Business Process exam 2
Types of manufacturing processes
1) Job Order Systems - produce products as special orders. In some systems each order has one or more features that are different from those of any other order
Getting an autograph from a famous person represents which type of queuing system line structure? a. Single channel, single phase b. Single channel, multi-phase c. Multichannel, single phase d. Multichannel, multiphase e. None of the above
A
The main purpose of aggregate operations planning is to specify the optimal combination of _____. a. Workforce levels & on hand inventory b. On hand inventory & the cost of financing the inventory c. The strategic plan & the products available for sale d. The workforce level & degree of automation e. Operational costs & the cash flow to support
A
There are many applications of poka-yokes in service organizations. Which is one of the three T's used to classify poka-yokes? a. Task b. Time c. Teamwork d. Trust e. Talent
A
You have been placed in charge of a large project. Shortened communication lines are required to ensure quick resolution of problems as they arise. You recognize that the project is going to take a lot of time and require strong team pride, motivation and commitment from all team members. Which project management structure should you use? a. Pure b. Task force c. Matrix d. Functional e. PERT
A
What is project management?
A project may be defined as a series of related jobs usually directed toward some major output and requiring a significant period of time to perform. Project management can be defined as planning, directing, and controlling resources (people, equipment, material) to meet the technical, cost, and time constraints of the project. Although projects are often thought to be one-time occurrences, the fact is that many projects can be repeated or transferred to other settings or products. The result will be another project output. A contractor building houses or a firm producing low-volume products such as supercomputers, locomotives, or linear accelerators can effectively consider these as projects.
Service blueprinting and fail-safing
A technique for mapping an entire service system, so that the process can be analyzed, monitored, an
Aggregate planning techniques
Aggregate planning is an operational activity that does an aggregate plan for the production process, in advance of 2 to 18 months, to give an idea to management as to what quantity of materials and other resources are to be procured and when, so that the total cost of operations of the organization is kept to the minimum over that period.
According to Little's Law, as presented in the textbook, which can be used to estimate work-in-process inventory? a. Process time divided by cycle time b. Throughput rate times flow time c. Process velocity divided by flow time d. Setup time divided by throughput rate e. Value added time divided by
B
According to the textbook, which is an example of a finite population in a queuing system? a. People waiting to place their order at a fast food restaurant b. The faculty of a college department in line at the department's copy machine c. People waiting in line at an ATM d. Patients seeking help in a hospital emergency room e. Taxpayers calling the IRS for assistance
B
You are hired as a consultant to decide if your client should purchase a new, highly specialized, piece of equipment. The forecast of worldwide demand for the item to be made by this equipment is 15,000 units over the entire product life. The initial investment to acquire and install the equipment is $256,000. The variable cost to produce each unit will be $15 and the selling price for the finished product will be $30. Which best describes the situation the firm is facing? a. The company will recover its initial investment b. The company's total margin will be less than its investment c. It's a good investment d. The break-even point is lower than the 15,000 units the firm expects to sell e. All of the above
B
Structuring projects
Before the project starts, senior management must decide which of three organizational structures will be used to tie the project to the parent firm: pure project, functional project, or matrix project. We next discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the three main forms. Pure Project Tom Peters predicts that most of the world's work will be "brainwork," done in semipermanent networks of small project-oriented teams, each one an autonomous, entrepreneurial center of opportunity, where the necessity for speed and flexibility dooms the hierarchical management structures we and our ancestors grew up with. Thus, out of the three basic project organizational structures, Peters favors the pure project (nicknamed skunkworks), where a self-contained team works full time on the project. Advantages •The project manager has full authority over the project. •Team members report to one boss. They do not have to worry about dividing loyalty with a functional-area manager. •Lines of communication are shortened. Decisions are made quickly. •Team pride, motivation, and commitment are high. Disadvantages •Duplication of resources. Equipment and people are not shared across projects. •Organizational goals and policies are ignored, as team members are often both physically and psychologically removed from headquarters. •The organization falls behind in its knowledge of new technology due to weakened functional divisions. •Because team members have no functional area home, they worry about life-after-project, and project termination is delayed
