Exam 7: Manufacturing and Service Technologies

E-commerce entails the customer's landing on the home page.

Do you agree with a top executive who claimed that top-level management is a craft technology? Based on your answer, what can be taught in the classroom about top-level management?

What is a flexible manufacturing system (FMS)? Describe the three subcomponents of flexible manufacturing.

Which type of system links manufacturing components that previously stood alone?

Boundary roles are used extensively in manufacturing firms, but rarely used in service organizations.

Contrast the axes on Perrow's framework for department technologies.

For which of the following would baseball be a close analogy?

Routine technologies are characterized by little task variety and the use of objective, computational procedures, whereas engineering technologies tend to be complex because there is substantial variety in the tasks performed.

Which of the following means that the job provides greater responsibility, recognition, and opportunities for growth and development?

The production of tangible outputs from service technology, rather than intangible ones from manufacturing technology, is the most obvious difference between the two technologies.

What organizational changes begin to appear as service organizations take on characteristics of "mass production?" Give an example to support your explanation.

Which of the following is one important advantage of flexible manufacturing systems

Intensive technologies refers to "the combination in one organization of successive stages of production; each stage of production uses as its inputs the production of the preceding stage and produces inputs for the following stage."

According to the general pattern in technology research, what is advisable when technologies are routine, analyzable, independent, and well defined?

Compared with traditional mass production technologies, FMS has a narrow span of control; few hierarchical levels; adaptive tasks, low specialization, and decentralization; and an overall environment characterized as organic and self-regulative.

Failing to adopt appropriate technologies to support strategy, or adopting a new technology and failing to realign strategy to match it, can lead to poor performance.

Research suggests that FMS can become a competitive burden, rather than a competitive advantage, unless organizational structures and management processes are redesigned to take advantage of the new technology.

Job simplification means that jobs are made less difficult and with fewer tasks.

An integrated information network refers to a computerized system with a common database linking all areas of the organization such as accounting, inventory control, design, marketing, production, etc.

List the differences between manufacturing and service technologies. Provide three examples of service technologies, product and service technologies, and product technologies.