Operations Management Exam 1 MC

Which of the following is not true about the systems approach?

A systems approach concentrates on efficiency within subsystems.

A popular visual tool for planning and scheduling simple projects, and for monitoring progress, is the:

Gantt Chart

Project management differs from management of more traditional activities mainly because of: I. its limited time frame. II. its unique, defined set of activities. III. the requirement for use of the appropriate resources. IV. the need for planning and execution.

I and II

Which of the following are advantages of PERT and CPM? I. It is visual. II. It is automatically updated. III. Activities that need to be watched closely can be identified.

I and iii

Which of the following most involves coordinating the activities among all the elements of the business including its suppliers and distributors?

Supply Chain Management

Increasing the service offered to the customer makes it more difficult to compete on the basis of:

price

The ratio of good output to quantity of raw material input is called

process yield

technology choices can have a major impact on:

productivity, customer satisfaction, quality, and costs

Dealing with the fact that certain aspects of any management situation are more important than others is called:

recognition of priorities

Which of the following stages is that one in which the project's expected costs, benefits, and risks are assessed?

initiating

Time-based approaches of business organizations focus on reducing the time to accomplish certain necessary activities. Time reductions seldom apply to:

internal audits

The basis for use of the beta distribution in PERT is:

its features that make it attractive in practice.

Core competencies in organizations generally do not relate to:

sales price

At which point does crashing of a project cease?

when the cost to crash equals or exceeds the benefit of crashing

A hierarchical listing of what must be done in a project is called a:

work breakdown structure (WBS).

A productivity increase in one operation that does not improve overall productivity of the business is not

worthwhile

Budgeting, analysis of investment proposals, and provision of funds are activities associated with the ________ function.

Finance

which of the following is true?

Functional strategies are shaped by corporate strategy.

The fact that a few improvements in a few key areas of operations will have more impact than many improvements in many other areas is consistent with the:

Pareto Phenomenon

Business organizations consist of three major functional areas which, ideally:

Support one another

Which of the following is not a benefit of using models in decision making?

They force the decision maker to take into account qualitative issues such as personalities and emotions.

If one organization is better able than most to respond to changes in demands or opportunities, we say that organization exhibits higher:

agility

In "crashing" a project, a manager will generally focus on activities which:

are on the critical path and are the least costly to crash.

The process of comparing outputs to previously established standards to determine if corrective action is needed is called:

controlling

Unique attributes of firms that give them a competitive edge are called:

core competencies

Shortening activity durations is called:

crashing

The advantage a precedence diagram has over a Gantt chart is:

crashing

Which of the following is not a characteristic of service operations?

easy measurement of productivity

Which of the following is not among the chief reasons organizations fail?

emphasizing labor productivity in labor-intensive environments

Which of the following is determined as a direct result of computing the earliest starting and finishing times for the activities of a project network?

expected project duration

Measurements taken at various points in the transformation process for control purposes are called:

feedback

Which is not an area of significant difference between manufacturing and service operations?

forecasting demand

Which of the following is not one of the six key decisions in project management? I. Selecting the project team II. Deciding on the project manager's title III. Managing and controlling project resources IV. Deciding which projects to implement V. Selecting the project manager

ii

In project network analysis, "slack" refers to the difference between:

latest and earliest times

In a project network, the critical path is the sequence of activities which has the:

longest duration

Marketing personnel and product designers must work closely with operations to successfully develop and produce new products because operations personnel can best judge how ________ new product designs will be.

manufacturable

Which of the following factors would tend to reduce productivity?

more inexperienced workers

In the probabilistic approach to project network analysis, the time estimate annotated tm for any activity is the:

most likely time

An organization's mission statement serves as the basis for:

organizational goals

A sequence of activities that leads from the starting node to the finishing node is called a:

path

In the execution phase of a project's life cycle, activities are guided by decisions that were made in the ________ phase.

planning

Competitiveness doesn't include:

profitability

Which of the following is not a key factor of competitiveness?

size of organization

Product design and choice of location are examples of ________ decisions.

strategic

Which of the following refers to service and production processes that use resources in ways that do not harm ecological systems?

sustainability

The responsibilities of the operations manager include:

the creation of goods or provision of services