Ch. 4

1. Construct a perceptual map for car rental/car sharing services. Label the axes with dimension you feel are most relevant. You might want to consider cost, reputation, ease of use, features, variety or convenience but the choice is yours. Explain how perceptual maps are used as well.

2. How are reliability and maintainability related? Give an example for a product or service you have experienced.

3. What does design for manufacture entail? List several techniques that can facilitate the DFM process. How do DFM and DFSC differ?

4. Calculate the reliability of the following system in which each component has 0.85 reliability.

0.85 0.85 0.85

| | |

| | |

----- 0.85 ----- 0.85 ----- 0.85 -----

Ch. 5

5. Why must the utilization factor in a single-server model be less than one?

6. Describe the traditional cost relationship in waiting line analysis.

7. The ticket booth on the Tech campus is operated by one person, who is selling tickets for the annual Tech versus State football game on Saturday. The ticket seller can serve an average of 12 customers per hour (Poisson distributed); on average, 8 customers arrive to purchase tickets each hour (Poisson distributed). Determine the average time a ticket buyer must wait and the portion of time the ticket seller is busy.

Ch. 6

8. Describe the four basic types of production processes. What are the advantages and disadvantages of each? When should each be used?

9. T.W. Smitty, an emerging rapper, has reserved a recording studio for $5000 to cut his first album, called Smart Rep. The cost of recording the album is $5000 and copies are $5 apiece. I the vinyl albums are priced at $15 each, how many must be sold to break even? What is the breakeven point in dollars?

10. T.W. Smitty is confident that demand for his Smart Rap album substantially exceed the breakeven point computed in the previous problem, so T.W. is contemplating having his album cut at a classier (and pricier) studio. The recording costs would rise to $9000. However since this new studio works with very high volume, production costs would fall to $2 per vinyl album.

a. What is the breakeven point for this new process?

b. Compare this process to the process proposed in the previous problem. For what volume of demand should T.W. chose the classier studio?