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business
production and operations management
Production And Operations Management 1st Edition McGraw-Hill Education India - Solutions
2 Operations managers can have a profound influence on how organisations implement their human resource strategy (the overall long-term approach to ensuring that an organisation’s human resources provide a strategic advantage). One authority on human resource (HR) strategy (Dave Ulrich, the
3 (It is recommended that you look at the supplement to this chapter before answering this question.)A hotel has two wings, an east wing and a west wing. Each wing has four ‘room-service housekeepers’working 7-hour shifts to service the rooms each day. The east wing has 40 standard rooms, 12
4 In the example above, one of the housekeepers in the west wing wants to job share with their partner, each working 3 hours per day. Their colleagues have agreed to support them and will guarantee to service all the rooms in the west wing to the same standard each day. Can this arrangement succeed
5 (This question is based on an original case study by Dr Ran Bhamra, Loughborough University.)Service Adhesives Ltd produces specialist adhesives. It has always been profitable, but there had been a slowdown in the company’s profits. Several improvement initiatives had attempted to reverse the
6 At W.L. Gore (that makes the high-performance Gore-Tex fabrics) few in the company have any formal job titles or job descriptions. There are no managers, only leaders and associates, people are paid ‘according to their contribution’ and staff help to determine each other’s pay. Its skilled
7 Among the first large organisation to take flexible working seriously in Europe was Lloyds TSB Banking Group (now called TSB Bank). It adopted flexible working because it was sensitive to the social and economic changes that were affecting both customers and staff. There were benefits of adopting
8 Re-read the ‘Operations in practice’ example on Torchbox selling itself to its employees. What advantages does such a move have (a) for the employees, (b) for the original owners?
9 Many staff in retail operations spend most of their time interacting with customers, not all of whom are always polite. In fact, some can be abusive. How should such operations balance their responsibility to their customers with their responsibility to their staff?
10 Some high customer contact jobs (such as police forces) have started requiring staff to wear ‘body cameras’ that record interactions with the public. What do you see as the advantages and disadvantages of doing this?
1 Mark Key is an events coordinator for a small company. Returning from his annual holiday in France, he is given six events to plan. He gives them the codes A–F. He needs to decide upon the sequence in which to plan the events and wants to minimise the average time the jobs are tied up in the
2 It is week 35 of a busy year at Ashby Architects and Jo Ashby is facing a big problem. Both her two junior partners have been diagnosed with a serious illness contracted on a trip to scope out a prospective job in Lichtenstein. So Jo has to step in and complete the outstanding jobs that were
3 It takes 6 hours for a contract laundry to wash, dry and press (in that order) a batch of overalls. It takes 3 hours to wash the batch, 2 hours to dry it and 1 hour to press it. Usually, each day’s batch is collected and ready for processing at 8.00 am and needs to be picked up at 4.00 pm. The
4 Read the following descriptions of two cinemas:Kinepolis in Brussels is one the largest cinema complexes in the world, with 28 screens, a total of 8,000 seats, and four showings of each film every day. It is equipped with the latest projection technology.All the film performances are scheduled to
5 Think through the following three brief examples. What type of control (according to Figure¦10.16)do you think they warrant?The Games Delivery Authority (GDA) was a public body responsible for developing and building the new venues and infrastructure for the ‘International Games’ and their
6 Re-read the ‘Operations in practice’ example ‘Operations control at Air France’. How do the planning and control tasks compare to those in a motor servicing garage?
7 Re-read the ‘Operations in practice’ example ‘Can airline passengers be sequenced?’. What problems could airlines face if they attempt to implement the Steffen method?
8 What might a Gantt chart for the mass production of chicken salad sandwiches look like?
9 If you had to make a case against the use of triage in sequencing the treatment of patients at an accident and emergency department in a hospital, what points would you make?
10 How does scheduling staff shift patterns differ from scheduling truck maintenance?
1 In March, a law firm predicted April demand for 360 client consultations. Actual April demand was 410. Using a smoothing constant chosen by management of a = 0.20, what is the forecast for May demand using the exponential smoothing mode?
