Exam 9: Production and Operations Management

Marie is an operations manager at a local housekeeping service. She is recommending that her firm make better use of the Internet so its services are more readily available to its customers. Marie's recommendation reflects a growing trend in service-sector firms.

A Gantt chart is a bar graph showing production managers what projects are being worked on and the stage of development at any given time.

Operations managers at Alumax Corporation have found that they can achieve efficient production only by producing very large quantities of aluminum without shutting down the production process. This indicates that Alumax should use a(n) ________ production process.

Bolt's Electric is in the process of trying to achieve ISO 14001 certification. Although the criteria for certification involve several milestones, we can be assured they will be evaluated on the regularity and thoroughness of their environmental audits, and how well top management reviews the firm's adherence to policies that are environmentally friendly.

The concept just-in-time (JIT) works well if a company works with lots of suppliers. It also helps avoid the breakdowns that occur when operating with an enterprise resource planning system.

________ is a technique to analyze and sequence tasks involved in completing a project, to estimate the time needed to complete each task, and to determine the minimum amount of time needed to complete each project.

The goal of lean manufacturing is to

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.

________ examines statistical samples of product components at each stage of the production process and plots the results on a graph in order to spot and correct any variances from desired quality levels.

How has the emphasis of quality control changed in recent years? Describe some of the modern quality control techniques that illustrate this change in emphasis.

At Stevens Manufacturing, workers are organized in teams that combine their efforts to produce complex units of a final product. Stevens is using a facility layout known as a(n):

In a modular manufacturing layout teams of workers combine to produce more complex units.

To make their famous Daddy's Deluxe Italian Sandwiches, Santino's Sandwich Emporium finely slices prime meats, stacks them on Italian bread, adds special seasonings, cheeses, and veggies. The value added by Santinos's when it combines these ingredients to make a sandwich is known as

At Skilled Specialties, Inc., production line employees often work side by side with their robotic counterparts. This practice is also common among many of Skilled Specialties' other American competitors. The resurgence of U.S. manufacturing firms in recent years can be credited to

Corie is a development engineer for a company that manufactures solar panels for both residential and commercial purposes. Her company uses PERT network software for all development projects. As she nears the final month of her timeline for completing a new panel, Corie will focus on those activities that are

The critical path identified by PERT analysis is the sequence of tasks that can be completed in the shortest amount of time.

In the past, production management was about using the factors of production to create finished goods.

Service businesses know that in order to delight customers they must be able to anticipate their needs.

________ involves computers directly in the production process.

For service-intensive businesses, facility layout is usually designed to centralize the decision-making process.