Key definitions [Lecture 1+2]

Question 1

Motivations for studying O&SC?

Answer 1

1. reduce costs
2. reduce risk exposure
3. increase customer satisfaction (high service level)
4. meeting sustainable/ESG goals

Question 2

What does ‘Opus’ mean?

Answer 2

The planning and execution of work

Question 3

What is meant by operations?

Answer 3

Creation and delivery of products and services to the customers”

Question 4

What are the three core functions of an organisation?

Answer 4

1. marketing and sales: communicating the organization’s
   products and services to its markets
2. product/service development: developing new and
   modified offerings
3. operations function: creation and delivery of products and
   services to customers

Question 5

Describe the process view

Answer 5

Inputs: tangible/ intangible items that flow into the process
from the environment.

Processes: a transformation that converts inputs into outputs.

Outputs: tangible/ intangible items that flow from the process
back into the environment.

Question 6

What constitutes an input?

Answer 6

• materials (natural or processed resources, parts and components)
• information
• customers
• money
• energy

Question 7

What are some examples of processes?

Answer 7

• changing location of materials (eg. parcel delivery process)
• changing physical properties of materials (e.g. in manufacturing), or customers (e.g. hairdressing process)
• to store materials (e.g. warehousing), or customers (e.g. hotel)
• Synthesize or analyse information (e.g. in accounting process)
• Transform physiological (e.g. in health care process) or
  psychological (e.g. in entertainment process) state of customers

Question 8

What can be considered an output?

Answer 8

outputs of some processes are just products, others just
services, but most a mixture of the two

Question 9

What are the five elements of the process view?

Answer 9

1. Input/ Output
2. Flow unit
3. Resources
4. Information structure
5. Network of activities and buffers

Question 10

What is a flow unit?

Answer 10

it may be a unit of input, such as a customer order, or a unit of output such as a finished product, or the value of input or output.

Question 11

List the four product attributes that we know

Answer 11

1. product cost (C)
2. product delivery time (T)
3. product variety (V)
4. product quality (Q)

Question 12

What is product cost?

Answer 12

total cost of ownership of the product/service to
the customer including the purchase price, service, maintenance, repair, insurance and disposal cost.

Question 13

What is product delivery time?

Answer 13

total waiting time for the customer before
receiving a product/ service.

Question 14

What is product variety?

Answer 14

the choices offered to the customer
–> Options, colours and styles offered for a particular model
–> Number of product lines and families.

Question 15

What is product quality?

Answer 15

how well the product works.

Question 16

what factors determine the quality of a product?

Answer 16

• features
• performance
• reliability (how consistently it works over time?)
• serviceability (how quickly it can be restored?)
• aesthetics

Question 17

What is the customer value proposition?

Answer 17

a set of benefits (along the four product attributes) that the firm offers to customers

Question 18

What are process competencies?

Answer 18

determine the product attributes that the
process is particularly good at supplying

Question 19

What are the four process competencies?

Answer 19

1. process cost (C)
2. process flexibility (flex)
3. process quality (Q)
4. process flow time (T)

Question 20

What is meant by process cost?

Answer 20

the total cost of producing and delivering
products and services.

Question 21

What is process flexibility? What are the two types?

Answer 21

1. scope flexibility = ability of the process to produce and deliver a range of products/services
2. volume flexibility = the ability of the process to deal with fluctuating demand.

Question 22

What is process quality?

Answer 22

the ability of the process to deliver quality
products

Question 23

What is process flow time?

Answer 23

the total time needed to transform a flow unit
from input to output

Question 24

What is process architecture?

Answer 24

Type of the resources used to perform the activities and their physical layout in the processing network

Question 25

What are characteristics of job shop architecture?

Answer 25

• Uses flexible resources to produce low volumes of highly customized variety products.

example: hospitals

• Similar resources are located together in a layout that is called a functional layout

Question 26

What are characteristics of flow shop architecture?

Answer 26

• Uses specialized resources that perform limited tasks with high precision and speed

example: Ford Model-T

• Resources are arranged according to the sequence of activities needed to produce a particular product, with limited storage space between activities, in a product layout.

Question 27

What are the process competencies for a job shop architecture?

Answer 27

• High flexibility
• long flow time
• high variable cost but often low initial investment
• high quality but may not be consistent

Question 28

What are some challenges to the job shop architecture?

Answer 28

• Complicated work flows
• slow material handling over long distances
• large volume of inventories
• difficult product tracing
• difficult product scheduling

Question 29

What are the process competencies associated with flow shop
architecture?

Answer 29

• Low flexibility
• short flow time
• low variable cost but often high initial investment (since volume is high, the unit price is often low)
• consistent quality

Question 30

Operations strategy

Answer 30

a specific plan of action to reach a particular objective

Question 31

What is a market-driven strategy?

Answer 31

A firm starts with key competitive
priorities and then develops processes to support them

Question 32

What is a process-driven strategy?

Answer 32

A firm starts with a given set of process competencies and then identifies a market position that is best supported by those processes.

Question 33

What are trade-offs?

Answer 33

a giving up of one thing in
return for another

Question 34

What is the efficient frontier?

Answer 34

the smallest curve that contains all current industry positions