Offshoring is the practice of moving a business process to a foreign country but
retaining control of it.
If the schedule calls for the production of 120 units per day and 480 minutes of
production time are available per day, the maximum cycle time would be 4 minutes.
The ratio of labor cost per day to productivity, in units per day, is the labor cost per unit.
Mistakes stemming from workers’ inadequate training represent an assignable cause of
variation.
If a decision maker has to make a certain decision only once, expected monetary value
is a good indication of the payoff associated with the decision.
Labor specialization includes the development of specialized tools to reduce labor
costs.
A work system has five stations that have process times of 5, 9, 4, 9, and 8. What is the
process cycle time of the system?
A) 4
B) 9
C) 18
D) 35
E) none of the above
A local business owner is considering adding another employee to his staff in an effort
to increase the number of hours the store is open per day.
a. If the employee will cost the owner $4,000 per month and the store takes in $50/hour
in revenue with variable costs of $15/hour, how many hours must the new employee
work for the owner to break even?
b. The employee again costs $4000 and has agreed to work 120 hours. If variable costs
remain at $15/hour and revenue is uncertain with a 40% chance of being $40/hour, 35%
chance of being $20/hour, and 25% chance of being $35/hour should the owner hire the
employee?
Which of the following constitutes a major trend influencing office layouts?
A) downsizing
B) globalization
C) environmental issues
D) off-site employees
E) health issues
Balancing a work cell is done
A) before the work cell equipment is sequenced
B) as part of the process of building an efficient work cell
C) before takt time is calculated
D) so that each assembly line workstation has exactly the same amount of work
E) to minimize the total movement in a process layout
Which of the following is true regarding simulation?
A) Small problems can be done by hand.
B) Most simulations are computerized.
C) Real-world complications can be included in simulation models.
D) Simulation is most suitable where standard analytical models are too complex.
E) All of the above are true.
A simple CPM network has five activities, A, B, C, D, and E. A is an immediate
predecessor of C and of D. B is also an immediate predecessor of C and of D. C and D
are both immediate predecessors of E.
A) There are two paths in this network.
B) There are four paths in this network.
C) There are five paths in this network.
D) There are 25 paths through this network.
E) None of these statements is true.
Which of the following statements describes job rotation?
A) The job contains a larger number of similar tasks.
B) The job includes some planning and control necessary for job accomplishment.
C) The operator works on different shifts on a regular basis.
D) The operator’s schedule is flexible.
E) The operator is allowed to move, for example, from one type of CNC machine to the
other.
Infant mortality in electronics follows which kind of distribution?
A) normal
B) negative exponential
C) exponential
D) random
E) one-sided normal distribution
Which of the following sets of constraints results in an unbounded maximizing
problem?
A) X + Y >= 100 and X + Y =<50
B) X + Y >= 15 and X – Y =< 10
C) X + Y =< 10 and X >= 5
D) X =<10 and Y =< 20
E) All of the above have a bounded maximum.
Which of the following statements regarding fixed costs is true?
A) Fixed costs rise by a constant amount for every added unit of volume.
B) While fixed costs are ordinarily constant with respect to volume, they can ‘step”
upward if volume increases result in additional fixed costs.
C) Fixed costs are those costs associated with direct labor and materials.
D) Fixed costs equal variable costs at the break-even point.
E) Fixed cost is the difference between selling price and variable cost.
An organization’s process strategy
A) will have long-run impact on efficiency and flexibility of production
B) is the same as its transformation strategy
C) must meet various constraints, including cost
D) is concerned with how resources are transformed into goods and services
E) All of the above are true.
The objective of maintenance and reliability is to
A) ensure that breakdowns do not affect the quality of the products
B) ensure that no breakdowns will ever occur
C) ensure that preventive maintenance costs are kept as low as possible
D) maintain the capability of the system
E) ensure that maintenance employees are fully utilized
Quality circles empower employees to improve productivity by finding solutions to
work-related problems in their work area.
In a PERT network, non-critical activities that have little slack need to be monitored
closely
A) because PERT treats all activities as equally important
B) because near-critical paths could become critical paths with small delays in these
activities
C) because slack is undesirable and needs to be eliminated
D) because they are causing the entire project to be delayed
E) because they have a high risk of not being completed
A grill assembly takes 20 washers. Instead of listing these washers separately they are
grouped into a single kit for production. The bill of material for the washers is classified
as
A) “Pseudo”
B) Planning
C) Modular
D) Low-level
E) A and B
A crew of mechanics at the Highway Department garage repair vehicles that break
down at an average of = 8 vehicles per day (approximately Poisson in nature). The
mechanic crew can service an average of = 11 vehicles per day with a repair time
distribution that approximates an exponential distribution. The crew cost is
approximately $300 per day. The cost associated with lost productivity from the
breakdown is estimated at $150 per vehicle per day (or any fraction thereof). Which is
cheaper, the existing system with one service crew, or a revised system with two service
crews?
Which of the following statements is most appropriate with respect to a 70% learning
curve?
A) There will be a 70% decrease in direct labor per unit each time the production
volume doubles.
B) Each successive unit of production will take 70% of the direct labor of the previous
unit.
C) There will be a 30% decrease in direct labor per unit each time production volume
doubles.
D) Thirty percent of the production will be defective until full learning takes place.
E) None of the above is true.
The __________ strategy maintains a constant output rate, or work force level, over the
planning horizon.
Suppose that a service facility has an average line of 2 customers that must wait, on
average, 5 minutes for service. How many customers are arriving per hour?
What are the three possible results (or findings) from the use of control charts?
Mark’s Ceramics spent $4000 on a new kiln last year in the belief that it would cut
energy usage 25% over the old kiln. This kiln is an oven that turns “greenware” into
finished pottery. Mark is concerned that the new kiln requires extra labor hours for its
operation. Mark wants to check the energy savings of the new oven, and also to look
over other measures of their productivity to see if the change really was beneficial.
Mark has the following data to work with:
Were the modifications beneficial?
The flow and distance data in the table below were input into a layout software
program, and solved by “pairwise comparison.” That solution called for assignments
A-4, B-1, C-3, and D-2, with a total movement of 2430. Verify that result. Is that
solution optimal? Can you offer an improved solution? What is the total movement of
your alternate solution?
Why is it that many cost curves associated with maintenance rarely consider the full
cost of a breakdown?
A(n) __________ provides feedback to the capacity plan, master production schedule,
and production plan so planning can be kept valid at all times.
What are some of the benefits from using environmental teams for product design?