or be impacted by activities in other functions such as marketing and finance. Often, cross-functional teams are formed to undertake complex decisions.
Chapter 1
Operations and its associated supply chain produces and delivers goods or services deemed to be of value to customers in a global economy. Operations and Supply Chain management is responsible for the productivity, innovation and GDP growth in aggregate. Without operations and supply chain management a firm, industry and country cannot prosper
Chapter 9
Operations consists of a sequence of interconnected processes, each with its own internal customers. Critical points must be defined for inspection and measurement to control and improve these processes.
Chapter 2
Operations strategic decisions indicate how operations objectives will be achieved. Strategic decisions can be developed for each of the major decision areas (process, quality systems, capacity, inventory, and supply chain)
Chapter 2
Operations strategy consists of mission, objectives, strategic decisions, and distinctive competence. These four elements must be tightly integrated with one another and with other functions
Chapter 6
Process analytics is essential to process improvement. Little's Law relates inventory to throughput time and flow rate of a stable system. The bottleneck resource determines the capacity of the entire process.
Chapter 9
Process control charts should be considered for critical points in the inputs (by the suppliers), as a part of the process, and for the outputs. The critical control points are best identified in a flowchart of the process.
Chapter 6
Process flowcharting can be applied to materials flow, information flow, and customer flow. In manufacturing, a flow-process chart is created show materials flow. In services, a service blueprint is created to show how customers interact with service providers.
Chapter 6
Process flowcharting creates a pictorial description of a transformation process. The aim is to create flowcharts, or visual diagrams of a transformation process, that are easy to understand by people who many not be familiar with the underlying transformation process
Chapter 6
Process redesign is used for changing how a process is carried out. It is often cross-functional in nature and may require a complete overhaul of work methods, flows, and information systems.
Chapter 4
Process selection decisions are highly cross-functional in nature because they affect human resources, capital, information systems, and the ability of the firm to deliver products to the market. Therefore, all functions should be knowledgable about process choices and the impact of process selection on their particular functional area and the environment
Chapter 6
Process-flow analysis takes the flowchart and the measurements of a transformation process and seeks answers to relevant questions. These questions help highlight opportunities that can be implemented to improve the transformation process.
Chapter 3
Products should be designed from the start for manufacturability. This is done by considering design of the production process as a part of product design and utilizing a concurrent (simultaneous) engineering approach
Chapter 3
QFD is used to connect customer attributes to engineering characteristics. This typically is done through a technique called the house of quality that can be used for both manufacturing and services.
Chapter 8
Quality can both improve revenue and reduce costs. The cost o quality measures lack the conformance to customer requirements. Quality costs can be divided into control costs and failure costs. Control costs are due to prevention or appraisal. Failure costs may be due to internal or external failures
Chapter 9
Quality control is defined as the stabilization and maintenance of a process to produce consistent output. Continuous improvement can occur once a stable process is achieved.
Chapter 8
Quality improvement efforts fail when management does not lead by example and does not take a systems approach driven by customer needs.
Chapter 8
Quality is defined as meeting or exceeding customer requirements now and in the future. The four dimensions of product quality are quality of design, quality of conformance, the "abilities", and field service.
Chapter 7
Reducing lot sizes, setup times, and lead times is the key to decreasing inventories in a lean production system and ensures smooth flow. Service and administrative activities should also work toward a fast changeover from one customer to the next and reduced lead time.
Chapter 11
Sales and operations planning (S&OP), or aggregate planning, serves as the link between facilities decisions and scheduling. S&OP decisions set output levels for the medium range time range. As a result, decisions regarding workforce size, subcontracting, hiring, and inventory levels are also made. These decisions must fit within the facilities capacity available and are constrained by the resources available
Chapter 5
Service outsourcing and offshoring are trends that present opportunities and challenges. Offshoring often is used to obtain from widespread global locations, particularly for information or communications intensive services. A strategic approach should be taken to offshoring and outsourcing, not just chasing low-cost labor, since changing costs, quality, and reliable suppliers in the long-run should be considered.
Chapter 5
Services consist of bundles of services and goods, including explicit services, implicit services, and facilitating goods. it is important to provide the right mix of these three elements and not overlook the psychological (implicit) component of service
Chapter 9
Six Sigma is an organized and systematic approach to process improvement. It utilizes the five DMAIC steps: define, measure, analyze, improve, and control. Careful analysis using statistical tools is needed to identify the root causes of defects perceived by customers, analyze changes, and control the improved process
Chapter 8
Supplier certification is a good way to ensure that suppliers have a quality system in place to prevent defects from occurring.
