Study Guide for Mgnt 675(1) (3) - Answer

7/29/2019 Study Guide for Mgnt 675(1) (3) - Answer

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Study Guide for MGNT 675

Most of the answers to these questions are one sentence long (at times only one word). The intent

is to remind you of some of these concepts. I will try to go over the study guide and questions

before the exam date and day.

Introduction to OM (Mostly in the folder for week 1)

1. Why do we represent the OM process as a system? What are the components of the OM

system? Where is value created? Why do we have value represented at two places on the

diagram? See examples of systems in the book.

Systems view word doc, Asystemcan be defined as a set of interrelated parts that must work

together. All the parts within the system are subsystems which must perform in sync with eachother

in order to achieve the ultimate result which is in line with the corporate strategy.

Value 1-It consists of pricing, selling, product, promotion, price, distribution and also the services after sales

which are given by the company and its people to the customers. It helps in better services as well as sales in

terms of the respect to the customer.

For example: Nike creates value to its customers in terms of all the above terms like pricing, promotion, comfortlevel, from the part of making to the part of selling it helps the customer in so many ways to warranty periodand the comfort zone.

And doc system view, pg 9

2. Are we interested in short-term or long-term profits? How do we create long term profits?

LONG. P23
http://void%280%29/http://void%280%29/http://void%280%29/http://void%280%29/


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By having a sustainable competitive advantage over their competitors, major competitive

dimentions that form the competitive position of the firm are: Cost, quality, speed of

delivery, delivery reliability, coping with changes in demand, flexibility

3. What is a closed system? (Ans: It doesnt consider the inputs from the environment,

represented as random fluctuations on the diagram, such as socio- political, individual or

family problems, should affect the performance of the system.) Of the two major schools

of thought, which views the OM system as a closed system, which as an open system?

(Hint: Refer to Introduction to Operations Management document.

School of scientific management, Open system was established by human relations school

Intro doc

4. Describe the components (using his words or terms) of the Drew Pearson and Company

(DPC). What is their order qualifier? What is their order winner?

Order Qualifier: Cost and quality of production

Order Winner: Quality of design

5. What do they mean (i.e. DPC) by obsolescence avoidance?

Meaning obsolescence: Being in the process of passing out of use or usefulness, check

planned obscolescence in wiki

Strategy (Mostly week 2)

1. What does Skinner mean by the Missing Link? Why and when does it occur?


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Missing link is the link between manufacturing and corporate strategy. Which means Top

management unknowingly delegates a surprisingly large portion of basic policy decisions to lower

levels in the manufacturing area. Generally, this abdication of responsibility comes about more

through a lack of concern than by intention. And it is partly the reason that many manufacturing

policies and procedures developed at lower levels reflect assumptions about corporate strategy

which are incorrect or misconstrued.

2. Why are tradeoffs important in establishing the correct OM policy?

P24. Operation cannot excel in all competitive dimentions

Are important as it effects the corporations ability to compete.

Whether you are trading off on flexibility or mass production.

3. According to Skinner, how should OM policy be formulated?

4. Does either of the companies in the ACC(A) case exhibit a missing link syndrome?

Why? Or why not?

No missing link, if there is a conflict bw mnf strat and corp goals.

5. Describe the important components of the SWOT analysis. How does it relate to the

traditional approach to strategy formulation (the diagram)?

6. What is a strategic decision? What is a tactical decision? What is a policy? What is the

relationship between the three? (You have to research this on your own. Look at some of

the OM books on reserve. MGMT 320 is the undergraduate version of MGMT 675)

Ans 6.1:Strategy is the long view of things like winning a war. Tactics is solving day to day problems, like

winning a battle.

Ans 6.2

There appears to be an imbalance in strategic vs. tactical thinkers: around 90% of leaders or

managers are tactical and only about 10% are strategic. I believe that we can teach and be taught


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the difference and how to think both ways. I also know that it will take some effort, but we have

to start someplace. Lets define strategic and tactical decision making in simple terms:

Tactical leaders and managers are like firefighters. They seem to thrive on running around

fighting the little fires that crop up in their businesses or divisions.Tactical decisions are

short term, narrowly focused, and should be, but are most often not, made with the long

term view in mind.

Strategic leaders and managers are fire preventors. They look to the future and see the

implications of moves and minimizing the risk of a fire starting. If or when a fire does start,

they fight it based on the long view of the company. In some cases, they may choose not to

fight a fire and just let it burn itself out. Strategic decisions are based on the higher level,

big picture and long term views and objectives .

Where the Strategy and Tactics meet: Improving the organizations capacity to survive and

thrive. Strategists need to get the long view right and share that view with the tacticians.

And vice-versa.o When the tacticians know what the long term view is, they are better able to choose

which fires to fight, how to fight them, and help prevent fires in the future.o When the strategists listen to and understand the tacticians they get a boots on the

ground view of areas of possible flare-ups and can make decisions to prevent them.They can answer questions such as Are we capable of handling that flare up?

