Southwest Airlines’ core competence is operations.
Blanket orders are a long-term purchase commitment to a supplier for items that are to
be delivered against short-term releases to ship.
A finite population waiting line model has an average service time T of 100 minutes and
an average time between service requirements U of 400 minutes; the service factor X is
0.25.
In statistical process control, the range often substitutes for the standard deviation.
The use of part-time workers as an aggregate planning option may be less costly than
using full-time workers, but may also reduce quality levels.
One reason to globalize is to learn to improve operations.
Which of these is not part of the planning files of a production planning and control
system?
A) a progress file
B) a work-center master file
C) an item master file
D) a routing file
E) All of the above are all part of the planning files.
Excess bags of basic commodities such as flour and sugar that are stored in a
restaurant€s kitchen represent which of the following wastes?
A) overproduction
B) queues
C) transportation
D) inventory
E) defective product
In a transportation problem, degeneracy means that
A) the problem was improperly constructed, and must be reformulated
B) the assumptions of the transportation model have not been met
C) the number of filled cells is too small to allow the calculation of improvement
indices
D) the total supply and the total demand are unbalanced
E) the number of origins is not equal to the number of destinations
The expected value with perfect information
A) equals EVPI € EMV
B) requires that each decision alternative have a known probability of occurrence
C) is an input into the calculation of the expected value of perfect information
D) is the average of the maximax and the maximin
E) none of the above
Which of the following is true regarding the average outgoing quality level?
A) An AOQ value of 1 is ideal, because all defects have been removed.
B) AOQ is always greater than AQL but less than LTPD.
C) AOQ rises (worsens) following inspection of failed lots.
D) AOQ is very low (very good) for extremely poor quality lots.
E) None of the above is true.
A manager who is conducting a time study now needs an accuracy of ±0.1 minutes,
rather than ±0.2 minutes as in the past. Because of this change in accuracy, the adequate
sample size becomes
A) one-fourth as large
B) one-half as large
C) twice as large
D) four times as large
E) none of the above
A facility is trying to set up an assembly line, and has identified the various tasks, and
their relationship to each other, as shown in the following table. They wish to produce
600 units per day, working two 8-hour shifts.
a. Draw a network diagram of precedence relationships.
b. Compute the required cycle time per unit in seconds.
c. Compute the minimum number of workstations required to produce 600 units per
day.
d. Balance this line using longest processing time.
e. What is the efficiency of the line obtained in part d?
Which of the following statements about aggregate planning is true?
A) The development of mathematical models has allowed aggregate planners to
discontinue use of trial-and-error methods.
B) In aggregate planning, back orders are a means of manipulating supply while
part-time workers are a way of manipulating product or service demand.
C) A pure chase strategy allows lower inventories when compared to pure level
scheduling.
D) Disaggregation turns the master production schedule into an intermediate term
master plan.
E) All of the above are true.
A transportation model fills one-half of its cells under the optimal solution. Which of
the following most closely describes the number of sources compared to the number of
destinations?
A) 1 to 1
B) 2 to 2
C) 3 to 3
D) 4 to 3
E) 4 to 4
What theory states that you should allow another firm to perform work activities for
your company if that company can do it more productively than you can?
A) theory of competitive advantage
B) theory of core competencies
C) theory of comparative advantage
D) theory of outsourcing
E) theory of offshoring
The number of kanbans should be equal to
A) one
B) the ratio of (demand during lead time + safety stock) to container size
C) ½ of the EOQ
D) one full day€s production divided by the EOQ
E) none of the above
Effective use of MRP and other dependent demand models does not require which of
the following?
A) master production schedule
B) bill of materials
C) inventory availability
D) lead times
E) cost of individual components
A grocery store is attempting to implement a kanban system. Which of the following
would not be an application of kanbans?
A) An empty doughnut tray signaling the bakery to produce 2 dozen glazed doughnuts.
B) A line of 5 people in the Chinese department signaling the department to heat 5 Crab
Rangoon.
C) A red light on top of the cashier’s lane signals that the cashier needs additional
change replenished.
D) The meat department stocking up on turkeys before Thanksgiving.
E) All of the above are kanban applications.
A network has been crashed to the point where all activities are critical. Additional
crashing
A) is unnecessary
B) is impossible
C) is prohibitively expensive
D) may require crashing multiple tasks simultaneously
E) can be done, but all critical tasks must be reduced in duration
Cross-docking is
A) seldomly placing an item in storage, it is sent straight from incoming to outbound
B) using docks for either incoming or outbound shipments
C) using a single dock to unload and then load the same truck
D) all of the above
E) none of the above
A firm’s demand in the next four quarters (its aggregate planning horizon) is forecast to
be 80, 50, 40, and 90 units. Last quarter, the firm produced 60 units. If it uses level
scheduling, the firm will.
A) hire workers to permit production of 65 units per quarter for the next four quarters
B) hire 20 workers
C) have an increase in inventory of 20 units in the next quarter
D) have a decrease in inventory of 5 units in the next quarter
E) change its workforce each quarter so that inventory does not change
A product has three components, A, B, and C, with reliabilities of 0.95, 0.98, and 0.995.
Engineers intend to put a redundant component A that has reliability 0.70. With this
change, system reliability will
A) fall by 20%
B) fall by 10% or less
C) rise
D) cannot determine from the information provided
E) none of the above
Name the tools of process analysis and design. Describe them in a sentence or two each.
Is it possible for a product’s life cycle stage to affect its product strategy? In particular,
describe how one product in growth and another in maturity might have different
product strategies.
What are the 5Ss? Why does the list of the 5Ss sometimes have seven elements?
Describe the advantages and limitations of the transportation method for aggregate
planning.
Rapidly developing products and moving them to the market is referred to as
__________.
What is the link between focused processes and specialization? What kinds of focus are
possible?
Identify the three productivity variables used in the text.
A manufacturer of semiconductor “wafers” has been attempting to convert its
operations to practices more in keeping with JIT principles. The firm is now paying
much more attention to the transit time between one processing stage and the next. The
plant has a somewhat haphazard pattern of machine locations, partly because the
machines were purchased and installed at different times, partly from a shortage of floor
space, and partly from previous experiments with work cells. The bottom line is this:
there are four machines that perform a certain processing phase, and three machines
that perform the next phase. All units of a large class of wafers go through these two
phases. The table below displays the transit time, in minutes, from each machine of the
first phase to each machine of the second. Machine 3 is not really 100 minutes away
from machine B; the company has prohibited that combination because of quality
problems associated with that specific pairing. Supply and demand quantities are in
wafers processed per week. Develop a transit time minimizing solution for this firm.
What is the total transit time of this solution? Which machines are fully utilized? Which
machines have some capacity unused or requirements unfilled? Was the prohibition on
the 3-B combination honored?
