Question

PART I: Multiple Choice

Write all answers to the following questions. No partial credit available.

Consumption utility is composed of price and convenience. True or False?

A firm reduces inefficiencies by making trade-offs. True or False?

A firm can increase its profitability by:

A. increasing costs and reducing price.

B. moving away from the efficient frontier.

C. increasing inefficiencies.

D. reducing inefficiencies.

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 high-level scope must have different inputs and outputs than the process viewed at a lower 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 inputs into outputs.

D. A set of activities that transforms a collection of outputs into inputs.

9. Which of the following is a key process metric?

A. Flow rate

B. Flow unit

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. Customer sequencing

D. Average customer flow time

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. maximum

B. minimum

C. average

D. medium

13. The process is ___________ constrained when ___________ exceeds ___________ and the flow rate is equal to the demand rate.

A. Demand, supply, demand

B. Capacity, supply, demand

C. Demand, demand, supply

D. Capacity, demand, supply

14. Which of the following statements is FALSE?

A. Nonbottleneck resources have slack capacity.

B. A bottleneck resource must have a utilization of 100%.

C. Nonbottleneck resources have a less than 100% utilization.

D. A bottleneck resource does not always have the longest processing time.

15. It matters 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, lower

B. demand, raise

C. capacity, raise

D. capacity, lower

18. C&A Fast Food 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 C&A 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. nonbottleneck

D. bottleneck

20. Which of the following is a drawback of specialization?

A. Increased processing time

B. Increased wage rates

C. Demotivated workers

D. Increased setup times

This is the end of the multiple choice or True/False section.

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. CodeDesk Inc matches programmers with freelance jobs. It has 30 employees who staff its online chat room. It receives, on average, 240 chat requests per hour, and the average chat session takes 5 minutes to complete ( i. e., from start to finish). On average, how many chat sessions are active (i.e., started but not completed)?

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).

What is the capacity of the nurse team over the course of 9-hour workday?

Assuming the demand for the nurses is 60 patients per day, what is the utilization of the nurse team?

Assuming the demand for the nurses is 60 patients per day, what is the cycle time?

23. Glenn Dental Clinic provides general dental care to residents of Philadelphia 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 workers)             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.

Draw a process diagram of this process.

What is the capacity (patient/hour) at the resource “Dentist”?

What is the bottleneck in the process?

Assuming unlimited demand, what would be the flow rate?

Assuming unlimited demand, what would be the utilization at resource “Receptionist”?

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.

What is the labor content?

What is the cost of direct labor

Answer 1

Consumption utility is not composed of price and convenience but performance and fit. Hence, the statement is false. 2. The statement is false as trade off made by the firms result in incompatibility. 3. The firm will face loss if it increases cost and reduces prices. If they ignore efficiency frontier, the performance of the firm will decrease. If the inefficiencies are increased, the profitability decreases. Hence, the firm should reduce their inefficiencies to increase profitability. Therefore, the correct option is D 4. In Latin, Opus means work. The word operations derived from this word Opus. Therefore, the correct option is D Operations management deals with all the activities which transforms inputs to outputs by adding value to them. It plans the production such that the supply is equal to demand, generating revenue by through their products which meet the requirement of customer. However, it is not the goal of operations management to provide the high quality products at low cost. Therefore, the correct option is D.

Circle for operation Arrow for transportation Square for inspection Triangle for storage Hence, the correct option is D 12. Capacity: The maximum flow units that can be completed by a resource per unit time is called capacity. It is calculated by dividing the number of machines or other resources by the processing time Hence, the correct option is A 13 Capacity-constrained: When the demand is more than the supply and the flow rate is equal to process capacity, it is called capacity constrained Demand-constrained: When the process capacity is more than demand and the flow rate is equal to demand rate is called demand constraint Unconstrained: If the demand and supply are equal then it is unconstrained Therefore, the correct option is C. 14 Bottle neck is the resource with the minimum capacity in a process, which detemines the capacity of the process. If the resource utilization is less than 100%, it cannot be a bottle neck. Therefore, the correct option is B

15. A process without any inventory is called empty process. If the process is empty, the time to produce the first unit is included in the time through process. If the process has already started, the time through process is calculated by multiplying the cycle time and quantity Hence, the statement is true. 16. Calculate the labour content as follows Labour content-2+30+60+5 -97 seconds or 1.61 minutes The labour content to serve one customer is 97 seconds or 1.61 minutes. Therefore, the correct option is C Demand-constrained: When the process capacity is more than demand and the flow rate is equal to demand rate is called demand constraint. Hence, if the demand is constrained, the staff should be lowered to decrease the capacity Hence, the correct option is A