Managing Healthcare Processes

1. True or false: In a competitive environment where increasing product customization and variety is becoming more and more important, a move from a job shop to anassembly line would be appropriate, all other things being equal.
2. True or false: Cells have a faster quality feedback loop than do job shops because cell workers have more visibility on the entire processes around them and are more likely to be cross-trained, so quality usually benefits from quicker feedback. In a traditional job shop, it might be hours or days or weeks between the creation and detection of a quality problem because batches of work in process spend so much time in queues and sometimes in intermediate storage (WIP).
3. True or false: Consider the differences between a high-end stock brokerage, where each client is assigned to a specialist and each client receives an individualized portfolio, versus a mutual fund, where there is a much higher volume of clients, with each client receiving the exact same portfolio (the bundle of securities that the fund holds). In Figure 4: Product-Process Matrix in theHBP No. 8012reading, the high-end stock brokerage would be positioned above and to the left of the mutual fund.