Deck 9: Production and Operations Management

Question 1

Operations management involves inventory management, quality control, and production scheduling.

Answer 1

True

Question 2

To strengthen its manufacturing base, the U.S. will need to continue to innovate.

Answer 2

True

Question 3

The box, "Creating Skilled Workers with German-Style Apprenticeships," asserts that Germany is working to combat the growing skills gap by providing on-the-job education for young workers.

Answer 3

True

Question 4

In the past, production management was about using the factors of production to create finished goods.

Question 5

In recent years, operations management has become more focused on providing services, because that is where the growth and profit potential is greatest.

Question 6

Evidence suggests that U.S. manufacturing firms can no longer compete against the best firms in the rest of the world.

Question 7

U.S. manufacturers are focusing on quality as a way to become more competitive globally.

Question 8

One key to the resurgence of U.S. firms as world-class competitors has been the implementation of a focus on quality.

Question 9

Operations management converts resources into goods and services.

Question 10

Since U.S. manufacturing competes on price throughout the world, innovation plays a very small part in the U.S. economy.

Question 11

U.S. businesses are known for their technological advances and their ability to implement change.

Question 12

In the process of operations management, a firm transforms resources such as raw materials, supplies, and even human resources into goods and services.

Question 13

Manufacturing firms focus exclusively on the production of goods and allow other firms to provide services.

Question 14

Currently, manufacturing accounts for only around 70% of U.S. GDP.

Question 15

Operations management in service industries is about creating a good experience for the customer.

Question 16

The U.S. is still manufacturing intensive. Only 55% of U.S. jobs come from the service sector.

Question 17

Today, due to technological advancements, manufacturers in the U.S. have become so efficient, they require fewer workers to produce the same amount of output.

Question 18

American manufacturers have emphasized continuous improvement as one strategy for regaining a competitive advantage in the manufacturing sector.

Question 19

As the service industries became a larger part of U.S. GDP, companies have become more concerned about measuring productivity in the service sector.

Question 20

American companies, like IBM, prefer to stay the course and continue to compete by selling products instead of services.

Question 21

Education and training are less important to workers in the service sector than to workers who have jobs in the manufacturing sector.

Question 22

Manufacturing companies are concerned with production management, while service companies are concerned with operations management.

Question 23

Process manufacturing physically or chemically alters materials to create finished goods.

Question 24

Apollo just graduated with a degree in operations management. While earning his degree, the knowledge he gained and skills he developed could make him an attractive employee for both a manufacturing firm and a service firm.

Question 25

As you're loading your groceries on the conveyor belt, the clerk asks you if you found everything you needed. As she continues to scan your purchases, coupons for future purchases print near the cashier's terminal. In reviewing the key concepts from this chapter, you would consider this action to be the store's management of its labor.

Question 26

Service businesses know that in order to delight customers they must be able to anticipate their needs.

Question 27

When firms successfully produce products, they create form utility.

Question 28

Process manufacturing refers to combining components and raw materials to make a product.

Question 29

Operations management moves from knowing the needs of consumers to actually satisfying those needs.

Question 30

Operations management transforms resources into goods and services. Green Grass Landscaping utilizes equipment, labor, and materials to develop a top notch landscape for its customers. Managing this operation may also involve maintenance services.

Question 31

The value added by the creation of finished goods and services from inputs is called ownership utility.

Question 32

Only firms in the manufacturing sector can create true form utility.

Question 33

Firms that specialize in accounting, finance, and management consulting are all part of the service sector.

Question 34

Kimber Cross is majoring in operations management at a local university. Unfortunately, the evolution of the U.S. from a manufacturing-oriented to a service-oriented economy means that Kimber will not likely find job openings in her field of study.

Question 35

The quality standard for service industries such as luxury hotels is meeting the customers' requests.

Question 36

The three basic requirements of production are: (1) creating a finished good, (2) making sure you created it at the lowest cost possible, and (3) selling it.

Question 37

Trey is a manager at Plastics Plus, a manufacturing firm in Arkansas. His responsibilities include production scheduling as well as keeping tabs on the company's inventory. These duties suggest that Trey is involved in promotions management.

Question 38

An important strategy in operations management is using technology to anticipate customer needs.

Question 39

A continuous production process involves physically or chemically manipulating raw materials to create a product.

Question 40

One important issue with respect to managing the operation of a business is to make certain that customers leave feeling as though they had a good experience with your service and with your company in general.

