Short Q & A:

1) Define Production and Operations Management?

Ans: Production And Operations Management (POM) can be defined as
planning, coordination and controlling of an organization's resources to
facilitate the production process. POM is an extremely important
management area. Issues such as the location of production facilities, labor
and transportation costs, and production forecasting are extremely important
considerations.

2) What is Line Balancing?

Ans: Line Balancing is the process of assigning tasks to workstations in such a
way that the workstations have approximately equal time requirements.
The objective of line balancing is to obtain equal time requirements at
majority of the workstations. This shortens the time of manufacturing as well
as reduces the idle time.

3) What are the Phases of a Project?

Ans: The phases of a project are:
a) Initiate
b) Plan
c) Execute
d) Evaluate

4) What is Concurrent Engineering?

Ans: Concurrent Engineering refers to the process of bringing together the
representatives from various functional areas (like engineering design and
manufacturing personnel) to simultaneously design a product and the
process by which it should be made.

5) What is Productivity?
Ans: Productivity refers to the ratio of the quantity and quality of units
produced to the labor per unit of time or simply ratio of output to input.
It is a measure of how well the organization converts the input resources
(labour, materials, machines etc) into goods and services.

6) What is Logistics?
Ans: Logistics involves Planning, Implementing and Controlling the physical
flow of materials and final goods from points of origin to the points of use to
meet customer requirements at a profit.

7) What is QFD (Quality Function Deployment)?

Ans: Quality Function Deployment is a formal system for identifying customer
wants and eliminating wasteful product features and activities that do not
contribute to product quality.
QFD is designed to help planners focus on characteristics of a new or existing
product or service from the viewpoints of market segments, company, or
technology-development needs.

8) What is Poka-Yoke?
Ans: Poka-yoke is a Japanese term that means "fail-safing" or "mistake-
proofing". A poka-yoke is any mechanism in a lean manufacturing process
that helps an equipment operator avoid (yokeru) mistakes (poka). Its purpose
is to eliminate product defects by preventing, correcting, or drawing attention
to human errors as they occur.
It is a behavior shaping constraint or a method of preventing errors by
putting limits on how an operation can be performed in order to force the
correct completion of the operation.

9) What is Benchmarking?
Ans: Benchmarking is the process of comparing one's business processes and
performance metrics to industry bests and/or best practices from other
industries. Dimensions typically measured are quality, time, and cost.
Improvements from learning mean doing things better, faster, and cheaper.
Benchmarking involves management identifying the best firms in their
industry, or any other industry where similar processes exist, and comparing
the results and processes of those studied (the "targets") to one's own results
and processes to learn how well the targets perform and, more importantly,
how they do it.

10) What is Six Sigma?

Ans: Six Sigma is a business management strategy originally developed by
Motorola, USA in 1981.
Six Sigma seeks to improve the quality of process outputs by identifying and
removing the causes of defects (errors) and minimizing variability in
manufacturing and business processes. It uses a set of quality management
methods, including statistical methods, and creates a special infrastructure of
people within the organization who are experts in these methods.
It allows only 3-4 defects per million opportunities for each product or service
transaction, in other words 99.99966% of the products manufactured are free
of defects.

11) What are flexible manufacturing systems?

Ans: A group of computer-controlled independent workstations or machines
linked by material handling systems that are able to accommodate wide
variations in types and quantities of products.
This system reduces setup or changeover times and facilitates the production
of differentiated products in small numbers. The shift in emphasis is from
 mass production of a few products to a job-shop environment in which
customized orders are manufactured.

12) What is Lean Manufacturing?

Ans: Lean manufacturing or lean productions, which is often known simply as
"Lean", is a production practice that considers the expenditure of resources
for any goal other than the creation of value for the end customer to be
wasteful, and thus a target for elimination. It refers to the philosophies and
approaches embodied in JIT.
It involves identifying and eliminating non value adding activities in design,
production and supply chain management and dealing with the customers.

13) What is Value Engineering?

Ans: Value engineering or value analysis is defined as “an organized creative
approach which has its objective, the efficient identification of unnecessary
cost-cost which provides neither quality nor use nor life nor appearance nor
customer features.”

14) What is JIT?

Ans: Just-in-Time (JIT) Manufacturing is a philosophy rather than a technique.
By eliminating all waste and seeking continuous improvement, it aims at
creating manufacturing system that is response to the market needs.
The phase just in time is used to because this system operates with low WIP
(Work-In- Process) inventory and often with very low finished goods
inventory. Products are assembled just before they are sold, subassemblies
are made just before they are assembled and components are made and
fabricated just before subassemblies are made. This leads to lower WIP and
reduced lead times. To achieve this organizations have to be excellent in
other areas e.g. quality.

15) What is Production System?

Ans: The production system is ‘that part of an organization, which produces
products of an organization. It is that activity whereby resources, flowing
within a defined system, are combined and transformed in a controlled
manner to add value in accordance with the policies communicated by
management’.

Long Q & A

1) Explain the types of wastes?

Ans: Shiego Shingo, a Japanese JIT authority and engineer at the Toyota Motor
Company identifies seven wastes as being the targets of continuous improvement
in production process. By attending to these wastes, the improvement is achieved:
1. Waste of over production eliminate by reducing set-up times, synchronizing
quantities and timing between processes, layout problems. Make only what is
needed now.
2. Waste of waiting eliminate bottlenecks and balance uneven loads by flexible work
force and equipment.
3. Waste of transportation establishes layouts and locations to make handling and
transport unnecessary if possible. Minimize transportation and handling if not
possible to eliminate.
4. Waste of processing itself question regarding the reasons for existence of the
product and then why each process is necessary.
5. Waste of stocks reducing all other wastes reduces stocks.
6. Waste of motion study for economy and consistency. Economy improves
productivity and consistency improves quality. First improve the motions, then
mechanize or automate otherwise. There is danger of automating the waste.
7. Waste of making defective products develop the production process to prevent
defects from being produced, so as to eliminate inspection. At each process, do not
accept defects and makes no defects. Make the process fail-safe. A quantify process
always yield quality product.

2) Discuss the historical development of POM?

Ans: For over two centuries operations and production management has been
recognized as an important factor in a country’s economic growth;
1) The traditional view of manufacturing management began in eighteenth century
when Adam Smith recognized the economic benefits of specialization of labour. He
recommended breaking of jobs down into subtasks and recognizes workers to
specialized tasks in which they would become highly skilled and efficient.
2) In the early twentieth century, F.W. Taylor implemented Smith’s theories and
developed scientific management. From then till 1930, many techniques were
developed prevailing the traditional view.
3) Production Management becomes the acceptable term from 1930s to 1950s. As
F.W. Taylor’s works become more widely known, managers developed techniques
that focused on economic efficiency in manufacturing.
4) Workers were studied in great detail to eliminate wasteful efforts and achieve
greater efficiency. At the same time, psychologists, socialists and other social
scientists began to study people and human behavior in the working environment.
In addition, economists, mathematicians, and computer socialists contributed
newer, more sophisticated analytical approaches.
5) With the 1970s emerge two distinct changes in our views. The most obvious of
these, reflected in the new name Operations Management was a shift in the service
and manufacturing sectors of the economy. As service sector became more
prominent, the change from ‘production’ to ‘operations’ emphasized the broadening
of our field to service organizations. The second, more suitable change was the
beginning of an emphasis on synthesis, rather than just analysis, in management
practices.