Chapter 02 – Competitiveness, Strategy, and Productivity
1. An example of a strategic operations management decision is the choice of where to
locate.
Chapter 02 – Competitiveness, Strategy, and Productivity
2. An example of an operational operations management decision is inventory level
management.
3. Government statistics are a good source of data about productivity trends in the service
sector.
4. An example of a tactical operations management decision is determining employment
levels.
Chapter 02 – Competitiveness, Strategy, and Productivity
5. Productivity is defined as the ratio of output to input.
6. Productivity is defined as the ratio of input to output.
7. Competitiveness relates to the profitability of an organization in the marketplace.
Chapter 02 – Competitiveness, Strategy, and Productivity
8. If people would only work harder, productivity would increase.
9. Tracking productivity measures over time enables managers to judge organizational
performance and decide where improvements are needed.
10. Productivity is directly related to the ability of an organization to compete.
Chapter 02 – Competitiveness, Strategy, and Productivity
11. A characteristic that was once an order winner may become an order qualifier, and vice
versa.
12. Outsourcing tends to improve quality but at the cost of lowered productivity.
13. Productivity tends to be only a very minor factor in an organization’s ability to compete.
Chapter 02 – Competitiveness, Strategy, and Productivity
14. An organization that is twice as productive as its competitor will be twice as profitable.
15. National productivity is determined by averaging the productivity measures of various
companies or industries.
16. Wage and salary increases that are not accompanied by productivity increases tend to
exert inflationary pressures on a nation’s economy.
Chapter 02 – Competitiveness, Strategy, and Productivity
17. Global competition really only applies to multi-national organizations.
18. A business that is rated highly by its customers for service quality will tend to be more
profitable than a business that is rated poorly.
19. Services often don’t fit simple yield measurements.
Chapter 02 – Competitiveness, Strategy, and Productivity
20. A mission statement should provide a guide for the formulation of strategies for the
organization.
21. The hierarchy and sequence of planning and decision-making is: mission, organizational
strategy, tactics, and operational decisions.
22. Strategy includes both organizational and functional strategies.
Chapter 02 – Competitiveness, Strategy, and Productivity
23. Organizational strategy should be determined without considering the realities of
functional area strengths and weaknesses since they can be changed to meet our strategy.
24. Mission statements should be as specific as possible regarding exactly how they will be
accomplished.
25. Improving efficiency will guarantee a similar improvement in productivity.
Chapter 02 – Competitiveness, Strategy, and Productivity
26. As long as we match a competitor on quality and price we will gain market share.
27. Environmental scanning is a search for events or trends that present either threats or
opportunities to the organization.
28. Standardization has the advantage of reducing variability.
Chapter 02 – Competitiveness, Strategy, and Productivity
29. Traditional strategies of business organizations have tended to emphasize cost
minimization or product differentiation.
30. The majority of our textbook deals with tactical operations that support established
functional strategies.
31. Quality-based strategies focus on customer satisfaction by ensuring that each product is
carefully and thoroughly inspected prior to delivery to prevent sending out bad product.
Chapter 02 – Competitiveness, Strategy, and Productivity
32. Time-based strategies focus on reducing the time required to accomplish certain activities,
such as new product development or delivery to the customer.
33. Functional strategies should be designed to directly support a firm’s mission.
34. Companies are required to use environmental scanning because of both federal and state
regulations regarding environmental pollution control.
Chapter 02 – Competitiveness, Strategy, and Productivity
35. The Balanced Scorecard is an attractive tool to use in the formation of strategy.
36. One major shortcoming of the Balanced Scorecard is that it doesn’t tend to take into
account sustainability issues.
37. Competitiveness doesn’t include:
Chapter 02 – Competitiveness, Strategy, and Productivity
38. Product design and choice of location are examples of _______ decisions.
Chapter 02 – Competitiveness, Strategy, and Productivity
39. Scheduling personnel is an example of an operations management:
40. Productivity is expressed as:
Chapter 02 – Competitiveness, Strategy, and Productivity
41. In the 1970’s and 1980’s in the USA, organizations concentrated on:
42. In the past, a significant reason why U.S. productivity was the highest in the world was
high:
Chapter 02 – Competitiveness, Strategy, and Productivity
43. Which of the following is not a factor that affects productivity?
44. Which of these factors affects productivity?