PART I: Multiple Choice
Write all answers to the following questions. No partial credit available.
1. Inconvenience or transaction cost consists of price and performance. True or False?
2. A firm's ability to satisfy the dimensions of the customer's utility is called capacity. True or False?
3. A firm can increase its profitability by:
A. increasing costs and reducing price.
B. moving away from the efficient frontier.
C. reducing inefficiencies.
D. increasing inefficiencies.
4. Operations comes from the Latin word "opus," which means:
A. activity.
B. helping people.
C. improvement.
D. work.
5. Which of the following is NOT a goal of operations management?
A. Understanding the drivers of customer utility
B. Match supply with demand
C. Make a profit while providing customers what they want
D. Provide great products at low prices to customers
6. A process with a lower scope must have different inputs and outputs than the process viewed at a high-level scope.
True or False?
7. The entry rate of inputs and the exit rate of outputs in a process match at every moment.
True or False?
8. Which of the following is a definition of the term "process"?
A. A set of activities that combines a collection of units.
B. A set of activities that combines a collection of supplies.
C.A set of activities that transforms a collection of outputs into inputs.
D. A set of activities that transforms a collection of inputs into outputs.
9. Which of the following is a key process metric?
A. Flow unit
B. Flow rate
C. Base unit
D. Base rate
10. Which of the following factors is relevant to Little's Law?
A. Customer arrival times
B. Resource input time
C. Average customer flow time
D. Customer sequencing
11. Inventory is shown as ____________ in a process flow diagram.
A. boxes
B. arrows
C. spheres
D. triangles
12. The capacity of a resource determines the ___________ number of flow units that can flow through that resource per unit of time.
A. medium
B. minimum
C. average
D.maximum
13. The process is ___________ constrained when ___________ exceeds ___________ and the flow rate is equal to the demand rate.
A. Demand, demand, supply
B. Capacity, supply, demand
C. Demand, supply, demand
D. Capacity, demand, supply
14. Which of the following statements is FALSE?
A. Non-bottleneck resources have slack capacity.
B. A bottleneck resource must have a utilization of 100%.
C. Non bottleneck resources have a less than 100% utilization.
D. A bottleneck resource does not always have the longest processing time.
15. It does not matter whether the process starts empty or not when computing the time it takes to produce a certain order quantity. True or False?
16. Four employees at a fast-food restaurant each perform one of the four activities in serving a customer: greet customer, take order, process order, and deliver order. The processing time for each activity is given as follows:
|
Activity
|
Processing time per customer
|
|
Greet customer
|
2 seconds
|
|
Take order
|
30 seconds
|
|
Process order
|
60 seconds
|
|
Deliver order
|
5 seconds
|
Assume demand is unlimited. What is the labor content associated with serving one customer?
A. 60 seconds per customer
B. 24.25 seconds per customer
C.97 seconds per customer
D. 388 seconds per customer.
17. If _________ is constrained, we should __________ the staffing level to lower capacity.
A. demand, raise
B. demand, lower
C. capacity, raise
D. capacity, lower
18. Fast Food restaurant has four activities in serving a customer: greet customer, take order, process order, and deliver order. Each activity is staffed by one employee (for a total of four employees). The processing time for each activity is given as follows:
|
Activity
|
Processing time per customer
|
|
Greet customer
|
2 seconds
|
|
Take order
|
30 seconds
|
|
Process order
|
60 seconds
|
|
Deliver order
|
5 seconds
|
Assume demand is unlimited. To which activity should restaurant management assign an additional employee in order to increase process capacity?
A. Process order
B. Take order
C. Greet customer
D. Deliver order
19. A process can be balanced by moving work away from the _______ to unused capacity elsewhere in the process.
A. most expensive resource
B. least expensive resource
C. non bottleneck
D. bottleneck
20. Which of the following is a drawback of specialization?
A. Increased processing time
B. Increased wage rates
C. Increased setup times
D. Demotivated workers
PART II: Problem Solving
Answer the following questions in the space provided below each question. Be absolutely as neat/brief/elegant as possible but show all work (how you got the answer). I value correctness much more than "blah, blah, blah." That said, I can only award partial credit to wrong answers if justifications are provided.
21. Consider the baggage check-in process of a small airline. Check-in data indicate that from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m., 300 passengers checked in. Moreover, based on counting the number of passengers waiting in line, airline management found that on average number of passengers waiting for check-in was 30. How long did the average passenger had to wait in line?
22. A community health system's nurse team consists of 12 nurses working in the local community. It takes a nurse 1.5 hours to complete one patient visit (including travel time and breaks).
a. What is the capacity of the nurse team over the course of 9-hour workday?
b. Assuming the demand for the nurses is 60 patients per day, what is the utilization of the nurse team?
c. Assuming the demand for the nurses is 60 patients per day, what is the cycle time?
23. Dental Clinic provides general dental care to residents of New York on walk-in basis. The clinic has started receiving complaints from patients that the waiting time is too long and has asked you to investigate whether this problem can be solved.
Upon arrival, customers first received a series of paperwork from the receptionist and fill out relevant information such as personal health records and insurance provider. The form is then handed back to the receptionist who enters the information into the computer system for the dentist to see. A dental assistant then takes an X-ray from the patient. A dentist then performs the check up and discusses any issues with the patient.
Based on conversations with staff members at the clinic, you have obtained the following information on the process:
- It takes about 5 minutes for customer to fill out the paperwork.
- Entry of information on the paperwork into the system and verification with past records takes another 5 minutes for a receptionist. There are two receptionists.
- It takes 15 minutes, on average, for the dental assistant to take an X-ray. There are three dental assistants on shift at any moment.
- There are 10 dentists working at the clinic. Each checkup takes 30 minutes, on average.
The following table summarizes the process data collected above.
|
Resources
|
Process
|
Staffing (# of worker)
|
Activity Time (min/patient)
|
|
Self-service
|
Paperwork
|
-
|
5
|
|
Receptionist
|
Data Entry
|
2
|
5
|
|
Dental Assistant
|
X-ray
|
3
|
15
|
|
Dentist
|
Checkup
|
10
|
30
|
Assuming that there exists unlimited demand, unless otherwise stated
a. Draw a process diagram of this process.
b. What is the capacity (patient/hour) at the resource "Dentist"?
c. What is the bottleneck in the process?
d. Assuming unlimited demand, what would be the flow rate?
e. Assuming unlimited demand, what would be the utilization at resource "Receptionist"?
f. Assuming the process started empty. How long would it take to serve 20 patients?
24. This problem is continuation of the problem 23, i.e. all the conditions and observations are the same.
Assume that there exists unlimited demand, unless otherwise stated. Assume further that the dentists get paid $100 per hour while the receptionists and dental assistants get paid $30 per hour.
a. What is the labor content?
b. What is the cost of direct labor?