157. Andre is an outdoorsman whose love of hunting and fishing led him to start an e-tail
company specializing in hunting and fishing gear. He decided to locate his business near the
Ozarks in southwestern Missouri, partly because of low labor costs, but mainly because the area
offered excellent fishing and hunting opportunities, a low crime rate, and a pleasant climate.
Ken’s location decision was strongly influenced by quality of life considerations.
158. Amalia is an operations manager at a medium-sized service firm. Amalia is
recommending that her firm use the Internet to make its services more readily available to its
customers. Amalia’s recommendation reflects a growing trend in service-sector firms.
159. Solarsys Aeronautics was awarded a contract to build a large lab module that will be
attached to a new space station. The module is approximately 48 feet long, 17 feet in diameter,
and weighs over 60 tons. Solarsys should use an assembly-line plant layout to produce this
module.
160. Millwell Manufacturing redesigned its facility layout to group similar equipment and
functions together, and to allow flexibility in the sequence in which products are produced using
these functions. Millwell’s new layout is an example of the fixed-position layout.
161. Impact Computers wants to set up a planning system that enables it to integrate its
production and operations system with those of its suppliers. As its operations management
consultant, you explain that it needs a Material Requirement Planning (MRP) system.
162. Rysler Motors currently uses an ERP system to manage all of its production operations
and coordinate them with the other operations of the company. The company also wants to
implement a just-in-time (JIT) inventory system. Unfortunately for Rysler, ERP is incompatible
with JIT, so if it adopts the new inventory system it will have to abandon ERP.
163. Mypartz, Inc., is a major supplier of components used by Idle Time Gaming Systems. Idle
Time Gaming wants to implement a just–in-time inventory system. Mypartz should benefit from
this approach, since JIT systems greatly simplify the task of suppliers.
164. In an effort to improve the quality control process at the Southern Peanut Corporation,
management is introducing the importance of the Deming Cycle to employees. This suggests that
managers are aware of the need to find potential problems before they occur.
165. Northern States Electric is in the process of trying to achieve ISO 14000 certification.
Although the criteria for certification involve several milestones, we can be assured they will be
evaluated on the regularity and thoroughness of their environmental audits, and how well top
management reviews the firm’s adherence to policies that are environmentally friendly.
166. Star Performance, Inc., a sporting good company, and Fairview Community College are
interested in following the lead of other companies and implementing criteria that will lead
toward receiving the Baldrige Award. As their advisor, you emphasize that focusing on the
measurement of customer satisfaction is one important area where both will need to excel.
167. Antoine’s Creamery, an eastern seaboard ice cream producer, wants to license firms in
Europe to produce and sell its products. We can conclude that this is good strategy if it wants to
save the money it would cost to be ISO 9000 certified because the EU (European Union), unlike
U.S. firms, has not yet adopted these standards.
168. IMPUZZLED! Corporation produces jigsaw puzzles. The quality of its materials and the
calibration of machines that cut and fit pieces of a puzzle are extremely important if it is to
eliminate defects and meet customer specifications. If the company meets or exceeds Six Sigma
criteria, it will have no more than 60 defects per million puzzles.
169. A major purpose of the program evaluation and review technique (PERT) is to identify the
minimum time needed to complete a project.
170. The end result of PERT analysis is an estimate of the total cost of completing a project.
171. The critical path identified by PERT analysis is the sequence of tasks that can be
completed in the shortest amount of time.
172. PERT is a popular technique for analyzing the tasks involved to complete a given project,
estimating the time required to complete each task, and identifying the minimum time needed to
complete the project.
173. An advantage of PERT diagrams is that they are usually so simple to draw that a computer
is not needed.
174. In a PERT network, a critical path is the sequence of tasks that takes the longest time to
complete.
175. Compared to PERT networks, Gantt charts provide a more basic way to track progress on
a given project.
176. A Gantt chart is a bar graph showing production managers what projects are being worked
on and the stage of development at any given time.
177. The significance of the critical path on a PERT chart is that it identifies the least costly
method of producing a given product.
178. The first step in the PERT method is to assign a cost to each activity.
179. The PERT network provides a project manager with a plan that puts all the activities of a
project in the correct order that they must be accomplished, shows which activities can be
accomplished simultaneously, and, also gives the manager a good estimate of how long each
activity will take to complete.
180. Gantt charts will show the production manager if certain activities in the production
process are lagging behind their acceptable time of completion.
181. Brian is a construction manager who wants to determine how long a new project will take
to complete and which tasks in the project have the greatest potential for delaying the project.
The PERT Network model will help Brian answer these questions.
182. Casper is in charge of a complex project. He wants to see how all the different activities
involved in completing the project are related to each other. One way to illustrate these
relationships would be to construct a PERT chart.
183. In order to determine overall progress on her current project, production manager
Michelle often refers to a bar graph that shows what activities are being worked on, and how
much of each task has been completed on a daily basis. Michelle is using a Gantt chart.
184. Review the PERT Network below: If it takes 2 weeks for each activity (represented by a
box) to be completed, it can be determined that the boxes labeled with No.1 create the
critical
path
because this path of activities takes the shortest time to complete.
185. In recent years, the service sector of the U.S. economy has:
186. Manufacturing output in the U.S. continues to increase. The high unemployment of skilled
workers who previously worked in the manufacturing sector _______________________.
187. One strategy U.S. manufacturers have employed in order to become more competitive is:
188. To strengthen its manufacturing base in the future, U.S. will have to:
189. The resurgence of U.S. manufacturing firms in recent years can be credited to:
190. Production management is the traditional term used to describe all the activities
managers do to help their firms create:
191. Operations management is a specialized area in management that converts resources
into:
192. __________ is the specialized area of management that converts or transforms resources
into goods and services.
193. __________ is the creation of goods and services using land, labor, capital,
entrepreneurship, and knowledge.
194. The U.S. economy is now dominated by the _________ sector.
195. Operations management in the service sector is focused on creating:
196. Experts in operations management for service industry businesses stress:
197. The basic reason the term production management has been replaced by the term
operations management is that: