BEC 6 Flashcards
List the five process management activities.
- Design
- Modeling
- Execution
- Monitoring
- Optimization
List the elements of PDCA.
- Plan
- Do
- Check
- Act
List the benefits of process management.
- Efficiency
- Effectiveness
- Agility
Define: Outsourcing.
Outsourcing is generally defined as the contracting of services to external providers. Examples might include a payroll service or even a call center to provide support or back office services for a fee. A contractual relationship exists between the business and its outsource provider.
Define: JIT and the underlying concept of JIT
Just-in-time (JIT) management anticipates achievement of efficiency by scheduling the deployment of resources just in time to meet customer or production requirements.
The underlying concept of JIT is that inventory does not add value. The maintenance of inventory levels purely produces wasteful costs. Reducing inventory by ensuring that resources arrive only if they are needed (just in time for use) is the idea behind JIT.
Define: Demand flow
Demand flow manages resources using customer demand as the basis for resource allocation. Demand flow contrasts with resource allocations based on sales forecasts or master scheduling.
Define: Theory of constraints
Theory of constraints anticipates that organizations are impeded from achieving objectives by the existence of one or more constraints. The organization or project must be consistently operated in a manner that either works around or leverages the constraint.
What are the five steps in the theory of constraints?
- Identification of the constraint
- Exploitation of the constraint
- Subordinate everything else to the above constraint
- Elevate the constraint
- Return to the first step
What is Six Sigma?
Six Sigma anticipates the use of rigorous metrics in the evaluation of goal achievement. The program is a continuous quality-improvement program that requires some specialized training. Six Sigma expands on the Plan-Do-Check-Act model of process management and logically anticipates methodologies to improve current processes and develop new processes,
In Six Sigma, what is DMAIC?
Existing product and business process improvements (DMAIC):
- Define the problem
- Measure key aspects of current process
- Analyze data
- Improve or optimize current processes
- Control
In Six Sigma, what is DMADV?
New product or business development (DMADV):
- Define design goals
- Measure CTQ (critical to quality) issues
- Analyze design alternatives
- Design optimization
- Verify the design
Define: Project management
Project management consists of five major processes carried out by a project manager tasked with balancing the needs and expectations of various stakeholders against the organization’s constraints. The processes include authorization, planning, implementation, monitoring, and closing.
Define: Project charter
Project charter is a document that contains a business justification to fulfill the needs and expectations of initial stakeholders by carrying out a statement of work that will achieve the project objectives. It formally establishes a partnership between the requesting organization and the receiving organization.
Define the roles of project members.
Project members perform the project tasks, and their roles generally include:
- Carrying out the work and producing the deliverables that have been defined by the project manager. (Project members may be either individuals or organizations.)
- Understanding the work that must be completed; planning out the assigned activities in more detail if needed; completing the work within the budget, time, and quality expectations; and proactively communicating the status of their work to the project manager.
Identify the project sponsor and that role.
An individual at the executive level of management who is responsible for allocating funding as well as resources to the project.
Identify the executive steering committee and its role.
A steering committee is to a project what the board of directors is to a company; both groups direct, but they do not manage on a daily basis. A group of executive level people or external organizations charged with regular oversight of a project and taking responsibility for the business issues associated with a project.
The quality of deliverables should be SMART.
Define: SMART.
Specific Measurable Attainable Relevant Time-based
Describe the impact of globalization.
Globalization results in a deeper integration of the world’s individual national economies and makes those economies more interdependent.
What is a frequently used statistical measure for globalization?
World trade expressed as a percentage of GDP.
What is meant by shift in economic balance of power?
The ability of the world’s emerging nations to contend with the economies of the industrialized world for power, resources, influence, etc., is a change or shift in the economic balance of power from previous decades.
Balance of power theory holds that the states that are members of the global economy can either engage in balancing or bandwagoning behavior. An emerging nation might side with the United States or other industrialized nations in an embargo or other economic sanction (bandwagoning) or could join with other emerging nations in ignoring the leadership of the United States (balancing). The significance of their decision to change the impact of the embargo represents an important shift in the balance of economic power.