- •Identify a product that is 100% goods without any service component. Identify a product
- •Mass customization and rapid product development were identified as current trends in
- •How does an om strategy change during a product’s life cycle?
- •How must an operations strategy integrate with marketing and accounting?
- •What is meant by competitiveness?
- •For each of the different competitive priorities, describe the unique characteristics of
- •Describe the difference between order-qualifiers and order-winners. What is the
- •In your opinion, does business school have competitive priorities?
- •What kind of information do you think would add value to the following goods and
- •Describe the type of service that would make the following items more attractive to
- •Define project management.
- •Describe and define work breakdown structure, program, project, task, subtask, and
- •How does the role of a project manager differ from that of a traditional functional manager?
- •What are some of the key characteristics of high-performance work teams?
- •1. Develop goals and plans.
- •What are some of the reasons project scheduling is not done well?
- •What are the underlying assumptions of minimum-cost scheduling? Are they equally realistic?
- •21. Why would subcontractors for a government project want their activities on the critical path? Under what conditions would they try to avoid being on the critical path?
- •What is meant by "Crashing a project," and when do you do this?
- •Students are sometimes confused by the concept of critical path, and want to believe that it is the shortest path through a network. Convincingly explain why this is not so.
- •How can we determine the probability that a project will be completed by a certain date? What assumptions are made in this computation?
- •Discuss the four types of new service.
- •Describe what is meant by the “voice of customer”.
- •Voice of the Customer Initiatives
- •Identify and describe the four major phases of the new product development.
- •Identify and describe the four stages of the new service developmet (nsd) process.
- •Why is it important for managers to understand the relationship between the stages of a product’s life cycle and the types of processes that are available to manufacture that product?
- •A. List specific products that you especially like. What do you like most about them?
- •Is quality free? Debate.
- •Identify the quality dimensions for each of the following:
- •41. If line employees are required to assume the quality control function, their productivity will decrease. Discuss this.
- •42. “You don’t inspect quality into a product; you have to build it in.” Discuss the implications of this statement.
- •43.How is the Baldrige Award process beneficial to companies who do not win?
- •44. What are the some contributions of the iso 9000 standards/certification to the international business?
- •45. Compare the iso certification process with the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award criteria. What are the main differences?
- •46. What are some of the reasons that quality initiatives fail in organizations? How can these be overcome?
- •47. What are some of the major reasons for the success of Six Sigma?
- •48. Explain, in your own words, the meaning of the correlation coefficient. Discuss the meaning of a negative value of the correlation coefficient.
- •49. Develop a histogram of the time it took for you or your friends to receive six recent orders at a fast-food restaurant.
- •54. Discuss the purposes and differences between p-charts and X and r charts.
- •55. Discuss the logic of Taguchi methods.
- •61. Discuss the managerial issues regarding the use of control charts.
- •68. What are the assumptions of break-even analysis?
- •85) What are the advantages and disadvantages of product layout?
- •86) What are the advantages and disadvantages of work cells?
- •87) How do you classify the time for a machine operator who, between every job and sometimes in the middle of jobs, turns off the machine and goes for stock?
- •88) What are the differences among job enrichment, job enlargement, job rotation, job specialization, and employee empowerment?
- •89) What are some of the worst jobs you know about? Why are they bad jobs? Why do people want these jobs?
- •90) Can you think of any jobs that push the man-machine interface to the limits of human capabilities?
- •91. Define vertical job expansion and horizontal job expansion. Explain clearly how they differ.
- •92. Define ergonomics. Discuss the role of ergonomics in job design.
- •94. What is the difference between “normal” and “standard” times?
- •95. What kind of work-pace change might you expect from an employee during a time study? Why?
- •96. How would you classify the following job elements? Are they personal fatigue or delay?
- •97. How do you classify the time for a machine operator who, between every job and sometimes in the middle of jobs, turns off the machine and goes for stock?
- •98. Describe Gilberth’s approach of setting work standards.
- •99. What are the advantages and disadvantages to a firm having a small number of suppliers?
Operations Management is the se of activities that creates value in the form of goods and
services by transforming inputs into outputs. The operations management of any organization involves the design, operation, and improvement of the systems that create and deliver the primary products and services of the organization. From an organizational point of view, operations management might be defined as the management of the direct resources that are required to produce and deliver organizational goods and services. Operations management is an area of business that is concerned with the production of goods and services. Operations research is an interdisciplinary mathematical science that focuses on the effective use of technology by organizations.
What are the major factors leading to the resurgence of interest in OM today?