Chapter 3
Supply chain collaboration in NPD is essential. This should be accomplished by collaborating with both customers and suppliers in the NPD process.
Chapter 11
Supply factors that can be changed by aggregate planning are hiring, layoffs, overtime, inventory, subcontracting, part-time labor, and cooperative arrangements. Factors that influence demand are pricing, promotion, backlog or reservations, and complementary products.
Chapter 2
Sustainable operations has become a critical objective and strategy. It should be approached by forming cross-functional teams that include suppliers. Measuring and reducing environmental, social, and economic impact in all phases of design, operations, and distribution are the path of action.
Chapter 5
Technology allows the automation of services for greater efficiency that can result in lower costs and more uniform quality. AI offers the prospect of providing some services that are indistinguishable from human service providers. Nevertheless, both AI and service employees will be needed depending on the type of service provided.
Chapter 8
The Baldridge Award recognizes companies that achieve a total quality system as defined and measured by the Baldridge criteria. The criteria have become the common definition for excellence in quality and performance excellence for US organizations
Chapter 3
The NPD process is often specified in companies as having three phases: concept development, product design, and pilot production/testing
Chapter 11
The amount of capacity planned should be based on the desired risk of meeting forecast demand. The capacity cushion is a decision that the firms must consider, determining whether they will use a large cushion and not run out of capacity or a small cushion with the possibility of a capacity shortage.
Chapter 4
The combination of product flow and type order fulfillment provides six types of processes. Selection from among these six requires consideration of market conditions, capital requirements, labor, and technology. Taking into account these factors, the process selection decision is always strategic and cross-functional in nature.
Chapter 2
The distinctive competence of operations should support the mission and differentiate operations from its competitors. Possible distinctive competencies include proprietary technology, embedded organization culture, and any innovation in operations that cannot be copied easily.
Chapter 7
The five lean tenets seek to eliminate waste by utilizing the full capability of workers and partners in continuous improvement efforts. Lean tools, or methods, are described for each of the five tenets.
Chapter 2
The objectives of operations are cost, quality, delivery, and flexibility. One of the four qualities is the order winner, the other three are order qualifiers
Chapter 2
The operations and supply chain strategy must be linked to the business strategy and other functional strategies, leading to a consistent pattern of decisions, unique capability, and competitive advantage for the firm
Chapter 2
The operations missions should be aligned with the business strategy. Possible missions for operations include low cost, fast new product introduction, fast delivery, or best quality.
Chapter 4
The order penetration point determines the point at which the customer order enters the production process. This is related to whether the process is designed to be MTS, ATO, or MTO.
Chapter 7
The plant layout in a lean production system requires much less space and encourages evolution toward cellular or group technology layouts
Chapter 6
The process view is the idea that a business is a horizontal processes that are interconnected with the objective of meeting customer needs.
Chapter 4
The product-process matrix provides a dynamic view of the process selection decision by considering the life cycle of both products and processes. Strategy is defined by a position on the matrix for the firm's product and process. The matrix helps provide coordination between marketing decisions about product and operations decisions concerning the process.
Chapter 2
The scope of operations and supply chain strategy has expanded to a global basis, particularly for businesses pursuing a global business strategy
Chapter 4
The second dimension of process is the type of order fulfillment: MTS, MTO, ATO. With MTS, the replenishment cycle of its inventory is separate from the customer order cycle. In contrast, the MTO process is set in motion by the customer orders and feared to delivery performance The MTS process provides standard products, whereas the MRO process is suited to customer orders. The ATO process makes subassemblies in advance for inventory and assembles them into a final product when ordered by the customer.
Chapter 5
The service delivery system matrix is formed by juxtaposing customer wants and needs in terms of customizing a service against the service delivery system. The combination of service package and service process design elements results in three main service types: customer-routed services, co-routed services, and provider-routed services. Each of these service types has different requirements for operations managers to meet.
Chapter 5
The service-profit chain indicates how value provided to the customer drives customer satisfaction and loyalty, which leads to revenue growth and profitability. External customer value is the result of employees who are productive, satisfied, and retained by the firm. These employees must be appropriately selected, trained, and rewarded. The service-profit chain indicates the crucial role of employees in delivering services and financial results.
