DAO2703 Tutorial 1 Questions Semester 1 AY2023/2024
1. Define operations management.
2. What are the major ways in which services operations differ from manufacturing operations?
3. Discuss the operations objectives for:
a. A fast-food restaurant (e.g., MacDonald’s, Burger King, Jollibee)
b. A university (e.g., NUS, NTU, SMU)
c. A computer company (e.g., ASUS, Dell Technologies, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo)
4. What are the three classic functions that must be performed in all organizations? How are they
interrelated? Which is more important?
5. If inputs increase by 35% and outputs increase by 10%, what is the percent change in
productivity?
6. Textbook: Chapter 2, Problem 3 on page 65 (Chocolate Bars Production).
7. Textbook: Chapter 2, Problem 4 on page 65 (Shopping Carts for Supermarkets).
8. Textbook: Chapter 2, Problem 9 on page 66 (ID Theft Protection).
9. Suppose that a US manufacturer is considering opening a plant in Vietnam, and the current
exchange rate is 23,745 Vietnamese Dong per dollar, i.e., VND23,745/USD. Also, the wage rate
is VND30,660 per hour. Suppose further that U.S. workers are 11 times more productive than
Vietnamese workers.
a. What is the “relative” wage rate (in dollars) of operating in Vietnam, after taking
productivity differences into account?
b. If the U.S. wage rate is USD15.94 per hour, are labor costs (relatively) cheaper in the U.S. or
Vietnam?
10. Textbook: Chapter 6, Discussion and Review Question 2 on page 290 (Describe the Five Process Types).
11. What process types are used for making/manufacturing each of the following:
a. Beer
b. Business cards
c. Automobiles
d. Cell phones
e. Gardenia bread
f. Customized homes
12. What are CAD and CAM? How do they differ from integrated CAD/CAM??
13. What is CIM?
14. Do you think our local companies need to adopt new production technologies like CAD, CAM,
FMS, CIM, etc.? Please explain.
15. Textbook: Chapter 6, Questions 1 & 2 on page 254 (Reading: Foxconn Shifts Its Focus to
Automation).
16. Watch the following YouTube video: How Amazon Delivers In 1 Day. Discuss how Amazon
uses robots and automation technology in its warehouse management.
17. Watch the following YouTube videos
• A behind the scenes look at Amazon Prime Singapore
• Alibaba Challenges Amazon With a Promise: Fast Global Shipping | WSJ
a. Last mile delivery has been a challenging problem for delivery companies and accounted
for a large percent of the total delivery cost. Why was that the case?
b. Briefly describe the new system Alibaba tried to test in order to deal with last mile
delivery problem. How about Amazon? Did Amazon try to test any new system to handle
last mile delivery problem?
18. The diagram below depicts a five-stage, worker-paced headphone manufacturing plant.
Stage 1 Stage 2 Stage 3 Stage 4 Stage 5
The headphones are meant to be used with iPods and DVD players. Stage 1 involves a worker
bending a metal strip into an arc shape. In stage 2, the metal arc is fitted with a plastic sleeve. In
stage 3, the headphones are fitted at the end of the metal and plastic strips. In stage 4, the wires
are soldered into the headphones. Stage 5 involves a specially designed packaging unit.
Currently, there is a single worker at each stage. After the plant has been operational for a couple
of hours, the OM manager inspects the plant. She is particularly interested in cutting labor costs
and observed the following: the whole process is capacity-constrained and the entire process
4 4
produces 36 units in one hour, and the utilizations at each step are as follows: U1 = , U2 = ,
30 15
4 2
U3 = , U 4 = 1 , U 5 = where U1 through U5 denote the resource capacity utilizations at stage 1
5 5
through stage 5. Help the OM manager to figure out:
a. Which stage is the bottleneck?
b. What is the resource capacity of stage 5?
c. Which process stage has the highest resource capacity?
19.