A simple project listing of five activities, their predecessors and their respective time estimates are presented below. Activity Immediate Predecessor Time (days) A None 2 B A 2 C A 1 D B and C 3 E D 1 Using the critical path method (CPM), which activities in this project have slack? HINT: First find the critical path, then find the early and late start/finish times. a. A b. B c. C d. D e. C & E
C
Using the assembly-line balancing procedure, which is the required cycle time in minutes per unit if the daily production time is 480 minutes and the required daily output is 50 units? 𝐶=𝑃𝑟𝑜𝑑𝑢𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑇𝑖𝑚𝑒 𝑃𝑒𝑟 𝐷𝑎𝑦𝑅𝑒𝑞𝑢𝑖𝑟𝑒𝑑 𝑂𝑢𝑡𝑝𝑢𝑡 (𝑖𝑛 𝑢𝑛𝑖𝑡𝑠) 𝑃𝑒𝑟 𝐷𝑎𝑦 a. 0.104 b. 50 c. 9.60 d. 480 e. Cannot determine
C
Which, according to the textbook, of these costs are relevant for aggregate planning? a. Sunk costs b. Transaction costs c. Backordering costs d. Legal costs e. Inherent costs
C
A pure project is one for which self-contained teams work full time on the project. Which of these is an advantage of pure projects? a. Team members can work simultaneously on several project b. Functional area is a "home" after the project is completed c. There are duplicated resources d. Lines of communication are shortened e. Organizational policies and goals can be ignored
D
According to the textbook, which of these is considered a "pure" production planning strategy? a. Variable workforce, stable hours b. Lag demand c. Level playing field d. Stable workforce, variable hours e. Product warehouse
D
Project control charts
Gantt chart, sometimes referred to as a bar chart, showing both the amount of time involved and the sequence in which activities can be performed. Earned value management (EVM) is a technique for measuring project progress in an objective manner. EVM has the ability to combine measurements of scope, schedule, and cost in a project. When properly applied, EVM provides a method for evaluating the relative success of a project at a point in time. The measures can be applied to projects focused on either "revenue generation" or "cost," depending on the type of project. Project Tracking with EVM Consider the same project, except this time the project plan includes pre-defined methods of quantifying the accomplishment of work. At the end of each week, the project manager identifies every detailed element of work that has been completed, and sums the Budgeted Cost of Work Performed for each of these completed elements by estimating the percent complete of the activity and multiplying by the activity budgeted cost. Budgeted Cost of Work Performed (BCWP) may be accumulated monthly, weekly, or as progress is made.
Earned value management: includes all steps used in working the example in class
In a project layout, the product (by virtue of its bulk or weight) remains in a fixed location. Manufacturing equipment is moved to the product rather than vice versa. A workcenter layout, sometimes referred to as a job shop, is where similar equipment or functions are grouped together, such as all drilling machines in one area and all stamping machines in another manufacturing cell layout is a dedicated area where products that are similar in processing requirements are produced. assembly line is where work processes are arranged according to the progressive steps by which the product is made. continuous process is similar to an assembly line in that production follows a predetermined sequence of steps, but the flow is continuous such as with liquids, rather than discrete. The relationship between layout structures is often depicted on a product-process matrix similar
How production processes are organized
In a project layout, the product (by virtue of its bulk or weight) remains in a fixed location. Manufacturing equipment is moved to the product rather than vice versa. A workcenter layout, sometimes referred to as a job shop, is where similar equipment or functions are grouped together, such as all drilling machines in one area and all stamping machines in another. A manufacturing cell layout is a dedicated area where products that are similar in processing requirements are produced. An assembly line is where work processes are arranged according to the progressive steps by which the product is made A continuous process is similar to an assembly line in that production follows a predetermined sequence of steps, but the flow is continuous such as with liquids, rather than discrete.
Managing resources
In addition to scheduling each task, we must assign resources. Modern software quickly highlights overallocations—situations in which allocations exceed resources. To resolve overallocations manually, you can either add resources or reschedule. Moving a task within its slack can free up resources. Tracking Progress The real action starts after the project gets under way. Actual progress will differ from your original, or baseline, planned progress. Software can hold several different baseline plans, so you can compare monthly snapshots. A tracking Gantt chart superimposes the current schedule onto a baseline plan so deviations are easily noticed. If you prefer, a spreadsheet view of the same information could be output. Deviations between planned start/finish and newly scheduled start/finish also appear, and a "slipping filter" can be applied to highlight or output only those tasks that are scheduled to finish at a later date than the planned baseline.
Production processes
Production processes are used to make everything that we buy ranging from the apartment building in which we live to the ink pens with which we write. The high-level view of what is required to make something can be divided into three simple steps. The first step is sourcing the parts we need, followed by actually making the item, and then sending the item to the customer.