2 The degree of effort (and cost) to devote to forecasting is often a source of heated debate within organisations. This often comes down to two opposing arguments. One goes something like this.‘It’s important for forecasts to be as accurate as possible. We cannot plan operations capacity
3 A German car manufacturer defines ‘utilisation’ as the ratio of actual output for a process to its design capacity, where design capacity is the capacity of a process as it is designed to operate. However, it knows that it is rarely possible to achieve this theoretical level of capacity,
4 In a typical 7-day period, the planning department of the pizza company programs its ‘Pizzamatic’machine for 148 hours. It knows that changeovers and set-ups take 8 hours and breakdowns average 4 hours each week. Waiting for ingredients to be delivered usually accounts for 6 hours, during
5 Seasonal demand is particularly important to the greetings card industry. Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Halloween, Valentine’s Day and other occasions have all been promoted as times to send (and buy)appropriately designed cards. Now, some card manufacturers have moved on to
6 A pizza company has a demand forecast for the next 12 months that is shown in the table below.The current workforce of 100 staff can produce 1,500 cases of pizzas per month.(a) P repare a production plan that keeps the output level. How much warehouse space would the company need for this
7 Revisit the ‘Operations in practice’ example, ‘3M’s COVID-19 surge capacity’. With reference to this and other operations that you are familiar with:(a) What are the main challenges in long-term demand forecasting and how these might be addressed?(b) How can longer-term capacity
8 Why do airlines often ‘overbook’ (sell more tickets than they have seats available) and what are the risks of doing so?
9 Re-examine the chocolate manufacturer’s demand shown in Figure¦11.14. Use this data to explore two alternative plans:Plan 1 – Produce at 8.7 tonnes per day for the first 124 days of the year, then increase capacity to 29 tonnes per day by heavy use of overtime, hiring temporary staff and
10 If you were managing a small farm park that attracted visitors to observe farming exhibits, watch cows being milked, visit a farm shop and café, etc., how would you go about determining the appropriate capacity for the car park that served the visitors?
1 The COO of Super Cycles was considering her sourcing strategy. ‘I have two key questions, for each of our outsourced parts: what is the risk in the supply market, and what is the criticality of the product or service to our business?’ Four key outsourced components are shown in table below.
2 A chain of women’s apparel retailers had all their products made by Lopez Industries, a small but high-quality garment manufacturer. They worked based on two seasons: Spring/Summer season and Autumn/Winter. ‘Sometimes we are left with surplus items because our designers have just got it
3 The example of the bullwhip effect shown in Table¦12.4 shows how a simple 5 per cent reduction in demand at the end of supply chain causes fluctuations that increase in severity the further back an operation is placed in the chain.(a) U sing the same logic and the same rules (i.e. all operations
4 If you were the owner of a small local retail shop, what criteria would you use to select suppliers for the goods that you wish to stock in your shop? Visit two or three shops that are local to you and ask the owners how they select their suppliers. In what way were their answers different from
5 Many companies devise a policy on ethical sourcing, covering such things as workplace standards and business practices, health and safety conditions, human rights, legal systems, child labour, disciplinary practices, wages and benefits, etc.(a) What do you think motivates a company to draw up a
6 Airline catering is a tough business. Meals must be of a quality that is appropriate for the class and type of flight, yet the airlines that are their customers are always looking to keep costs as low as possible, menus must change frequently and they must respond promptly to customer
1 A supplier makes monthly shipments to ‘House & Garden Stores’, in average lot sizes of 200 coffee tables. The average demand for these items is 50 tables per week, and the lead time from the supplier 3 weeks. ‘House & Garden Stores’ must pay for inventory from the moment the supplier
2 A local shop has a relatively stable demand for tins of sweetcorn throughout the year, with an annual total of 1,400 tins. The cost of placing an order is estimated at £15 and the annual cost of holding inventory is estimated at 25 per cent of the product’s value. The company purchases tins
3 A fruit canning plant has a single line for three different fruit types. Demand for each type of tin is reasonably constant at 50,000 per month (a month has 160 production hours). The canning process rate is 1,200 per hour, but it takes 2 hours to clean and re-set between different runs. The cost
4 ‘Our suppliers often offer better prices if we are willing to buy in larger quantities. This creates a pressure on us to hold higher levels of stock. Therefore, to find the best quantity to order we must compare the advantages of lower prices for purchases and fewer orders with the
5 Most countries have blood collection and distribution services that collect from donors, process the blood by either breaking the blood down into its constituent parts or keeping it whole, and transport the blood from collection centres to hospitals in response to both routine and emergency
6 Re-read the ‘Operations in practice’ example, ‘An inventory of energy’. It mentions the potential of battery storage of energy, but stresses the cost of this method. What do you think would be the implications for energy distribution if batteries become both cheaper and more effective?
