Exam 9: Production and Operations Management

Tim and Eric recently started a company focused on rehabbing old houses. Before they buy a house, they use software to create and design the renovation of each room. The program provides them with an estimate of how much of each kind of material is needed, and the orderly progression of tasks that need to be completed. Tim and Eric use computer-aided design.

ISO 9001 refers to a set of international standards for quality management and assurance.

In the past, the idea behind mass production was to

Nanomanufacturing is when materials can be manipulated on a molecular or even atomic level.

Mini-Case Sparky Weyer, president and CEO of Minimotors, Inc., a growing manufacturer of small (some of them downright tiny) electric motors used in a variety of power tools and appliances told potential investors, "These are exciting times for our company. We've made a lot of changes over the past two years that have really improved our operations and lowered our costs. Now we are ready to expand into new markets. Minimotors is on its way to becoming a global player." Sparky was meeting with potential financial backers in an effort to obtain funding for some expensive new machinery he wanted to purchase. "You may have heard about some of the ways we've cut costs," Sparky continued. "We've developed a new arrangement with several of our biggest suppliers. They've agreed to make more frequent deliveries tied directly to our production schedules. This will help us reduce our inventory costs dramatically. We've also greatly reduced the number of defective motors we produce by carefully keeping tabs on all of our manufacturing processes. In fact, we have set a goal of reducing our defects to 3.4 parts per million. The main purpose of my meeting with you today is because we want to install some sophisticated new machinery and software that will allow us to quickly design and produce motors to the exact specifications of our customers. The machinery is computer-controlled and can produce custom-designed products at very little increase in cost compared to our mass-produced motors. We feel this flexibility and quick response time will give us a tremendous competitive advantage and help us attract new customers. Installing the new equipment and training our workers to use it properly will be a complex project, but I'm confident that once we get everything up and running we'll be able to strengthen our position as the leading maker of high-quality electric motors." -The equipment and software Sparky wants to purchase will allow the computers used to design motors to be linked directly to the computer-aided equipment on the factory floor. Sparky is proposing to set up a(n)

Process manufacturing involves taking raw materials and physically or chemically changing them into another form, while the assembly process takes the newly changed form and turns it back into the original form.

A disadvantage of flexible manufacturing systems is that they usually require a great deal of labor because machines are rarely capable of handling a wide variety of tasks.

Production manager Ryan McNealy wants to link all the divisions and subsidiaries of his firm's computerized functions into a single, integrated software program that uses a single database. In order to achieve this goal, Ryan could make use of:

A PERT network consists of activities linked by arrows. Suppose two of the activities on the network are labeled "A" and "B." An arrow from "A" to "B" indicates that

Service organizations find it difficult to provide outstanding service every time because the process is so labor intensive.

A big advantage of computer-integrated manufacturing software is that it

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is simpler and less sophisticated than manufacturing resource planning (MRP).

Today, e-commerce uses social media to make online transactions even easier.

While mass customization works well for producers it is not used in the service sector.

The European Union demands that all firms that want to do business with its member nations must satisfy ISO 9001 standards.

Land, labor, capital, and knowledge are inputs into the production process.

In a just-in-time inventory system, the producer holds large quantities of the materials and components used in the production process in its inventory to ensure that it always has enough on hand.

Actually, it is much easier to custom-design service programs than it is to custom-make goods.

Firms that satisfy the ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 standards have demonstrated a world-class management system in both quality and environmental standards.

In an effort to improve the quality control process at the Southern Peanut Corporation, management is introducing the importance of the Deming Cycle to employees. This suggests that managers are aware of the need to find potential problems before they occur.