Stage 1 Stage 2 Stage 3
12 minutes/part 10 minutes/part 12 minutes/part
Stage 1
a. What is the process capacity?
b. What is the cycle time and flow rate of the process? Assume that the process is at steady
state and process-constrained.
c. What is the flow time?
d. What’s the inventory level?
20. Consider the following 6 tasks (in table below) that must be assigned to 4 workers on a
conveyor-paced assembly line (i.e., a machine-paced line). Each worker must perform at least
one task. The current configuration assigns the workers in the following way:
• Worker 1 assigned to task 1 Task Time to complete task
• Worker 2 assigned to task 2 (seconds)
• Worker 3 assigned to tasks 3 & 4 1 30
• Worker 4 assigned to tasks 5 & 6 2 25
3 35
4 40
5 15
6 30
a. What is the capacity of the current line?
b. Assume that tasks are allocated to maximize capacity of the line, subject to the conditions
that (1) a worker can only perform 2 adjacent tasks and (2) all tasks need to be done in
their numerical order. What is the capacity of your assignment?
c. Company is considering automating the process due to high demand, how many workers
do you suggest the company to use so that the process capacity is maximized? For your
suggested number of workers, how do you assign tasks to them? Evaluate the
performance of the process of your decision.
21. Five activities each takes 8, 10, 6, 6, 4 minutes, respectively. Operating time per day is 8 hours
and daily demands is 48 units. Use both incremental-utilization and longest-activity-time
heuristics to design and balance a production line respectively and assess the performance.
22. Consider the following flow process which consists of three process steps performed by three
machines. Work is processed in batches at each stage. Before a batch is processed at Stage 1, the
machine in stage 1 has to be set up. During a setup, the machine is unable to process any product.
No setups are needed at stages 2 and 3. Assume that the parts in the same batch have to stay
together.
Stage 1 Stage 2 Stage 3
Setup time: 30 mins No setup No setup
Run time: 1.5 mins/part Run time: 2 mins/part Run time: 2.5 mins/part
a. If batch size is 50 parts, which stage is the bottleneck?
b. What batch size maximizes the capacity of the whole process with minimal inventory?
23. Customer flow rate of one of Sheng Siong Supermarket stores is 1500 customers per day and
there are always, on average, 25 customers in the store at any point of time during the day. How
much time, on average, do customers spend in this store?
24. Consider the following bunk-bed manufacturing process. Assume that beds are produced in
batches of four, and there are 40 hours available per week for production. Each bed goes through
the following nine steps:
Step Setup Time Run Time
(Minutes per setup) (Minutes per bunk bed)
1. Cut 15 37.5
2. Plane 10 38.4
3. Router 10 48
4. Drill 10 28
5. Sand 25 24
6. Stain 15 12
7. Polyurethane 45 90
8. Kit assembly 0 40
9. Cleaning 0 15
Assume that there is one worker at each step in the process.
a. Which step is the bottleneck?
b. What is the process capacity?
c. If the demand is 20 bunk beds per week, what is the resource capacity for each step in the
process?
d. How would the process capacity change if the batch size is doubled, i.e., eight bunk beds
per batch?
25. A processor makes two components, A and B, which are then packaged together as the final
product (each product sold contains one A and one B). The processor can do only one
component at a time: Either it can make As or it can make Bs. There is a setup time when
switching from A to B.
Current plans are to make 100 units of component A, then 100 units of component B, then 100
units of component A, then 100 units of component B, and so forth, where the setup and run
times for each component are given as follows:
Component Setup/Changeover Time Run Time/Unit
A 5 minutes 0.2 minute
B 10 minutes 0.1 minute
Assume the packaging of the two components is totally automated and takes only two seconds
per unit of the final product. This packaging time small enough that you can ignore it. What is
the average hourly output, in terms of the number of units of packaged product (which includes
one component A and one component B)?