Pasted from

Ans 3:

Strategy, policy, and tacticsStrategy is a plan, or method of approach developed by an individual, group, or organization, in

an effort to successfully achieve an overall goal or objective. Policy refers to a definite course of

action adopted by an individual, group, or organization in an effort to promote the best practice

particular to desired results. However, when one thinks of strategy, I believe one must also think

of tactics. Tactics involves the detail, the procedure, and the order of how to achieve the desiredresults particular to the strategy. A policy is what is, or what is not done- it thus implies a rule or

some kind of a guide whereas a strategy is the methodology used to accomplish a target as

prescribed by a policy!Pasted from

7. What is productivity? How is it used? Why is it important?

P28. Used as partial measures

8. What is the relationship between productivity and efficiency and profits? (You can

combine Q12 and Q13)

Efficiency ^ then productivity^ and profits ^. Pg 3 notes
http://www.bluecollaru.com/strategic-vs-tactical-decisions-return-on-investmentroi-in-writing-a-business-plan-pt-3/http://www.bluecollaru.com/strategic-vs-tactical-decisions-return-on-investmentroi-in-writing-a-business-plan-pt-3/http://www.bluecollaru.com/strategic-vs-tactical-decisions-return-on-investmentroi-in-writing-a-business-plan-pt-3/http://www.bluecollaru.com/strategic-vs-tactical-decisions-return-on-investmentroi-in-writing-a-business-plan-pt-3/http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_are_the_differences_between_strategy_and_policyhttp://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_are_the_differences_between_strategy_and_policyhttp://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_are_the_differences_between_strategy_and_policyhttp://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_are_the_differences_between_strategy_and_policyhttp://www.bluecollaru.com/strategic-vs-tactical-decisions-return-on-investmentroi-in-writing-a-business-plan-pt-3/http://www.bluecollaru.com/strategic-vs-tactical-decisions-return-on-investmentroi-in-writing-a-business-plan-pt-3/


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9. Study all the productivity problems (examples, solved problems in the book, and the HW

problems).

P33 solve 6 to 10

10.Describe the relationship between competitive priorities (my terms) and a (manufactured)

products life cycle?

Class notes wk1, prod life doc

11.What is a product-process matrix? Indicate what happens to capital invested, labor

content per unit as you go up the diagonal (my diagram)?

Product-process doc

12.Describe the relationship between competitive priorities (my terms) and the product-

process matrix?

My notes week 1 and product process doc

13.If you were the inventor of the personal PC (Steven Jobs incarnated), what kind of a

relationship would you expect between your products life cycle and the product-process

matrix?

Prod life cycle and product process matrix doc

Project Management

1. Know how to construct an activity-on-node (AON) diagram? What is an EST, EFT, LFT,

LST? Know how we obtain them. See the HW problems and solutions to the HW

problems on Bb. In the solutions, the activity durations have been put inside the nodes


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and are enclosed by a set of parenthesis. In class, I put them on the nodes. The places

used for the early and late times are identical to what I did in class.

EST, EFT- Are the earliest times the activity can start and finish.

LST, LFT- Latest time the activity can start and finish

LST-EST=SLACK time p67

2. What is a Gantt chart? (Describe in your own words)

P63, Gantt chart or bar chart. Is shows the amount of time involved and the sequence in

which the activities can be performed.

3. What is the main purpose of each? (Which would you rather use for planning and which

for control purposes?)

To know slack and start and finish times AON

Gantt- Scheduling and knowing critical path

4. What is a work-breakdown structure? When do you do it?

P62.

5. All the HW problems and practice problems I may put on Bb.

Notes

Product Design

(Remember, most product introductions are projects.)

1. What are the two major approaches to product design? (Hint: Sequential vs ..)

Week 2 product design, concurrent

2. Which approach did Chrysler use building its Viper cars? Which approach is faster?

Week 2 product design


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3. What is quality function deployment (QFD)? Can you use it along with sequential

design?

P103

4. Describe IKEAs product design strategy (as illustrated by the case for the mug)? Do they

design for ease of manufacture, assembly, packaging and logistics considerations,

environment as well as cost and style?

P116,

5. Describe Regal Marines product strategy? How do they compete in the market place?

What are some of their design goals? How do they treat value?

Process Design and Layout

1. Identify the appropriate layout for each process in the product-process matrix.

Facility layout doc week3,4,5 folder

Project- fixed process layout

Job shop- process layout

Batch- batch production layout

Mass-product layout

Continuousproduct layout

2. What is a bottleneck? Why is it important?

P165


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3. What is the bottleneck in the Bread Making Example? Do you agree with my

computations?

P170

4. What is the bottleneck in Circuit Board Manufacturers? What is their (actual) daily output?

5. In Circuit Board Manufactures, suggest a way to bring the daily output to their target level

of 1000 units.

6. What are the major layout types? What are their respective operational goals? (Hint: The

handout on Bb, Layout-A Summary.)

Week 3 facility layout

7. Dont worry about Facility Location.

8. Cross-over charts (break-even analysis). Know the example in the book. I dont think we

will have enough time to go over problems 7-11 (Chapter 7) in the book. Besides, you will

have a choice on the problems in case I decide to use them.

9. Know the assembly line balancing problem thoroughly. We will cover the material on the

Bb, Assembly Line Balancing-An Example. Know the two practice problems at the end of

that handout. Dont worry about the tie-breaking rules in the book. On the exam, it will not

matter how you break the ties (i.e., as shown in Problems 3,4,6,7 in the Appendix to Chapter

7 (7A)). However, you may balance these problems for practice ignoring the rules. Know

how to balance the line (i.e., assigning tasks to stations observing both the precedence

relationships and the cycle time). Know the concepts of cycle time, minimum hypothetical

number of stations, actual number of stations, efficiency.

Study Guide for Mgnt 675(1) (3) - Answer

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