7 Re-read the ‘Operations in practice’ example, ‘Safety stocks for coffee and COVID’. List and comment on the differences between the two examples (coffee and COVID) described.
8 Inventory management systems should not only get order quantities and timing right, they also need to make sure that stocks are in the right place. One airline found this out when a shortage of toilet paper and ‘the wrong kind of headphones’ delayed a London to Barbados flight for five hours.
9 In the colder parts of the world (such as northern Europe and North America) where winter snow and ice can cause huge disruption to everyday life, local governments ‘grit’ the roads (actually rock salt, a mixture of salt and grit) when they believe weather conditions warrant it. If you were
10 Two retail managers who had been at university together, Rosanne and Abeke, were having dinner together. ‘It’s such a coincidence that we both went into garment retailing’, said Rosanne, ‘but at the moment I’m having real problems getting repenishment stocks from our central warehouse.
1 Rolls-Royce is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of gas turbines. Their complex products typically have around 25,000 parts and hundreds of sub-assemblies, and their production is equally complex, with over 600 external suppliers. This makes planning a complex task, which is why
2 SAP is a large European software company selling ERP systems. It is well known for developing a network of ‘business partners’ to develop new products, sell its ‘solutions’, implement them into customers’operations, provide service, educate end users, and several other activities. If
3 Re-read the ‘Operations in practice’ example, ‘The ERP for a chicken salad sandwich’.The company on which this example is based found it difficult to implement its ERP system. ‘It was a far bigger job than we thought, according to the company’s operations director, ‘We had to change
4 Re-read the ‘Operations in practice’ example, ‘It’s not that easy’. Why did things go wrong, specifically with the relationship between SAP and Waste Management?
5 (It is advised that you read the supplement to this chapter before attempting this question.) Your company has developed a simple, but amazingly effective mango peeler. It is constructed from a blade and a supergrip handle that has a top piece and a bottom piece. The assembled mango peeler is
6 A lunch kiosk serves two meals every day: veggie fritters and mushroom stroganoff, the recipes for which are as follows:Veggie fritters (serves 10) – Prepare the ‘veggie mix’ by grating 500 g of carrots, 500 g of courgettes(zucchini), and chopping 300 g of mushrooms, 100 g of onions and 50
7 The nature of the product structure is closely related to the design of the product. This is reflected in the product structure shape. The shape is partly determined by the number of components and parts used at each level – the more that are used, the wider the shape. There are some recognised
9 Based on web searches, identify two examples of ‘successful’ ERP implementation, one from manufacturing and the other from a service or government organisation. Summarise the claimed benefits that are stated as having been achieved in each case. If available, highlight the underlying
1 Sophie was sick of her daily commute. ‘Why’, she thought, ‘should I have to spend so much time in the morning stuck in traffic listening to some babbling halfwit on the radio? We can work flexi-time, after all. Perhaps I should leave the apartment at some other time?’ So resolved, Sophie
2 ‘Everything we do can be broken down into a process’, said Lucile, COO of an outsourcing business for the ‘back-office’ functions of a range of companies. ‘It maybe more straightforward in a manufacturing business, but the concept of process improvement is just as powerful in service
3 Develop cause–effect diagrams for the following types of problems: Staff waiting too long for their calls to be answered by their IT helpdesk. Poor food in the company restaurant. Poor lecturing from teaching staff at a university. Customer complaints that the free plastic toy in their
4 For over 10 years, a hotel group had been developing self-managed improvement groups within its hotels. At one hotel reception desk, staff were concerned about the amount of time the reception desk was left unattended. To investigate this, the staff began keeping track of the reasons they were
5 A transport services company provided a whole range of services to railway operators. Its reputation for quality was a valuable asset in its increasingly competitive market. ‘We are continually looking for innovation in the way we deliver our services because the continuous improvement of our
6 Step 1 – As a group, identify a ‘high-visibility’ operation that you all are familiar with. This could be a type of quick-service restaurant, record stores, public transport systems, libraries, etc.Step 2 – Once you have identified the broad class of operation, visit a number of them and
7 There is an old saying that goes, ‘How do you learn to charm a snake? Answer – start with a slow, non-venomous snake. Then a slow, venomous snake. Then try a fast, non-venomous snake. Then a fast, venomous snake’. How could this be applied to operations improvement?
