Question

2. Describe the major challenges faced by production managers in the current environment. Answer: 3. Compare and contrast push-based production strategies with pull-based production strategies. What are the primary capabilities, advantages, and disadvantages of each? Answer: 4. Outsourcing has been a popular supply chain strategy. Discuss the reasons for and against an organization outsourcing its production processes.

Answer 1

1) In the present environment, the major challenges for production managers are

a) Ensuring that sufficient raw material inventory is always available to ensure uninterrupted production.

b) Minimising wastage generated from the production process

c) Ensuring high level of process consistency in the production process

d) Being able to meet customer requirements in terms of quality and quantity

2) Push based production strategies are focussed on maximization of production and maximum asset utilisation. They would be good to produce lesser variety of items at large scale. The advantages are that per unit cost of production would be low but there would be higher build up of inventory and larger cost of working capital.

In a pull based system, the production is aligned with customer requirement and batch sizes are smaller. The cost per unit may be higher but inventory would be lower and there would be higher flexibility.

3)

The advantages of outsourcing are:-

a) Economies of scale

b) Lower cost of production

c) Higher focus on high end design and engineering

The disadvantage are

a) Loss of core competency of manufacturing or production

b) Less ability to customize production process

c) Lack of innovation in production