26. Wally’s Widget Warehouse takes orders from 7 A.M. to 7 P.M. The manager wants to analyze
the process and has provided the following process flow diagram. There are three steps required
to ship a customer order. The first step is to take the order from a customer. The second step is to
pick the order for the customer, and then they have to pack the order to ready it for shipping. The
order-taking step works at a maximum rate of 100 customer orders per hour. Order picking
works at a maximum of 80 per hour, and packing works at 60 per hour.
Customers Customer Picked Wait for
Take Orders Orders Pick Orders Orders Pack Orders Shipper
1 hour/100 customers 1 hour/80 customers 1 hour/60 customers
Wally wants to figure out the following:
a. What is the current maximum output of the process assuming that no one works
overtime? (For your answers to these questions, assume that everyone can start working
at 7 A.M.)
b. How long will the picking and packing operations have to work if we have a day where
the order taker works at his maximum capacity all day?
c. Given b, what is the maximum number of orders waiting to be picked?
d. Given b, what is the maximum number of orders waiting to be packed?
If we double the packing capacity (from 60 to 120 orders per hour), what impact does this have
on your answers in parts (b), (c), and (d)?
27. An existing factory has the production process shown in the figure below. Manufacturing fittings
must be processed through each of the three operations (lathe, mill, and grinder) in sequence, but
it does not matter which lathe or mill is used. Each lathe is capable of handling 25 fittings per
hour, each mill can handle 30 per hour, and the grinder can handle 80 per hour.
Process Flow Diagram for Production Process
Mill
Lathe
Mill Grinder
Lathe
Mill
a. What are the cycle times for each of the three operations (lathe, mill, and grinder)?
b. Which of the above three operations is the bottleneck of the entire production process?
c. Assuming an eight-hour workday, find the overall daily capacity of the entire
manufacturing process.
d. If the factory were to add a third lathe that has the same process time as each of the
current lathes, what would be the new overall daily capacity of the entire manufacturing
process?
28. Refer to the Bread-Making Operation example on slide 20 of Week 3’s lecture notes. Suppose
the bakery is considering producing wheat bread in addition to white bread. Assume that equal
quantities of each bread would be produced. The packaging line would switch between
packaging white and wheat bread every 100 loaves, i.e., every batch. It would take ¼ hour to
change bags on the packaging line to switch from white bread to wheat and vice-versa. (Assume
no setup time to switch bread type made on either baking line.)
a. What would be the overall cycle time of the entire baking-line operation?
b. What would be the daily capacity (assuming an 8-hour workday)?
c. Would it help to package all white bread first and then all wheat bread?
29. A small barber shop has a single chair and an area for waiting, where only one person can be in
the chair at a time, and no one leaves without getting their hair cut. So the system is roughly
Entrance → Wait → Haircut → Exit
Assume customers arrive at the rate of 10 per hour and stay an average of 0.5 hour. What is the
average number of customers in the barber shop?
30. A bread-making factory has the production process shown in the figure below. There are three
operations (mixing, baking, and packaging) in sequence, but it does not matter which mixer or
oven is used. Each mixer can handle a batch of 75 loaves in 15 minutes, each oven in the baking
operation can handle a batch of 100 loaves in 20 minutes, and the packaging machine can handle
a batch of 100 loaves in 12 minutes.
Process Flow Diagram for Bread-Making Process
Raw Mix Bake
Work in Work in
Material Process Process Pack
s
Mix Bake
a. What is the cycle time for the entire bread-making process?
b. Assuming an eight-hour workday, what is the daily capacity?
c. The factory is considering replacing some of its existing equipment with more advanced
and faster equipment. The choice is between: (i) purchasing two new ovens that are each
capable of baking a batch of 100 loaves in 16 minutes, or (ii) purchasing a new packaging
machine that is capable of packaging a batch of 100 loaves in 10 minutes. Which option
is better? Explain your reasons. Furthermore, what is the new overall daily capacity?
