Table of Contents
Operations Management Old Question Paper Year 2015 | Tribhuvan University | Program BBA
Group “A”
Brief answer questions: [10*1=10]
1) Point the four responsibilities of operation manager.
2) Write formulas of system utilization and system efficiency.
3) Introduce term business process reengineering.
4) What are the balking and reneging in queuing system?
5) What is the important of Gantt chart?
6) List five factors affecting location decision of manufacturing organization.
7) Write about utilization factor.
8) Write two differences between product layout and process layout.
9) Define linear programming problem.
10) What is aggregate production planning?
Group “B”
Short answer questions
11) What is the importance of location decision? Explain five different location factors that are important in selection of location for manufacturing organizations.
12) What is layout design? Explain briefly different types of layouts that are used in organization with examples.
13) Solve the following assignment problem to minimize the cost.
| Counters | Salesman | ||
| X | Y | Z | |
| A | 250 | 400 | 350 |
| B | 400 | 600 | 350 |
| C | 200 | 400 | 250 |
14) Determine the minimum cost to the following transportation problem.
| Origin | Destination | Availability | |||
| D1 | D2 | D3 | D4 | ||
| O1 | 6 | 4 | 1 | 5 | 14 |
| O2 | 8 | 9 | 2 | 7 | 16 |
| O3 | 4 | 3 | 6 | 2 | 5 |
| Requirement | 6 | 10 | 15 | 4 | 35 |
15) Define inventory management. Describe briefly fixed order quantity and fixed order time model.
16) Processing new account at a bank is intended to average 10 minutes each. Five samples of four observations each have been taken. Use the each sample data to construct both the mean chart and a range chart. Do the results suggest that the process is in control?
| Sample no. | Observations | |||
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | |
| 1 | 10.2 | 9.9 | 9.8 | 10.1 |
| 2 | 10.3 | 9.8 | 9.9 | 10.4 |
| 3 | 9.7 | 9.9 | 9.9 | 10.1 |
| 4 | 9.8 | 10.2 | 10.3 | 9.7 |
| 5 | 9.9 | 10.3 | 10.1 | 10.5 |
Group “C”
Comprehensive answer questions.
17) Read the following case analytically and answer the following questions.
Handles and Hinges (H & H) Ltd was established in Birmingham, England, in 1984 by two young entrepreneurs, Dave Philips and Chris Agnew, both experienced in the hardware trade. The business specialized in the designer market for polished metal (brass and stainless steel) door handles, cupboard knobs, furniture fittings (mostly used in ship/office furniture) and hinges. By 1996, sales had grown to about £5 million per year This success was based on H&H’s reputation for high quality, unique designs of both traditional and modern products, many of which were selected and specified by architects for large and prestigious projects such as new office developments in London’s Docklands. Dave, the Chief executive Officer, with responsibility for sales, believed that most orders from construction companies were placed with H & H because they assumed they had no other choice once the H & H products had been specified.
Because of the recession in the construction industry, particularly in office building, we have, since 1990, expanded our direct sales to large UK hardware retail companies, which now account for about 40% of our sales value, but only about 15% of our gross profit, This segment is much more Pace-sensitive, so we must be able to manufacture good-quality, simple, standard products at low costs comparable to those of our competitors. Some of the reduced costs have been achieved by using thinner and cheaper materials similar to those used in our competitor’s products. We have just received our first consignment of brass sheet from Poland with saving of over 10% in the case. We also had to reorganize to reduce our processing costs. Chris has done a great job of changing all production to modern batch methods. However, 1 am concerned that we are often at delivering to our UK retail customers, and this makes it difficult to keep delivery of relatively small quantities is required in the retail segment”, whereas the construction/ contractors market allows very long production lead times. Dependable delivery is crucial to avoid completion delays, for which we have been held financially accountable on some occasions!
When customers complain about delivery or about faulty products, we try to compensate them in some way to keep their business for example by credit notes or discounts on the next order. Our representatives each spend about one day a week dealing with the consequences of late deliveries, but on the positive side, a meeting with a client is an opportunity to get the next order. The hardware retail companies often require very quick delivery, which is often only achieved by switching production to the item which is required first.
Really, I am more concerned about reports of quality problems, an increasing number of construction companies have complained to us about dented or scratched handles, but our production department assures us that they left the factory in good condition and must have been damaged on site; which is to be expected on a large construction site. The Quality Control Manager says, however, he cannot give an also guarantee that they were all OK, because we only do sampling of final production; if more than a few in a sample are found at final inspection be sub-standard, the whole batch is rejected, re-inspected, re-inspected and reworked. Using express courier transport and overtime in the factory network can usually be done in about a week, but invariably the contractors complain to the architect, perhaps because they dislike being told who to buy from. This can lead to lots of correspondence and meetings between H & H, the contractor and the architect, when we could be doing things. This problem seems to have got worse in the last two year; often it’s also difficult to agree if the product is sub-standard. It is frequently just a question of how shiny (or matt) the polish finish is; at other time there are scratches in areas that really can’t be seen in use. Often the customers are too fussy, anyway.
Discussions with Chris (the Manufacturing Director) put a perspective on different production methods could lead to quality problems. we are aware that the organization of production methods could lead the quality problems, so I introduced statistical control, a subject 1 studied extensively in a quantitative methods course at the local college. Our inspectors now take random samples of batches of components and measure important dimensions such as the diameter or length of brass handles, the thickness of the incoming which fail are either rejected or reworked, and all materials, etc. Batches where we have identified any fault at all is returned to the buyers routinely threaten to place orders elsewhere. I supplier, and our instructed the supervisors to inspect press tooling just before the start of each production batch to ensure that there are no surface faults, so I think it is unlikely that the dents and blemishes are caused in production. I must make a point of checking that this is happening. Anyway, our final inspection sampling has been changed to give an acceptable quality level (AQL) of 2% whereas until recently it was only 5%. We have had to increase the number of final inspectors by four at a cost of £15,000 each per annum, but all the management team agrees that with quality products we must be confident of the final quality before packing. We trained some of our best assemblers in Statistical Process Control (SPC) and made them full-time inspectors; the combination of their technical and statistical skills ensures that we have the right people for this job. We could not rely on our operators to do any dimensional checks; hardly any of them know how to measure using a metric rule, let alone a micrometer or venire gauge. It is best to keep them concentrating on achieving correct output targets. I believe that most quality problems here must be caused by occasional operator carelessness.
The batch method of production has given us much more control over operations. No longer do we have to rely on hard-to-recruit craftsmen who did everything slowly and unpredictably. Now we make the most of economic batches at each stage, benefiting from the economies of scale of longer runs and cheaper unskilled labor. With incentive bonuses based on effective performance against agreed standard times, all our people are working faster to achieve the company’s goal of higher productivity. There is no doubt that our operations are now more productive than they’ve ever been high quality and low costs, we are now set for a major assault the competition. We expect our profits to rise dramatically from the currently inadequate 1% return on sales.
Questions:
- What are the competitive priorities of the company? Describe
- Discuss the manufacturing process technology mentioned in this case
- What were the important things the company did to achieve higher productivity?
- Analyze the determinants of quality use by the company. Do you think that the company’s use of statistical quality control is sensible?
You may also like:
You must log in to post a comment.