OM is relatively new field of research and still evolving, many businesses employ it as a way to increase productivity and reduce error. OM allows companies to be more competitive by reducing unnecessary cost involved when resources are squandered. Today the human being is constantly finding new ways to get more for less. This means an increase in productivity, or output/input. OM helps to find these ways of increasing productivity through innovations. Technological advance is another factor of resurgence of interest in OM. Increasingly, the trend amongst 21st century industries is to offer both products and services, such as specialist programs and tools alongside consultancy, in an effort for businesses to differentiate themselves and to offer more to prospective clients. Those with operations management skills will therefore be more prepared for differentiation between planning, control and delivery of either products or services. Operation management embodies all aspects of the business process and unites them to
create an efficient resourceful procedure.
Identify a product that is 100% goods without any service component. Identify a product
that is 100% service without any goods component. Explain.
100% product – food (ex. chocolate, bread, yogurt, caviar) tangible, no service component and could be stored.100% service – counseling (accounting & logistics) – intangible, knowledge based, not stored and hard to automate.
Mass customization and rapid product development were identified as current trends in
modern manufacturing operations. What is the relationship, if any, between these trends?
Can you cite any examples?
Mass Customization is personalization of products and services for individual customers at a mass production price. Traditionally customization and low cost have been mutually exclusive. Mass production provided low cost but at the expense of uniformity. Customization was the product of designers and craftsman. Today, new interactive technologies, like the Internet, allow customers to interact with a company and specify their unique requirements which are then manufactured by automated systems and handled by your staff, a third party, or intermediary. Product development is a broad field of endeavor dealing with the design, creation, and marketing of new products. Sometimes referred to as new product development (NPD), the discipline is focused on developing systematic methods for guiding all the processes involved in getting a new product to market.
How does an om strategy change during a product’s life cycle?
The life cycle concept of any product is similar to any life cycle of a living being. The major stages in the life cycle concept are 1) Development 2) Introduction or Birth 3)Growth 4) Maturity 5) Decline. Through out the cycle the whole process of operation management is applied on the production system to maintain to sustain longer. The in evitable situation due to the environmental influences like people taste, interest there is always new born of other production system.
2.1 Development
The development stage can be a protracted stage and will involve activities such as design, planning, costing, test marketing, etc. The costs are high, with no earned revenue. Promotion for awareness may commence in advance of introduction of the product to the marketplace.
2.2 Birth (or Introduction stage)
This is the stage where a product will be introduced after initial decisions like selection, technology selection, location and layout design of production facility after study of various aspects of business unit in transpiration and raw material, manpower resources availability etc. This is the stage we call it as Birth stage of the product.
2.3 Growth stage
After introducing the product the next stage for any product is looking for growth. The growth is stage is very critical in the operation management. The key of success is lying in this stage. How we take this product to people or how people will have the feel of necessity of the product depends on the efficient marketing strategies of the management. Sometimes
the time taking to reach to growth stage will be faster because of the uniqueness of its usage when compared with its competitor's products. Major efforts are required at this stage to push with all possible strategies in an ethical manner.
2.4 Maturity stage
Once the product is established, the product life cycle enters into the maturity stage. At this stage organization takes feedback from various groups of users and improve the product usability with add on features and introduce different models without changing the basic applications. This is the stage where businesses will be exposed more to the external competitive market which initiates the new comers with similar products where they will take off the market or share the market which causes the original product business organization will go for further improvements or for a new product line. Sustainability of this stage depends on the factors like the management's views, how fast they recognize their product obsolesced and how fast new comers takes over the market.
2.5 Death stage.
As discussed above in maturity stage, in case business management could not predict the impact of the new product growth and lack of taking necessary changes in the product design, the product life cycle enters into the decline or death stage, which leads to the organization merging with new companies or liquidation or sale.
3. Life-cycle costing
The cost of the product throughout the product life cycle is referred to as the Life cycle costing. The new concept of this Life cycle costing is long-term cost. The short-term cost always lead us to inefficient decisions which put us in a wrong track of product selection, design and production. The initial cost may be higher at growth stage, but if we know that the product sustains longer in the market in future, we should go ahead with considerable investments keeping the future market in mind. The decision policy throughout the life cycle should be maintained in the operational management of such business opportunity.
4. Conclusion
As we discussed in the above section, any business organization will have their product life cycles. The operation management of the organization should always keep watching the new trends of people's taste or requirements, the available latest technology and competitor's new proposals so that necessary actions can be taken in advance to decrease the growth stage and increase the span of the maturity stage. The type of operational decisions and selection procedures all depends on the product of any organization plans to develop or introduce into the market.