Operation Management Exercise

Operations Management

Assignment 1

Name: ________________ Student ID: ___________________ Session:

Part 1: Please choose TRUE or FALSE for the statement.

1. From an operations management point of view, a traveler is an input to an airline's operations system. (True/False) (4 points)

2. Balancing the desire to efficiently use resources while providing a high quality service encounter is an operations management challenge. (True/False) (4 points)

3. A bottleneck occurs when a stage in a production process is starving. (True/False) (4 points)

4. When a make-to-order production process is used, production is based on forecasts. (True/False) (4 points)

5. Process analysis can help answer many important questions such as how many customers can a process handle per hour. (True/False) (4 points)

Part 2: Process Analysis.

Note: To each question, you must provide detail calculations for the answers.

Problem 2.1

Suppose you are supervising a car assembly line, where different parts of a car are installed into a fabricated car body. The assembly line has four processing stations in order:

A: Engine Setup B: Wheel Assembling C: Door Assembling D: Window Assembling.

Assume the following amount of work is required at each station: A: 60 minutes, B: 50 minutes, C: 20 minutes, and D: 20 minutes.

1. What is the flow time (from a fabricated car body to a finished car)? Please give your answer in minutes. (4 points)

2. What is the bottleneck station? (4 points)

3. What is the throughput of your process (cars per hour)? (4 points)

4. What is the cycle time of your process (mins)? (4 points)

5. What is the average utilization of your resources (in %)? (4 points)

6. If additional manpower is available, what is the best way allocating this resource (assuming that the additional manpower can only be added to one certain station and assuming you want to make many cars)? (4 points)

7. Assume the additional manpower can...