8 The idea of ‘organisational ambidexterity’, described earlier sounds attractive. What do you think are the barriers to achieving it, and what could be done to overcome them?
9 ‘This coffee is terrible’, said Anita, the catering manager. ‘We have to look into it before we get even more complaints’. How might a cause–effect diagram be used to investigate the causes of the coffee being so bad? Draw a diagram that would help Anita.
10 Benchmarking can be used to learn from other types of operation. What could, for example, a supermarket learn, by studying an airport?
1 Define the concept of lean as it would apply to a hospital.
2 The Zucchero mail-order clothing company in Milan receives order forms, types in the customer details, checks the information provided from the customers and that the products are in stock, confirms payment and processes the order. During an average eight-hour day, 150 orders are processed.
3 Consider this record of an ordinary flight. ‘Breakfast was a little rushed but left the house at 6.15.Had to return a few minutes later, forgot my passport. Managed to find it and leave (again) by 6.30.Arrived at the airport 7.00, dropped Angela off with bags at terminal and went to the
4 An insurance underwriting process consists of the following separate stages.What is the value-added percentage for the process? (Hint – use Little’s law to work out how long applications have to wait at each stage before they are processed. Little’s law is covered in Chapter¦6.)
5 Examine the marking process of an assignment you are currently working on. What is the typical elapsed time between handing the assignment in and receiving it back with comments? How much of this elapsed time do you think is value-added time?
6 A production process is required to produce 980 of product X, 560 of product Y and 280 of product Z in a 4-week period. If the process works 7 hours per day and 5 days per week, devise a production schedule per hour that would meet this demand. (Tip: refer to the section on Levelling product or
7 Examine the value-added versus non-value-added times for some other services. For example, posting a letter (the elapsed time is between posting the letter in the box and it being delivered to the recipient). How much of this elapsed time do you think is value-added time? How might you reduce
8 One physician, in an attempt to emphasise the need for civility, used the slogan, ‘Assholes kill people’.What did they mean by this?
9 Re-examine the ‘Operations in practice’ example, ‘The rise of the personal kanban’. Make your own‘kanban list’, as described in the example.
10 How might a creative business such as an advertising agency or film studio adopt lean principles?
1 Human error is a significant source of quality problems. Think through the times that you have (with hindsight) made an error and answer the following questions:(a) How do you think that human error causes quality problems?(b) What could one do to minimise human error?
2 The owner of a small wedding photography business realises that the market is changing. ‘I used to take a few photos during the wedding ceremony and then formal group shots outside. It rarely took more than two hours. Around 30 photos would go in a standard wedding album. You had to get the
3 Ryanair is the best-known budget airline in Europe, focusing on a popular routes and very low operating costs. For years, the airline’s policy on customer service was clear. It aimed to give the lowest air fare available, and a safe and on-time flight. It did not promise to give anything more.
