Deck 8: Process Management: Lean and Six Sigma in the Supply Chain

Question 1

A lean system is also known as a push system.

Answer 1

False

Question 2

When designing a manufacturing or service process, a Pareto chart would be an essential tool for evaluating the process in terms of its action elements, waiting periods, and process flow.

Answer 2

False

Question 3

A weakness of lean systems is that none of its practices are related to the environment or sustainability.

Answer 3

False

Question 4

The primary design objective with lean layouts is to reduce wasted movements of workers, customers, and/or work-in-process.

Question 5

Lean thinking and Six Sigma quality are both concerned with achieving low cost and high quality throughout the supply chain.

Question 6

The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award recognizes firms for their quality achievements but is only given to U.S.firms.

Question 7

Lean production, JIT, and Six Sigma quality mean the same thing.

Question 8

Statistical process control (SPC) allows firms to compare process performance to desired levels or required standards.

Question 9

Deming, Crosby, and Juran are all prominent quality professionals whose ideas were vital to the development of Six Sigma.

Question 10

Toyota initially designed their JIT program on Ford's manufacturing system.

Question 11

Some of Deming's 14 points actually conflict with many Six Sigma concepts.

Question 12

When lean firms share their best practices with supply chain members, this is referred to as yokoten.

Question 13

Statistical process control uses control charts to monitor the outputs of a process to identify variations due to assignable causes and variations due to common causes.

Question 14

Organizations practicing lean production often increase their inventory levels in order to create a cushion against variability so that they can investigate and eliminate the weaknesses in their systems.

Question 15

Lean production is an operating philosophy or mindset that essentially attempts to minimize the impact of system variability and flaws in forecasting through the use of high safety stock inventories.

Question 16

A type of card called a kanban is used to signal when a process is out of control in a JIT production process.

Question 17

Acceptance sampling is a statistical technique that enables a shipment reject or accept decision to be made based on information obtained from a representative sample drawn from the population.

Question 18

A cause-and-effect diagram is a useful tool for presenting data in an organized fashion, indicating process problems from most to least severe.

Question 19

Manufacturing cells are often U-shaped to make operator and material movements easier within the cell.

Question 20

The term "lean production" essentially refers to the Toyota Production System in its entirety.

Question 21

Which of the following is an example of how lean programs can help to protect the environment?

A) Parts made from recycled materials
B) Using rubber from used tires in auto parts
C) Batch size reduction to reduce plastics
D) All of the above

Question 22

Calculate the inventory container size required given the following: Demand rate = 10 parts per hour, Safety stock required = 16%
Number of containers = 14, Time to cycle through entire system = 6 hours

A) 2 parts
B) 3 parts
C) 4 parts
D) 5 parts

Question 23

Lean production emphasizes all of the following EXCEPT:

A) Continuous improvement
B) Reduction of waste
C) Synchronization of material flows
D) Long production runs

Question 24

Which person was a key figure in developing the Toyota Production System and also developed the concept of poka-yoke?

A) Deming
B) Ohno
C) Toyoda
D) Shingo

Question 25

Which company probably played the largest role in the development of the Toyota Production System?

A) General Motors
B) Chrysler
C) Ford
D) Boeing

Question 26

Which tool is useful for presenting data in an organized fashion, indicating process problems from most to least severe:

A) Pareto Charts
B) Check Sheets
C) Cause-and-Effect Diagrams
D) Fishbone Diagrams

Question 27

Lean production systems are sometimes referred to as pull systems because demand from customers activates the production actions of the manufacturing facilities.In order for this demand to be communicated to everyone in the supply chain/manufacturing facility a signal must be passed from downstream processing centers to the upstream processing centers.This system of relaying signals is referred to as a:

A) Kanban System
B) Semaphore System
C) Keiretsu Network
D) TQM Network

Question 28

Efficient Consumer Response was initially developed in the 1990's for the following industry:

A) Fashion
B) Grocery
C) Small Electronics
D) Automobile

Question 29

If lot sizes are reduced by 50 percent, what impact will this have on average inventory levels?