Chapter 1
The supply chain is the network of manufacturing and service operations that supply each other from raw materials through manufacturing to the ultimate customer. The supply chain consists of the physical flow of materials, money, and information along the entire chain of suppliers, production, and distribution and the reverse supply chain of recycled and returned products and information.
Chapter 12
The theory of constraints (TOC) is aimed at making money by managing throughput, inventory, and operating expenses. The bottleneck resource is scheduled to increase throughput, while non-bottleneck resources are scheduled to keep the bottleneck busy.
Chapter 1
There are five key groupings of decisions in operation and supply chain management: Process Quality Capacity Inventory Supply Chain These decisions need to utilize analytics when appropriate and account for contingencies, or special situations, because a best practice may not be best in all circumstances
Chapter 4
There are five types of processes: Continuous, assembly line, job shop, batch, and project. The continuous and assembly line processes are suited to high-volume standard products that are prduced at low cost with limited flexibility. The batch and job shop processes are suited to low-to-moderate volume products that are customized or produced in a high variety. The disadvantage of batch processes is the jumled flow, which reduced the throughput and efficiency. The project process is best for unique or creative products that are made one at a time. It requires intensive planning and scheduling and generally results in costly products or services.
Chapter 9
There are seven quality tools that can be used to monitor quality, identify quality problems, and conduct root cause analysis when quality problems occur
Chapter 3
There are three ways to develop new products: market pull, technology push, and interfunctional. The interfunctional approach is usually the best since it includes both market and technological considerations in the new product design.
Chapter 11
There are two basic strategies for adjusting supply: the chase strategy and the level strategy. Firms can also use a combination of these two main strategies. A choice of strategy can be analyzed by estimating the total cost of each of the available strategies. Factors, other than costs, to consider are customer service levels, possible demand changes, the labor force, and forecasting accuracy
Chapter 8
There is a cycle of product or service quality -- from understanding customer needs through quality of design, production, and use by the customer. This cycle is controlled by specifying attributes, determining how to measure each attribute, setting quality standards, establishing a testing program, and finding and correcting causes of poor quality. Continuous improvement of the system through prevention of defects is the preferred approach.
Chapter 2
There is no one best strategy for all operations and their supply chains. The mission, objectives, strategic decisions, and distinctive competence depend on whether a product imitator, product innovator, or another strategy is being pursued by the business
Chapter 10
Time series forecasting is used to decompose demand data into their underlying components and to project the historical pattern forward in time. The primary uses are for short-to-medium forecasting for inventory, scheduling, pricing, and costing decisions. Some time series techniques are the moving average, exponential smoothing, mathematical models, and the Box-Jenkins method
Chapter 10
Two measures of accuracy in forecasting are bias and deviation. Both should be monitored routinely to control the accuracy of the forecasts obtained. For forecasting applications, tracking signal and MAD are two methods used to determine if bias and deviation are well controlled.
Chapter 8
Two quality pioneers, Deming and Juran, have taken somewhat different approaches to quality but also have much in common. Deming argues that management needs to change for quality to improve. He also advocated the aggressive use of statistical quality control techniques. Juran advocated the quality trilogy: planning, control, and improvement
Chapter 9
Using process quality control. periodic samples are taken from a production process. As long as the sample measurements fall within the control limits, production is continued. When the sample measurements fall outside the control limits, the process is stopped and a search is made for an assignable cause - operator, machine, or material. With this procedure, a production or service process is maintained in a continuous state of statistical control
Chapter 1
We identify several opportunities and trends facing operations and supply chain managers that are emerging and will be important in the future. These are sustainability, services, digital technologies, integration of decisions, and globalization of operations and the supply chain
Chapter 5
When services are not delivered as promised, the firm should provide quick and helpful service recovery. A service guarantee can be offered to ensure that the customer understands what is promised and what constitutes an error in service delivery. The service guarantee provides a way for operations to know exactly what is required.
Chapter 11
When timing capacity expansion, a firm can choose to be preemptive by building capacity sooner or wait and see how much capacity is needed
Chapter 12
Within the available resources, scheduling seeks to satisfy the conflicting objectives of low inventories, high efficiency, and good customer service. Thus, trade-offs may be implicitly or explicitly made wherever a schedule is developed. Because of the potential for conflicting objectives, cross-functional coordination is required for effective-scheduling.
