Chapter 1: Introduction to OM

Advances in information technology & global competition have had a lacking influence on operations management

A process of reducing costs, improving quality, and increasing customer satisfaction

Natural causes such as weather, cannot be changed

Measures of variation are standard deviation, variance, and range

Outsourcing is one of the ethical issues that arise in many aspects of operations management

Operations management is the management of systems or processes that create goods and/or services

A few factors account for a high percentage of the occurrence of some events

Management of sequence of internal & external facilities, functions, & activities involved in producing/delivering

Models may be incorrectly applied and the results misinterpreted and does not guarantee good decisions

Buying goods or services instead of producing or providing them themselves

The ideal situation for a business organization is to achieve an economic match of supply and demand

Provide raw materials, equipment, supplies, and/or other inputs to the organization, & deliver outputs

Secures and allocates financial resources to fund business operations

Consist of one or more actions that transform inputs into outputs

The organization & coordination of activities of a business to achieve defined objectives

An abstraction of reality, a simplified representation of something

A philosophy that involves everyone in a organization in a continual effort to improve quality & satisfy customers

Which one of the following is false about supply chains

Models are generally difficult to use and expensive than dealing directly with the actual situation

Management of systems or processes that create goods & services

Simple models are less preferred over complicated ones

Uncover patterns that can be used to guide business decisions

Summarizing data; averages, graphs, frequency distributions, and pie charts

Govern the operation of the entire organization

Problem solving often embody an attempt to obtain mathematically optimal solutions

Standards of behavior that guide how one should act in various situations

Cost per unit is an area of significant difference between manufacturing and service operations

Use much less of certain resources than typical mass production systems use to produce a comparable amount of output

The equation for value-added is price of outputs - cost of inputs

Simplicity is an important feature of models. Complicated models are preferred over simple ones.

Predictable, important for capacity planning; not a big problem, it can be easily dealt with

There are two types of models: physical and mathematical

Function itself, supplying operations with parts & material, performing work on product or service

Incorporates a number of recent trends listed with an emphasis on quality, flexibility, time reduction, and teamwork

Used to provide information sharing in real time among organizations and their major supply chain partners

Answering the question of why something happened

Abstract than their physical counterparts; graphs, charts, blueprints, pictures, and drawings

The key business functions of the demand side are operations and supply chains

Weather is an example of random variation

Real-life counterparts; visual correspondence with reality

Numerous operations failures underscore the need to improve the way operations are managed

Assesses consumer wants and needs, promotes organization's goods and services

Similarities between goods & sales is the impact the management of the goods portion vs management of the service part

Defective inputs, incorrect work methods, maintenance issues etc. can be changed

As more value-added to a good, it becomes more expensive to store and transport within the supply chain

Make up the value system; purchasing, production and/or service, marketing, sales

Which of the following not a benefit of using models in decision making

The responsibilities of the operations manager are planning, organizing, staffing, procuring, and reviewing

The most abstract--do not look at all like their real-life counterparts; easiest to manipulate

What are the three functions of business organizations?

Systems approach emphasizes hierarchies among subsystems

Measurement of productivity is easy for goods, but difficult for services

The responsibilities of the operations manager are:

Maximize the revenue received from fixed operating capacity by influencing demand through price manipulation

Trade disputes and tariffs have created uncertainties for decision makers

Service and production processes that use resources in ways that do not harm ecological systems that support humans

What are the basic functional areas of business organization

Process is one or more actions that transform inputs into outputs

All modes are wrong, but some are useful

Manufacturing and service are often different in terms of what is done, but quite similar of how it is done

Sequence of organizations-their facilities, functions, & activities-that are involved in producing & delivering products

Support the core processes; accounting, HR, and IT

Physical items produced by business organizations; include raw materials, parts, subassemblies, & final products

Used in conjunction with formulas to guide business decisions

Sustainability is using resources in ways that do not harm ecological systems that support human existence

Activities that provide some combination of time, location, form, and psychological value

Any activity that harvests value from the assets of a business

The business organization is system composed of marketing, operations, and finance subsystems

It becomes less expensive to store & transport goods, as they are more value-added by the processes in the supply chain

Which of the following is not a characteristic of a service operations

Analyzing data to determine how to influence a desired change

The reason why we study OM is because it became a very popular discipline

What are the commonly used measures of variation

The creation of goods and services

Ability of an organization to respond quickly to demands or opportunities

Major influence on the entire organization of its products/services, more labor intensive, time consuming, etc.

The key aspect of operations management is supply chain management

Which of the following lists all major components of a supply chain correctly

Various inputs such as capital, labor, & information are used to create goods/services using one or more processes

Collective success/failure of companies' operations functions has no impact on the nation's economy & ability to compete

Focuses on what will happen

Management of systems or processes that create goods and/or provide services

A set of interrelated parts that must work together; whole is greater than the sum of its individual parts

Activities include process design, process execution, and process monitoring

The lesser the value added, the greater the profitability

Customer contact for goods are generally high, but low for services

Production is the creation of goods only

Collecting, analyzing, and presenting data using statistics, math, and computers for use in decision making

The key business functions on the supply side are sales and marketing