Question 41

One way to compete with cheap labor is to use robots.

Question 42

Despite its early promise, computer-aided design has not met with much success in increasing productivity.

Question 43

Intermittent production processes are characterized by short production runs and frequent changes of machinery in order to produce different products like customized furniture.

Question 44

Technological improvements are largely responsible for the increase in productivity and efficiency of U.S. plants.

Question 45

The production process requires inputs, controls, and outputs.

Question 46

CAD/CAM has made it possible to custom-design products to meet the tastes of small markets with very little increase in costs.

Question 47

Flexible manufacturing systems use machines that are designed to do a multitude of tasks so that they can produce a variety of goods.

Question 48

The ability to integrate computers into the design and manufacture of products has had the greatest impact on production techniques in recent years.

Question 49

So far, the high cost of CAD/CAM techniques has limited their use to large, expensive manufactured goods such as automobiles.

Question 50

Mass production techniques allowed firms to respond quickly to the individual needs of consumers.

Question 51

An assembly production process is characterized by long production runs that turn out finished goods over time.

Question 52

The purpose of computer-integrated manufacturing (CIM) is to unite computer-aided design with computer-aided manufacturing.

Question 53

Companies that achieve lean manufacturing use less of everything (raw materials, labor, etc.) to produce the same amount of products.

Question 54

The advantage of computer-integrated manufacturing software is that it allows computer-aided design machines to communicate directly with computer-aided manufacturing machines.

Question 55

CAD systems allow designers to use 3D modeling software.

Question 56

One drawback of intermittent production processes is that they tend to be much slower than continuous processes.

Question 57

Lean manufacturing is a strategy of producing standardized products that have no frills or extra features in order to keep prices low.

Question 58

Contemporary manufacturers in the U.S. lack the flexibility to use intermittent production processes.

Question 59

A disadvantage of flexible manufacturing systems is that they usually require a great deal of labor because machines are rarely capable of handling a wide variety of tasks.

Question 60

One of the reasons mass production techniques lost favor is that, despite their ability to keep costs relatively low, mass production lacks flexibility.

Question 61

Mass customization is a strategy of convincing customers to choose from a relatively small number of alternatives in order to achieve the efficiencies of mass production.

Question 62

Mass customization is not exclusive to product-intensive businesses. Service businesses have learned how to use mass customization to serve their customers.

Question 63

Mass customization is tailoring products to meet the needs of a large number of individual customers.

Question 64

Businesses that provide services typically cannot use mass customization because services are not tangible products that can be customized.

Question 65

Improvements in technology have significantly increased the quality of products, as well as helped reduce costs.

Question 66

Nanomanufacturing is when materials can be manipulated on a molecular or even atomic level.

Question 67

The higher productivity of U.S. plants is due to technological improvements.

Question 68

Manufacturers use computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) to create three-dimensional designs of products before they are built.

Question 69

The main difference between process manufacturing and an assembly process is that process manufacturing uses sophisticated robots and automated machinery to produce a good or service, while an assembly process uses labor and simple tools to make a product.

Question 70

Process manufacturing involves taking raw materials and physically or chemically changing them into another form, while the assembly process takes the newly changed form and turns it back into the original form.

Question 71

To make its dry ice, Polar Caps Ice Company compresses carbon dioxide and cools it to an extremely low temperature. Polar Caps Ice Caps' method is an example of process manufacturing.

Question 72

While mass customization works well for producers it is not used in the service sector.

Question 73

Chinese companies use so many robots in its manufacturing sector that it may soon become the world's largest robot market.

Question 74

Comfort Corners Home Furnishings specializes in producing custom-made residential furniture. The most efficient process for Comfort Corners to utilize would be a continuous production process.

Question 75

Although lean manufacturing attempts to reduce the amount of labor used in the manufacturing process, it typically does so by increasing the amount of most of the other resources used in the production process.

Question 76

Land, labor, capital, and knowledge are inputs into the production process.

Question 77

Computers and robots are only useful in continuous production processes where the same type of product is produced many times.

Question 78

When a company has the ability to produce the same amount of goods with only half the floor space and half the labor that it used in the past, the firm is practicing flexible manufacturing.

Question 79

Companies that employ lean manufacturing and flexible manufacturing produce better quality products, but have costlier production lines.

Question 80

Actually, it is much easier to custom-design service programs than it is to custom-make goods.