Operations Performance

Question 1

Social bottom line

Answer 1

the element of the triple bottom line that assesses the performance of a business in relation to the people and the society with which it has contact; and/or environmental mission and a legal responsibility to respect the interests of workers, the community and the environment as well as shareholders

Question 2

Economic bottom line

Answer 2

the part of the triple bottom line that assesses an organisation’s economic performance, usually in financial terms

Question 3

Environmental bottom line

Answer 3

the element of the triple bottom line that assesses an organisation’s performance in terms of how it affects the natural environment

Question 4

Triple bottom line

Answer 4

(also known as people, plants, and profit) the idea that organisations should measure themselves on social and environmental criteria as well as financial ones

Question 5

Agility

Answer 5

the ability of an operation to respond quickly and at low cost as market requirements change

Question 6

B Corps

Answer 6

an abbreviation for Benefit Corporations; those that have a clear and unequivocal social benefit

Question 7

Stakeholders

Answer 7

the people and groups of people who have an interest in the operation and who may be influenced by, or influence, the operation’s activities

Question 8

Performance objectives

Answer 8

the generic set of performance indicators that can be used to set the objectives or judge the performance of any type of operation; although there are alternative lists proposed by different authorities, the five performance objectives as used in this book are quality, speed, dependability, flexibility and cost

Question 9

Quality

Answer 9

there are many different approaches to defining this. We define it as consistent performance to customers’ expectations

Question 10

Speed

Answer 10

the elapsed time between customers requesting products or services and their receiving them

Question 11

Dependability

Answer 11

delivering, or making available, products or services when they were promised to the customer

Question 12

Product/service flexibility

Answer 12

the operation’s ability to introduce new or modified products and services

Question 13

Volume flexibility

Answer 13

the operation’s ability to change its level of output or activity to produce different quantities or volumes of products and services over time

Question 14

Delivery flexibility

Answer 14

the operation’s ability to change the timing of the delivery of its services or products

Question 15

Mix flexibility

Answer 15

the operation’s ability to produce a wide range of products and services

Question 16

Flexibility

Answer 16

the degree to which an operation’s process can change what it does, how it is doing it, or when it is doing it

Question 17

Quality-related costs

Answer 17

an attempt to capture the broad cost categories that are affected by, or affect, quality, usually categorized as prevention costs, appraisal costs, internal failure costs and external failure costs

Question 18

Productivity

Answer 18

the ratio of what is produced by an operation or process to what is required to produce it, that is, the output from the operation divided by the input to the operation

Question 19

Innovation

Answer 19

the act of introducing new ideas to products, services, or processes

Question 20

Polar diagram

Answer 20

a diagram that uses axes, all of which originate from the same central point, to represent different aspects of operations performance

Question 21

Mass customisation

Answer 21

the ability to produce products or services in high volume, yet vary their specification to the needs of individual customers or types of customer

Question 22

Efficient frontier

Answer 22

the convex line which describes current performance trade-offs between (usually two) measures of operations performance

Question 23

Trade-off theory

Answer 23

the idea that the improvement in one aspect of operations performance comes at the expense of deterioration in another aspect of performance, now substantially modified to include the possibility that in the long term different aspects of operations performance can be improved simultaneously