Work breakdown structure: Defining projects
Production processes are used to make everything that we buy ranging from the apartment building in which we live to the ink pens with which we write. The high-level view of what is required to make something can be divided into three simple steps. The first step is sourcing the parts we need, followed by actually making the item, and then sending the item to the customer. A key concept in production processes is the customer order decoupling point which determines where inventory is positioned to allow processes or entities in the supply chain to operate independently. Positioning of the customer order decoupling point is important to understanding production environments. Firms that serve customers from finished goods inventory are known as make-to-stock firms. Those that combine a number of preassembled modules to meet a customer's specifications are called assemble-to-order firms. Those that make the customer's product from raw materials, parts, and components are make-to-order firms. An engineer-to-order firm will work with the customer to design the product, and then make it from purchased materials, parts, and components.
Make-to-order production planning
Products that use standard components, but the final configuration of those components is customer-specific.
Aggregate planning example
Synchronized flow throughout the supply chain; it effect on costs, equipment utilization, employment levels, and customer satisfaction.
Line balancing
The assignment of work to stations in a line process so as to achieve the desired output rate with the smallest number of workstations
Appendix 6A: Break-even analysis
The choice of which specific equipment to use in a process often can be based on an analysis of cost trade-offs. There is often a trade-off between more and less specialized equipment. Less specialized equipment is referred to as "general-purpose," meaning that it can be used easily in many different ways if it is set up in the proper way. More specialized equipment, referred to as "special-purpose," is often available as an alternative to a general-purpose machine. For example, if we need to drill holes in a piece of metal, the general-purpose option may be to use a simple hand drill. An alternative special-purpose drill is a drill press. Given the proper setup, the drill press can drill holes much quicker than the hand drill can. The trade-offs involve the cost of the equipment (the manual drill is inexpensive, and the drill press expensive), the setup time (the manual drill is quick, while the drill press takes some time), and the time per unit (the manual drill is slow, and the drill press quick). A standard approach to choosing among alternative processes or equipment is break-even analysis. A break-even chart visually presents alternative profits and losses due to the number of units produced or sold. The choice obviously depends on anticipated demand. The method is most suitable when processes and equipment entail a large initial investment and fixed cost and when variable costs are reasonably proportional to the number of units produced.
Assembly-line design
The most common assembly line is a moving conveyor that passes a series of workstations in a uniform time interval called the workstation cycle time (which is also the time between successive units coming off the end of the line). At each workstation, work is performed on a product either by adding parts or by completing assembly operations. The work performed at each station is made up of many bits of work, termed tasks. The total work to be performed at a workstation is equal to the sum of the tasks assigned to that workstation. The assembly-line balancing problem is one of assigning all tasks to a series of workstations so that each workstation has no more than can be done in the workstation cycle time and so that the unassigned (that is, idle) time across all workstations is minimized. The problem is complicated by the relationships among tasks imposed by product design and process technologies. This is called the precedence relationship, which specifies the order in which tasks must be performed in the assembly process.
Work breakdown structure
The work breakdown structure (WBS) defines the hierarchy of project tasks, subtasks, and work packages. Completion of one or more work packages results in the completion of a subtask; completion of one or more subtasks results in the completion of a task; and, finally, the completion of all tasks is required to complete the project. A representation of this structure is shown in
The aggregate operations plan
What is concerned with setting production rates by product grou
Production planning
Which phase of production control determines the amount of all resources needed to produce a certain amount of goods and services?
Chase production planning for a make-to-stock environment
a sales and operations plan in which production is changed in each time period to match the sales forecast.
Network-planning models
best-known network-planning models were developed in the 1950s. The Critical Path Method (CPM) was developed for scheduling maintenance shutdowns at chemical processing plants owned by Du Pont. Since maintenance projects are performed often in this industry, reasonably accurate time estimates for activities are available The critical path of activities in a project is the sequence of activities that form the longest chain in terms of their time to complete. This is a simple project, but it will serve to demonstrate the approach. The following are the appropriate steps. 1.Identify each activity to be done in the project and estimate how long it will take to complete each activity 2.Determine the required sequence of activities and construct a network reflecting the precedence relationships
Waiting line models
can be useful when analyzing service systems.
Yield management
pricing the charging of different prices to maximize revenue for a set amount of capacity at any given time. For example, hotels in Austin cost more during the week of SXSW or during the F1 Race than at other times of the year.
