Operations Management Systems: Pre-lecture Questions

Pre-lecture Questions
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA
SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING
Operation Management Systems
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Table of Contents
(1) Operations as a transformation process................................................................................4
(2) Major decision-making processes........................................................................................4
(3) Competitiveness of business organisation............................................................................4
(4) Productivity..........................................................................................................................5
(5) Influence of non-economic factors on make-or-buy decisions............................................5
(6) Types of processes................................................................................................................5
(7) Line balancing......................................................................................................................6
(8) Job design and methods analysis..........................................................................................7
(9) Stopwatch time study...........................................................................................................8
(10) Determinants of quality......................................................................................................8
(11) Costs of quality...................................................................................................................9
(12) Quality-productivity ratio...................................................................................................9
(13) Control chart: c-chart..........................................................................................................9
(14) Run chart..........................................................................................................................10
(15) Aggregate planning..........................................................................................................12
(16) Strategies of aggregate planning......................................................................................12
(17) Available-to-promise inventory........................................................................................12
(18) Rough-cut capacity planning............................................................................................13
(19) Material Requirement Planning MRP I............................................................................13
(20) MRP: Outputs...................................................................................................................13
(21) Lot sizing in MRP processing..........................................................................................13
(22) Capacity requirement planning.........................................................................................13
(23) MRP II and ERP...............................................................................................................14
(24) Ultimate goal of lean operation........................................................................................14
(25) Waste in lean systems.......................................................................................................14

(26) Design and operation of lean system................................................................................15
(27) SMED (Single-minute exchange of die) relation with lean operation.............................15
(28) Difference between push systems and pull systems.........................................................15
(29) Kanban Calculation..........................................................................................................16
(30) Significance of Operation Management...........................................................................16
References................................................................................................................................18
List of Tables
Table 1: Measurement of productivity source: Reid, and Sanders (2015)............................5
Table 2: Calculation of positional weights per task (source: PANNEERSELVAM, 2012)....7
Table 3: Assigning the work stations.........................................................................................7
Table 4: Stopwatch time study...................................................................................................8
Table 5: Control chart limits (Source: Madu, 2012)..............................................................10
Table 6: Run chart table (Source: Rumane, 2017)................................................................11
Table 7: Available-to-promise inventory (Source: Wild, 2017)..............................................12
List of Figures
Figure 1: Precedence diagram....................................................................................................6
Figure 2: C-chart diagram........................................................................................................10

(1) Operations as a transformation process
According to Slack, Chambers, and Johnston (2010), operations can be defined by following
the transformation process model. It describes that operations are those transformation
processes in which a set of input resources such as customers, machines, labour, raw
materials, information, management capital are converted to outputs of services and products.
The transformation processes are controlled by a control mechanism and feedback is used to
measure performance of the system. The main objective of the operations management is to
ensure that the produces output should have greater value than the cost of inputs. Thus, the
transformation processes are also termed as activities which add value in the supply chain
which extends from suppliers to customers.
(2) Major decision-making processes
The two major operations decisions include decisions related to system design and system
operation. System design decisions are strategic in nature which means it have long-term
consequences and requires comparatively more expense and commitments for resources.
Strategic operational decisions need more of planning and designing tasks such as planning
of facility location and layout, decisions to choose the technologies, determining the
organisation of labour and equipment, and to ascertain long-term capacity of the organisation.
System operation decisions are tactical type which have short-term impact on the
organisation (Slack and Brandon-Jones, 2018). It requires relatively lesser commitment of
resources and need more of flexible management. Such decisions include workforce
scheduling, managing staff0, establishing quality standards, vendor contracting, management
of work in progress and inventory etc.
(3) Competitiveness of business organisation
Organisations compete to have higher share of various marketing variables. Competitiveness
of an organisation is determined in the ways a firm is comparatively better than the others in
meeting customers’ needs and wants. There are several competitiveness dimensions which
determine the relative position of an organisation and distinguish successful organisations
from the failure ones. Quality, speed, cost and flexibility are the major four business
dimensions that contribute to the competitiveness of a firm (Vargas, 2015).