Exam 1 Study Guide

By making many burgers before customers ask for them, a fast-food restaurant is sacrificing the dimension of __________ and improving the dimension of __________ in the customers' utility function.

fit, timing

The many flavors of ice-cream offered by ice-cream parlors are reflective of the __________ of today's customers.

heterogeneous preferences

Beyond just executing the current way of doing things, operations management is about _______.

innovating its operations to shift the efficient frontier

You observe a bank and notice that a customer leaves the bank about every five minutes. These five minutes between customers are

the cycle time

C&A Museum has three million visitors per year. Each visitor spends an average of 1 hour in the museum. What is the average number of visitors in the museum on a given day if the museum is open 300 days a year from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.?

1250

There are five activities in making one toy: cutting, sewing, stuffing, assembling, and packaging. The activities have to be carried out in this order. The processing time of each activity is given below: Demand rate is 4 toys per hour. Currently we have worker A in charge of cutting, worker B in charge of sewing and stuffing, and worker C in charge of assembling and packaging. Which of the following strategies will increase the process capacity by balancing the line?

Moving sewing to worker A.

A community health system's nurse team consists of 12 nurses working in the local community. It takes a nurse 1.5 hours to complete one patient visit (including travel time and breaks). Nurses work 9 hours per workday.

a. 12 nurses × 9 hours / 1.5 hours per visit = 72 visits per 9hr work day b. 60 demand / 72 capacity = 83% utilization. c. (9 hours × 60 minutes) / 60 patients = 9.0 minutes per patient

C&A operates three eight-hour shifts to produce 600 gallons of a chemical per day. It requires 12 minutes of labor to produce a gallon of the chemical. What is C&A's takt time in minutes per gallon, and what is the target manpower?

2.4,5

On average, a patient spends 5 minutes waiting and 15 minutes being treated at C&A Clinic. The average number of patients waiting and being treated at the clinic is 50. What is the average flow rate of patients per minute on a typical day?

2.5

C&A Cruise owns 10 ships and wants to serve 2000 passengers each week. Each cruise ship can carry 500 passengers on each voyage. Assume ships always travel fully loaded. What is the longest average travel time on a voyage that allows C&A Cruise to meet its goal of serving 2000 passengers per week?

2.5 weeks

Over the course of a 24-hour period a call center handled 1200 different calls and at noon there were 50 callers "in" the center (talking or waiting to talk to a representative). The sixth caller of the day spent 2.5 minutes with a representative. Which of the given numbers is an inventory?

50 50 callers is an inventory.

Arrivals and departures to C&A Optometrist are collected and reported below: patient | Arrival | Departure 1: 7:45 | 8:45 2: 8:00 | 9:00 3: 10:00 | 10:30 4: 10:15 | 11:45 5:10:35 | 12 What is the average flow time of its patients in minutes?

65

There are four steps in the manufacturing process of a stuffed toy: cutting, stuffing, sealing, and packaging. There are two employees each for cutting and stuffing, but one each for sealing and packaging. The processing times of cutting, stuffing, sealing, and packaging are 8, 5, 3, and 2 seconds per toy. Assuming demand is unlimited, how long does it take (in seconds) to produce 2,000 toys starting with an empty system?

8,014 Process capacity = Min(2/8, 2/5, 1/3, 1/2) = 1/4. Flow rate = Min(Demand, Process capacity) = 1/4. Cycle time = 1/Flow rate = 1/0.25 = 4 seconds. Time to complete the first toy = 8 + 5 + 3 + 2 = 18 seconds. Time to complete the remaining 1,999 toys = 1,999 × Cycle time = 1,999 × 4 = 7,996 seconds. Time to make 2,000 toys = 7,996 + 18 seconds, or 8,014 seconds.

Job candidates are leaving an office every 50 minutes. Each candidate goes through three activities during the office visit: verification, written test, and interview. Verification takes 1 minute, the written test takes 40 minutes, and the interview takes 10 minutes. Assume there is only one resource dedicated to each activity. What is the utilization of the bottleneck resource?

80%

Guests are arriving at a party at a rate of 12 per minute. Each guest will be checked in, served a drink, and accompanied to his/her table by one receptionist, one bartender, and one usher respectively. Both the receptionist and usher can serve 10 guests per minute, whereas the bartender takes 5 minutes to serve one guest. Which resource is the bottleneck and what is the process capacity in guests per minute?

Bartender, 0.2

Little's Law is very general, so it is not necessary that flow rate and flow time use the same time units.

False

Which of the following is NOT one of the three system inhibitors? Waste Variability Fatigue Inflexibility

Fatigue

To which system inhibitor does the following customer complaint relate: "I wish they could add more cashiers in the busy hours"?

Inflexibility

Three restaurants are compared along the dimensions of responsiveness and cost performance, as shown below: Which of the following conclusions can be drawn about restaurant C?

It is inefficient.

__________ addresses the question of how a firm should produce the products or services its customers want.

Process analysis

Which of the following is most related to the operations management of an organic sheep farm? The color of their brand logo. The amount of land they rent for grazing sheep. The amount borrowed from a bank. The legal structure selected for the owners.

The amount of land they rent for grazing sheep

If the takt time is shorter than the cycle time, the process needs to run faster.

True

It is possible to increase process capacity by balancing a process.

True

Glenn Dental Clinic provides general dental care to residents of Philadelphia on a walk-in basis. The clinic has started receiving complaints from patients that the waiting time is too long and has asked you to investigate whether this problem can be solved. Upon arrival, customers receive a form from the receptionist and fill out relevant information such as personal health records and insurance provider. The form is then handed back to the receptionist who enters the information into the computer system for the dentist to see. A dental assistant then takes an X-ray from the patient. A dentist then performs the checkup and discusses any issues with the patient. Based on conversations with staff members at the clinic, you have obtained the following information on the process: It takes about 5 minutes for a customer to fill out the paperwork. Entry of information on the paperwork into the system and verification with past records takes another 5 minutes for a receptionist. There are two receptionists. It takes 15 minutes, on average, for the dental assistant to take an X-ray. There are three dental assistants on shift at any moment. There are 10 dentists working at the clinic. Each checkup takes 30 minutes, on average.

a. 50 labor content b. $1,150 per hour / 12 patients per hour = $95.83 per patient c. Capacity of Receptionist is 2 workers × 60 min/hr / 5 min patient = 24 patients per hour. Flow rate is 12 patients per hour because Dental assistant is the bottleneck. Utilization = Flow rate / Capacity = 12 / 24 = 0.5 d. 100% because Dental assistant is the bottleneck and the process is supply constrained. e. Labor utilization = Labor Content / (Number of workers × Cycle Time ) = 50 min / (15 × 5 min) = 0.67 f. The first two are added to Dental assistant, raising its capacity to 20 per hour, just like the Dentist. The third can be added to Dental Assistant or Dentist, which would leave the other resource as the bottleneck and the resulting capacity equal to 20 per hour. g. Capacity of an integrated dental assistant and dentist = 13 workers × 60 min/hr / 45 min per patient = 17.3 patients per hour. The capacity of the receptionist is 2 workers × 60 min /hr / 5 min / patient = 24 patients per hour. So capacity is determined by the bottleneck, which is the integrated steps.