Questions from General Operations Management


Q: A gourmet burger shop has a daily demand for 250 burgers and

A gourmet burger shop has a daily demand for 250 burgers and operates for 10 hours. (a) What is the required cycle time in minutes? (b) Assuming that each burger has 7.2 minutes of work required, how...

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Q: Revisit the ‘Operations in practice’ example ‘Technology tracks customer flow

Revisit the ‘Operations in practice’ example ‘Technology tracks customer flow in retail operations’. Then visit a supermarket and observe people’s behaviours. You may wish to try and observe which are...

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Q: In an assembly operation for customized laboratory equipment the flow of materials

In an assembly operation for customized laboratory equipment the flow of materials through eight departments is shown in Table 7.2. Assuming that the direction of the flow of materials is not importan...

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Q: My flight to Stockholm would be late landing. We were in

My flight to Stockholm would be late landing. We were in a “stack” of planes circling above Brussels. Air traffic control had closed the runways for a short period at dawn, because of snow. Flights fr...

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Q: The assembler of customized laboratory equipment negotiates a long-term arrangement

The assembler of customized laboratory equipment negotiates a long-term arrangement to supply a simplified standard product to be sold to forensic laboratories worldwide. This product requires an asse...

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Q: A company that produces a wide range of specialist educational kits for

A company that produces a wide range of specialist educational kits for 5–10-year-olds is based in an industrial unit arranged in a simple layout of with six departments, each perfor...

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Q: A computer games developer is moving into new offices. The new

A computer games developer is moving into new offices. The new office has a floor space of approximately 300 square metres in the form 20 metres by 15 metres. The company has six departments, each as...

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Q: The operations manager of a specialist company assembling seabed monitors that recorded

The operations manager of a specialist company assembling seabed monitors that recorded pollution levels had a dilemma. ‘At the moment, we are producing around 40 seabed monitoring stations per year u...

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Q: It is a new job, as yet without a formal title

It is a new job, as yet without a formal title, but one commentator has called it being a ‘robot wrangler’. They even proposed a possible job advert: ‘Wranglers wanted for growing fleets of robots. Yo...

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Q: Modern aircraft fly on automatic pilot for most of their time.

Modern aircraft fly on automatic pilot for most of their time. Most people are blissfully unaware that when an aircraft lands in mist or fog, it is a computer that is landing it. When auto pilots can...

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