Explain sustainability.
> For many months your prospective ERP customer has been analyzing the hundreds of assumptions built into the $900,000 ERP software you are selling. So far, you have knocked yourself out to try to make this sale. If the sale goes through, you will reach yo
> Airline passengers today stand in numerous lines, are crowded into small seats on mostly full airplanes, and often spend time on taxiways because of air-traffic problems or lack of open gates. But what gripes travellers almost as much as these annoyances
> Wayne Hills Hospital in tiny Wayne, Nebraska, faces a problem common to large, urban hospitals as well as to small, remote ones like itself. That problem is deciding how much of each type of whole blood to keep in stock. Because blood is expensive and ha
> As a buyer for a discount retail chain, you find yourself caught in a maelstrom. Just last month, your chain began selling an economy-priced line of clothing endorsed by a famous movie star. To be price competitive, you have followed the rest of the indu
> Johnstown Foundry, Inc., with several major plants, is one of the largest makers of cast-iron water and sewer pipes in the U.S. In one of the nation’s most dangerous industries, Johnstown is perhaps one of the most unsafe, with 4 times the injury rate of
> Although buried by mass customization and a proliferation of new products of numerous sizes and variations, grocery chains continue to seek to maximize payoff from their layout. Their layout includes a marketable commodity—shelf space—and they charge for
> Rochester Manufacturing Corporation (RMC) is considering moving some of its production from traditional numerically controlled machines to a flexible manufacturing system (FMS). Its computer numerical control machines have been operating in a high-variet
> What is competitive advantage and what is the theory of comparative advantage?
> Identify and explain the four strategies that operations managers of international and multinational firms use to approach global opportunities.
> Suppose you need to forecast the amount of relief aid needed following an earthquake. Which type of forecast do you think is the most appropriate: qualitative or quantitative? Why? Is collaborative planning, forecasting, and replenishment (CPFR) applicab
> What are some career opportunities in the operations management discipline?
> Why must companies practice corporate social responsibility?
> Distinguish between effective capacity and actual output.
> What is efficiency?
> What is effective capacity?
> What are the techniques available to operations managers to deal with a bottleneck operation? Which of these does not decrease throughput time?
> Describe the five-step process that serves as the basis of the theory of constraints.
> Darden Restaurants, the $6.3 billion owner of such popular brands as Olive Garden, Seasons 52, and Bahama Breeze, serves more than 320 million meals annually in its 1,500 restaurants across the U.S. and Canada. Before any one of these meals is placed bef
> Explain how net present value is an appropriate tool for comparing investments.
> Under what conditions would a firm want its capacity to lag demand? to lead demand?
> Distinguish between design capacity and effective capacity.
> Why is a process termed “out of control” if it temporarily produces less defectives?
> When is the desired mean, , used in establishing the centreline of a control chart instead of x?
> Explain how a person using 2-sigma control charts will more easily find samples “out of bounds” than 3-sigma control charts. What are some possible consequences of this fact?
> List some possible causes of assignable variation.
> List five steps in developing and using x-charts and R-charts.
> Can the X-bar chart be used to see if the number of defectives in a production timeslot is randomly distributed? Explain.
> Define “in statistical control.”
> Frito-Lay, the multi-billion-dollar snack food giant, produces billions of pounds of product every year at its dozens of U.S. and Canadian plants. From the farming of potatoes—in Florida, North Carolina, and Michigan—to factory and to retail stores, the
> Is a capable process a perfect process? That is, does a capable process generate only output that meets specifications? Explain.
> In the ideal world, we would like our processes to have a high process capability. Discuss.
> What is the purpose of acceptance sampling?
> What is a P-chart used for?
> Discuss the managerial issues regarding the use of control charts.
> What is a run test, and when is it used?
> What are the acceptable quality level (AQL) and the lot tolerance percentage defective (LTPD)? How are they used?
> Even if the population distribution is not normal (e.g., beta or uniform), can the distribution of sample means be normal?
> Define Cpk and explain what a Cpk of 1.0 means. What is Cp?
> In a control chart, what would be the effect on the control limits if the sample size varied from one sample to the next?
> In November 2018, John Wells, a customer service representative of Bayfield Mud Company, was summoned to the Houston warehouse of Wet-Land Drilling, Inc., to inspect three boxcars of mud treating agents that Bayfield had shipped to the Houston firm. (Bay
> List Shewhart’s two types of variation. What are they also called?
> How would you define high quality?
> In what way do you think the operations managers’ role may change with regards to quality in the future?
> Where would the checklists for employees be beneficial in a service company, such as McDonalds?
> Explain how improving quality can lead to reduced costs.
> Why are sustainable business practices important?
> How would you classify a company as green?
> List ISO 14000’s (a) five core elements, (b) advantages, and (c) environmental and economic benefits.
> Discuss the circular economy.
> Twenty years ago, Celebrity Cruises, Inc., decided to make a name for itself in the premium market by offering an “upscale experience at an intelligent price.” Evoking images of luxury similar to the Ritz-Carlton brand
> Identify three products or services that employ: a) Interchangeability b) Standardization c) Modular design
> What is the difference between virtual reality and augmented reality?