4 Understanding type I and type II errors is essential for surgeons’ quality planning. For example, in the case of appendicitis, removal of the appendix is necessary because of the risk of its bursting, causing potentially fatal poisoning of the blood. The surgical procedure is relatively simple
5 ‘Tea and Sympathy’ (not a made-up name) was a British restaurant and café in the heart of New York’s West Village. It became fashionable not only with expatriate Brits but also with native New Yorkers, who were willing to queue to get in. One reason it become famous was for the unusual
1 Although rare, air crashes do happen. Predominantly, the reason for this is human failure such as pilot fatigue. One kind of accident, which is known as ‘controlled flight into terrain’, where the aircraft appears to be under control and yet still flies into the ground, has a chance of
2 Wyco is a leading international retailer selling clothing and accessories, with stores throughout the world. The countries from which it sources its products include Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, India and Vietnam. It was shocked when a British newspaper reported that an unauthorised subcontractor had
3 An Airbus A320 would not turn left no matter what the pilot tried. Eventually they made an emergency landing. Fortunately, no one was hurt. The cause of the near-disaster was that engineers had forgotten to reactivate four of the five spoilers on the right wing that help the plane to turn. The
4 A light bulb in the men’s lavatories of a firm finally burnt out when it was over 70 years old. It had survived bombs dropped in the Second World War that had devastated buildings in neighbouring streets, shaking buildings in the whole area but leaving the bulb intact and working. It was not
5 An automated sandwich-making machine in a food manufacturer’s factory has six major components, with individual reliabilities as shown in Table¦18.3.(a) What is the reliability of the whole system?(b) I f it is decided that the wrapper in the automated sandwich-making machine is too unreliable
6 Every time we enter an elevator, we are trusting our lives to the people who designed, made and maintain it. Without effective maintenance, elevators would literally be death traps. Otis, the elevator company, has its ‘Otis Maintenance Management System’ (OMMS), a programme that takes into
7 Carlsberg, the brewing company, learned of its crisis late one Friday afternoon. Something appeared to have gone wrong with the ‘widget’ (the device which gives some canned beer its creamy characteristic)in one of its cans of beer. One customer had found a piece of plastic in his mouth. He
8 What risks does a technology such as the ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT) pose to all elements of a supply network?
9 How might climate change affect how operations managers view risk management?
10 ‘Your feedback is very important to us’, is something that businesses often tell their customers.(a) I s this always true?(b) Why do they do it?
1 Revisit the ‘Operations in practice’ example, ‘The risk of changing project scope – sinking the Vasa’, in this chapter.(a) Who should be held responsible for this disaster?(b) What can be learnt from the Vasa story for the management of different kinds of modern-day projects?
2 ‘Funding comes from a variety of sources; to restore the literally irreplaceable buildings we work on.We try to reconcile historical integrity with commercial viability and rely on the support of volunteers.So, we need to involve all stakeholders all the way through the project’ (Janine
3 Table 19.6 shows the activities, their durations and precedences for designing, writing and installing a bespoke computer database for a commercial bank headquartered in Singapore. Draw a network diagram (activity-on-node) for the project and calculate the fastest time in which the operation
4 The table shows the planned time and budget for a legal consulting project being developed for a client in Copenhagen, Denmark. Complete an earned value analysis (EVA) for the project, based at the end of month 4, given that only activities A, B and C have been completed and spending to date has
5 In the oil industry, project teams are increasingly using virtual reality and visualisation models of offshore structures that allow them to check out not only the original design but any modifications that have to be made during construction.(a) Why do you think a realistic picture of a
6 The idea of the ‘critical path’ is important in project planning. What different ideas might be meant by the word ‘critical’?
7 Re-read the ‘Operations in practice’ example, ‘“For the benefit of all” – NASA’s highs and lows’. How might an organisation like NASA view the trade-offs implied by the ‘iron triangle’ perspective?
2. In a paint manufacturing unit, each type of paint is to be ground to a specified degree of fineness. The manufacturer uses the same ball mill for a variety of paints and after completion of each batch, the mill has to be cleaned and the ball change properly made up. The changeover from one type
1. A firm has to place orders for the supply of raw materials every 3 months. The raw materials are pro- cured from a supplier at periodic intervals. The annual requirements of the raw materials amount to Rs. 12 lac. The cost of ordering is estimated to be Rs. 5,000 per order and the cost of
8. What are the advantages of implementing ERP in MRP-I and MRP-II?
7. Discuss the role of ERP for MRP.
6. Discuss in brief the various terms used in MRP.
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