1. What relationship is there between learning curves and productivity measurement?
2. One manufacturer has seen a typical learning percentage of 90 percent in the firm. It has recently found out that a competitor has a percentage of 85 percent. What do you think about this?
3. What is a customer order decoupling point? Why is it important?
4. It has been noted that during World War II Germany made a critical mistake by having its formidable Tiger tanks produced by locomotive manufacturers, while the less formidable U. S. Sherman tank was produced by American car manufacturers. Use the product-process matrix to explain that mistake and its likely result.
5. Why is it that reducing the number of moves, delays, and storages in a manufacturing process is a good thing? Can they be completely eliminated?
6. Students arrive at the Administrative Services Office at an average of one every 15 minutes, and their requests take on average 10 minutes to be processed. The service counter is staffed by only one clerk, Judy Gumshoes, who works eight hours per day. Assume Poisson arrivals and exponential service times.
7. A cafeteria serving line has a coffee urn from which customers serve themselves. Arrivals at the urn follow a Poisson distribution at the rate of three per minute. In serving themselves, customers take about 15 seconds, exponentially distributed.
8. Describe cycle time as it relates to business processes. Why is it important to the management of business processes? How does it relate to concepts like productivity and capacity utilization?
9. Explain how having more work-in-process inventory can improve the efficiency of a process. How can this be bad?
10. From your own experiences, compare the process of your favorite bricks and mortar department store and a comparable online retailer. What advantages does each have over the other for the company? How about for you, the customer?