- •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
- •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
- •In your opinion, does business school have competitive priorities?
- •What kind of information do you think would add value to the following goods 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?
How must an operations strategy integrate with marketing and accounting?
To create goods and services all organizations perform three functions. These functions are the necessary ingredients not only for production but also for an organization’s survival. They are: Marketing, which generates the demand or at least takes the order for a product or service. Production or operations, which creates the product. Finance or accounting, which tracks how well the organization is doing, pays the bills, and collects the money. Therefore, Operation is an integral part of whole process. Marketing goals or financial aspects determine the direction of an operations strategy; or vice versa, operations sptrategy peculiarity may affect marketing and financial decisions.
What is meant by competitiveness?
Competitiveness is a comparative concept of the ability and performance of a firm, sub-sector or country to sell and supply goods and/or services in a given market. Although widely used in economics and business management, the usefulness of the concept, particularly in the context of national competitiveness, is vigorously disputed by economists, such as Paul Krugman. The term may also be applied to markets, where it is used to refer to the extent to which the market structure may be regarded as perfectly competitive. This usage has nothing to do with the extent to which individual firms are "competitive'. Competitive advantage implies the creation of a system that has a unique advantage over
competitors.
For each of the different competitive priorities, describe the unique characteristics of
the market niche with which it is most compatible.
There are various competitive priorities on which companies can compete in the market.
Mainly, companies can compete on differentiation, low cost or response. Differentiation is concerned with providing uniqueness. Differentiation should be thought of as going beyond both physical characteristics and service attributes to encompass everything about the product or service that influences value the customers can derive from it. This may be the convenience of a broad product line, product features or quality, related to the product. Differentiation is even more important in service sector, where one option for its extension could be an experience. The idea of an experience is to engage the customer into the process. Low-cost leadership is achieving maximum value as defined by your customer. A low- cost strategy does not imply low value or low quality. Airline service is a good niche for competing on low cost. The cost leadership is often driven by company efficiency, size, scale, scope and cumulative experience Response is a set of values related to rapid, flexible, and reliable performance.
Describe the difference between order-qualifiers and order-winners. What is the
relationship between the two over time?
The criteria required in the marketplace (and identified by marketing) can be divided into two groups: order qualifiers and order winners. An order qualifier is a characteristic of a product or service that is required in order for the product/service to even be considered by a customer. An order winner is a characteristic that will win the bid or customer's purchase. Therefore, firms must provide the qualifiers in order to get into or stay in a market. To provide qualifiers, they need only to be as good as their competitors. Failure to do so may result in lost sales. However, to provide order winners, firms must be better than their competitors. It is important to note that order qualifiers are not less important than order winners; they are just different. Order winners and qualifiers are both market-specific and time-specific. They work in different combinations in different ways on different markets and with different customers. While, some general trends exist across markets, these may not be stable over time. For example, in the late 1990s delivery speed and product customization were frequent order winners, while product quality and price, which previously were frequent order winners, tended to be order qualifiers. Hence, firms need to develop different strategies to support different marketing needs, and these strategies will change over time. Also, since customers' stated needs do not always reflect their buying habits, Hill recommends that firms study how customers behave, not what they say.