> Describe several applications of virtual reality in product design.
> Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of involving customers fairly early in the product design process.
> If the benefits of implementing CPFR are so evident, why are companies reticent to commit to this concept?
> Summarize in the form of a table the (a) characteristics, (b) strengths, and (c) weaknesses of the following qualitative methods: (i) jury of executive opinion, (ii) Delphi method, and (iii) market survey.
> Compare and contrast the Project Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) with the Critical Path Method (CPM).
> Read about Zara, the Spanish fashion retail company, and explain what is the best descriptive of Zara’s strategy approach. Explain some key operations management decisions that help Zara implement this strategy.
> How can an exponential smoothing model be made more responsive?
> Can the operations function on its own provide competitive advantage?
> Alaska Airlines, with nearly 100 destinations, including regular service to Alaska, Hawaii, Canada, and Mexico, is the seventh largest U.S. carrier. Alaska Airlines has won the J. D. Power and Associates Award for highest customer satisfaction in the ind
> Explain, citing appropriate examples, how flexibility saves time and stimulates response.
> Discuss the overlap amongst operations, marketing, and finance—the three functions basic to all organizations—for small and medium enterprises.
> Find statements of sustainability for a well-known company online and analyse that firm’s policy.
> How can the voice of the customer be incorporated in the design of products and services?
> What type of forecasting method would you recommend to a start-up retailer in terms of quantity, number of products, etc.? Would you use the same method after, say, 5 years of operation? Explain.
> While numerous trade-offs may be required during the life cycle of a project, the trade-offs between cost, time, and performance are considered essential. Discuss.
> The reasons for failure in productivity are cost reduction programs, which produce narrowness of vision. We must first let go of old-fashioned productivity as a goal: instead, we must set a new but powerful objective of competitiveness” (Skinner, 1986).
> What are the ethical dilemmas that project managers are faced with when dealing with projects?
> What is concurrent engineering and why is it adopted by companies?
> What is a project and why is it important is to understand the project environment?
> Founded in 1989, Arnold Palmer Hospital is one of the largest hospitals for women and children in the U.S., with 431 beds in two facilities totalling 676,000 square feet. Located in downtown Orlando, Florida, and named after its famed golf benefactor, th
> Frito-Lay, the massive Dallas-based subsidiary of PepsiCo, has 55 plants and 55,000 employees in North America. Seven of Frito-Lay’s 41 brands exceed $1 billion in sales: Fritos, Lay’s, Cheetos, Ruffles, Tostitos, Doritos, and Walker’s Potato Chips. Oper
> Describe the three paths of data mining.
> Consider Example G1. Think of three additional items for which the manager might want to check to ensure that the data are clean. Data from Example G1: Use of Conditional Formatting for Cleaning Data Vicky Luo, analytics manager for Thompson Industries,
> Describe the purpose of a heat map.
> What are some ways to use Excel to clean data?
> Describe the three major issues for data management and clean data.
> Describe the three categories of business analytics.
> What techniques can a firm use to move to a steeper learning curve?
> Explain the concept of the doubling effect in learning curves.
> What are the elements that can disrupt the learning curve?
> Why isn’t the learning-curve concept as applicable in a high-volume assembly line as it is in most other human activities?
> The popularity of Southwestern University’s football program under its new coach Phil Flamm surged in each of the 5 years since his arrival at the Stephenville, Texas, college. With a football stadium close to maxing out at 54,000 seats
> Refer to Example E2. What are the implications for Great Lakes, Inc., if the engineering department wants to change the engine in the third and subsequent tugboats that the firm purchases? Data from Example E2:
> What are the approaches to solving learning-curve problems?
> Identify three applications of the learning curve.
> What are some of the limitations of learning curves?
> What is meant by an unbalanced transportation problem, and how would you balance it?
> Develop a northeast-corner rule and explain how it would work. Set up an initial solution for the Arizona Plumbing problem analysed in Example C1. Data from Example C1: The Northwest-Corner Rule: Arizona Plumbing wants to use the northwest-corner rule t
> All of the transportation examples appear to apply to long distances. Is it possible for the transportation model to apply on a much smaller scale, for example, within the departments of a store or the offices of a building? Discuss.
> The more sources and destinations there are for a transportation problem, the smaller the percentage of all cells that will be used in the optimal solution. Explain.
> Which starting technique generally gives a better initial solution, and why?
> How do you know when an optimal solution has been reached?
> Celebrity Cruises, with its reputation as a leader in the “premium cruise” industry, decided in 2013 to become an industry leader in environmental sustainability as well. Celebrity’s “Save The Waves” program was initially set up to increase compliance wi
> Identify the three “steps” in the northwest-corner rule.
> What are the steps in the intuitive lowest-cost method?
> Explain what is meant by the term degeneracy within the context of transportation modelling.
> How can the transportation method address production costs in addition to transportation costs?
> Explain the significance of a negative improvement index in a transportation-minimizing problem.
