Revision Questions That Need Work

Question 1

Eight wastes associated with JIT?

Answer 1

Overproduction.
Waiting.
Excessive transportation.
Inappropriate processing.
Unnecessary inventory.
Unnecessary motion.
Defects.
Under-utilised employees.

Question 2

Benefits of JIT and Lean Thinking?

Answer 2

Cost savings.
Revenue increases.
Investment savings.
Work-force improvements.
Uncovering problems.
Reductions in waste and more sustainable operations.

Question 3

How to screen ideas for a new service design?

Answer 3

How difficult is it? -> what investment will be needed?
How worthwhile is it? -> what is the return for the operation?
What could go wrong? -> what are the risks if things go wrong?

Question 4

Four main aspects of Sasser et al’s model?

Answer 4

Service concept.
Service design and service delivery.
Service level.

Question 5

Aspects of service design.

Answer 5

Supporting facilities.
Facilitating goods.
Explicit services.
Implicit services.
Process design.
Service standards.

Question 6

Aspects of service delivery.

Answer 6

Performance of tangibles.
Quality of environment.
Speed of delivery.
Attitudes of staff.

Question 7

What are the differences between purchasing and supply management?

Answer 7

Purchasing management:
'Noncritical items'
A functional group as well as a functional activity.
Negotiating and contracting.
Supplier identification and selection.
Supply market research.

Supply management:
‘Strategic items’
Activities that have a major long-term impact on performance.
Work directly with suppliers to provide world-class performance.
Coordinate and collaborate with other functional areas.
Share information.

Question 8

Tangible benefits of ERP

Answer 8

Inventory reduction.
Personnel reduction.
Productivity improvement.
Order management improvement.
Financial close cycle reduction.
IT cost reduction.
Procurement cost reduction.
Cash management improvement.

Question 9

Intangible benefits of ERP

Answer 9

Information/visibility.
New/improved processes.
Customer responsiveness.
Integration.
Standardisation.
Flexibility.
Globalisation.
Supply/demand chain management.

Question 10

Challenges with ERP

Answer 10

On-time, on-budget implementations (90% are over budget).
Realisation of benefits takes time and usually requires implementation of advanced modules.
Massive amounts of testing needed to examine every function, different data combinations and appropriate data load.
Very expensive.
Issues of compatibility with existing systems.
It has a destabilising and disruptive effect on organisations.
Making existing organisational processes ‘fit’ with the ERP system.

Question 11

Different approaches to manage improvement.

Answer 11

BPR.
TQM.
Lean operations.
Six sigma.

Question 12

Business Process Reengineering (BPR).

Answer 12

Fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in critical, contemporary measures of performance, such as cost, quality, service and speed.
Customer-oriented viewpoint
BPR often enabled by new IT capabilities.

Question 13

How can BPR be used to design world-class processes?

Answer 13

BPR attempts to fundamentally alter processes within one or more of an organisation’s value chain activities in order to improve business performance.
It can also seek to improve effectiveness of relationships between value chain elements.
An organisation must fully understand its own value chain if it is to stand any chance of success with a BPR project.
An improvement of one part of the value chain could have a big impact on the rest of the chain.

Question 14

Triple bottom line

Answer 14

Social, environmental, economic.