Midterm Review

Question 1

operations strategy

Answer 1

setting broad policies and plans for using the production resources (operations function) to support the firm’s long term competitive strategy
- a pattern of decision-making
-reflected by competitive priorities & operations decisions

Question 2

competitive priorities in operations strategy

Answer 2

-cost
-quality
–superior
–consistent
-delivery
–delivery speed
–product development speed
-flexibility
–customization
–variety

Question 3

trade offs

Answer 3

-traditionally, they occur in providing:
–lowest cost (highest efficiency)
–high variety (different products/services)
–rapid delivery (least time to fulfill orders)

-operations processes usually make some degree of sacrifice in these areas to achieve better results in others

-new tech and approaches can help to mitigate the degree of trade-off

Question 4

key operations management decisions: product/service design

Answer 4

what is offered to customers and how is it designed or delivered

Question 5

key operations management decisions: quality management

Answer 5

how is quality defined (eg, superior performance and consistency) and what practices are implemented to achieve the desired quality level (eg, total quality management)

Question 6

process capacity design

Answer 6

what activities are incl to produce a product and how are they performed (eg, job shop, assembly line)? how many units can be produced and when is more capacity needed

Question 7

location selection

Answer 7

where should facilities be built (eg, domestic vs foreign) and should there be multiple or just one

Question 8

layout design

Answer 8

how should the facility be arranged

Question 9

HR and job design

Answer 9

how many employees needed and what skill level

Question 10

supply chain management

Answer 10

who should our suppliers be, what is the supplier relationship, and how do we evaluate our suppliers

Question 11

inventory

Answer 11

when should inventory be ordered (eg, after a time period or at certain levels)

Question 12

scheduling

Answer 12

when do we produce the product (eg, make to order vs make to stock)

Question 13

maintenance

Answer 13

when do we maintain the equipment (eg, repair as required or preventive maintenance)

Question 14

process strategy

Answer 14

-determining how to produce a product or provide a service
-follows a continuum

Question 15

project

Answer 15

-unique output for each iteration
-very high variety (so only key resources like managers, key personnel) are maintained over time, other resources rented
-reliance on skilled workers

Question 16

job shop

Answer 16

eg. cake line
-low volume, high variety - highly customized
-produces products according to customer specification
-non specialized equipment (ie, general purpose)
-make to order
-less automation (ie, more training)
-easy to measure capacity (depending on availability of workers)

Question 17

batch process

Answer 17

-eg, pastry line
-relatively stable product line, produced in periodic batches
-products created to producers specifications
-moderate volume
-moderate automation/ simple automation
-limited specialization equipment; can still be used on a variety of outputs
-moderate flexibility
-capacity change capability is moderate

Question 18

line flow

Answer 18

-high volume;
-low variety (standard, repeat products
-facilities often assembly lines; tend to be characterized by modules
-sequence process
-highly specialized equipment; workers may have narrow skills
-make to stock

Question 19

continuous flow

Answer 19

-few or one product (lowest variety)
-very high volume
-typically commodity products
-long continuous flows; few changeover req; difficult & expensive to start and stop the process
-highly capital intensive
-very high automation
-non custom
-low flexibility
-difficult to expand/change capacity