MAN 6501 Exam Review The following questions should serve as a very good review for the exam. I have tried to organize the questions based on the main topics covered in each learning unit. Although I may not ask a question exactly as it is stated on this review, if you have thought about each question, you should be able to perform very well on the exam. For example, it is possible that I may give you a very short scenario describing a company's current situation and ask you to provide suggestions to improve the operations of the company. Likewise, I could give you a list of products or services and have you tell me which type of process would be best to produce the product/ service. I will not ask specific questions about the cases discussed in class, except as noted in the questions below, but examples from the cases may be used to help support your answers. 1. Why is it important to create an operations strategy that is consistent with a firm's competitive strategy? How does an operations strategy affect operation decisions? (refer to Super Cuts example in notes). 2. What suggestions would you give a firm to help them create an effective product design, especially one that is easy and quick to manufacture/ develop? 3. What are some of the main differences between a manufacturing and a service system? Given these differences, what concerns does a service provider have that a manufacturing firm does not have in designing the service? How did Benihana address these concerns to create an effective service design? 4. Describe the differences between each of the five pure production processes. What are the main characteristics of each, i.e., volume and variety capabilities, unit costs, etc.? Provide an example of a product or service that would best be produced by each process. 5. What is the relationship between product design and process selection, i.e., how does product design influence the type of process to be used, and how does a firm's existing process influence future product innovations? 6. How can the capacity of a process be determined? What needs to be done, or can be done to increase the overall capacity of a process? You should be able to construct a process flow diagram, calculate individual workstation and system capacity, identify the bottleneck of a process, determine minimum throughput time and system cycle time, and calculate the total throughput time for a given number of units. (See practice problem.) 7. Given a list of activities, their expected completion times, and the order in which they must be completed, you should be able to a) construct a network of the project (we used the ACTIVITY - ON - NODE method), b) determine the length of each path, c) determine the critical path/ activities, d) calculate the expected time to complete the project, e) calculate the \"slack\