A) Increase by 50%
B) Increase by 100%
C) Decrease by 25%
D) Decrease by 50%

Question 30

The following is a term that refers to error or mistake proofing:

A) Kaizen
B) Muda
C) Kanban
D) Poka-yoke

Question 31

Which of the following are among the MOST important elements of the lean production philosophy?

A) Quality inspections and a standardized product line
B) Fully automated assembly lines and a large supplier base
C) Large inventories and quality inspections
D) Waste reduction and continuous improvement

Question 32

The Five-Ss refer to:

A) Overspending habits
B) Keiretsu relationships
C) Industrial housekeeping
D) Robust evaluation techniques

Question 33

The Quick Response program, developed in the 1980's, was an offshoot of the following supply chain concept:

A) Efficient Consumer Response
B) Six Sigma
C) Just-in-Time
D) Kaisen

Question 34

Japanese manufacturing firms sometimes create cooperative coalitions with their suppliers in order to provide the suppliers with a certain degree of financial support.What are these cooperative coalitions called?

A) Jidoka Networks
B) Keiretsu Networks
C) Kanban Networks
D) Kaizen Networks

Question 35

Which of the following quality gurus believed that companies should strive for zero defects and that quality was, in a sense, free since quality improvement programs invariably paid for themselves?

A) Juran
B) Deming
C) Baldrige
D) Crosby

Question 36

Waste in Japan is also referred to as:

A) Muda
B) Kanban
C) Poka-yoke
D) Sakichi

Question 37

Which of the following is NOT consistent with the lean philosophy?

A) Cross-training employees to increase processing flexibility
B) Developing a culture of continuous improvement within the organization
C) Increasing batch sizes to take advantage of economies of scale
D) Positioning WIP inventories near each processing center

Question 38

When compared to their U.S.counterparts, a benchmarking study found that Japanese auto manufacturers used:

A) Twice the manufacturing labor
B) Double the manufacturing space
C) Half the engineering hours to produce a new automobile model
D) All of the above

Question 39

Which of the following layouts is primarily designed to process parts, components, or jobs requiring the same or similar processing steps, saving duplication of equipment and labor:

A) Work centers
B) Production kanbans
C) Work-in-process
D) Manufacturing Cells

Question 40

Which of the following is NOT one of the Seven Wastes?

A) Excess inventory
B) Environmental waste
C) Waiting
D) Scrap and rework

Question 41

A Nevada Bank keeps track of errors from 20 clerks.Each sample has 100 records.They want to construct a P-chart to track the proportion of errors in each sample.The table below shows the number of errors per sample.(Use z = 3 for control limit calculations.)

a.Determine P.
b.Determine ?P.
c.Determine the 3-sigma UCL and LCL.
d.Does the process appear to be in statistical control?

Question 42

Discuss the linkages between lean production and environmental sustainability.

Question 43

Briefly explain THREE of the statistical tools of Six Sigma.

Question 44

A company that produces 8 pound bags of cat litter gathered 5 samples of 6 bags each.The weights of each bags' contents are listed below.What would you plot on the chart for sample 2?

A) All of the following numbers: 8.33, 8.22, 8.08, 8.51, 8.41, 8.28
B) All of the following numbers: 8.34, 8.22, 7.77, 8.18, 8.13
C) 8.130
D) 8.305

Question 45

Describe SPC and Acceptance Sampling.What is the key difference between the two?

Question 46

A company produces 8-pound bags of cat litter; as shown below, it gathered 5 samples with 6 bags in each sample for quality control purposes.The weights of each of the bags are listed below. Determine .

A) 8.26
B) 8.06
C) 7.97
D) 7.92

Question 47

Provide an overview of the beliefs of each of the following quality professionals:
W.E.Deming
Philip Crosby
Joseph Juran

Question 48

Why is the workforce considered such an important element of lean production?

Question 49

What are the TWO primary techniques/philosophies discussed in Chapter 8 that are used to manage processes in the supply chain such that they'll meet the needs of customers today.Provide the prime objectives for each of the two techniques/philosophies.Also, for each technique, provide three elements used to achieve the prime objectives.

Question 50

An important outcome of statistical process control is:

A) Firms can take corrective actions before process variabilities get out of control
B) Firms can visually monitor process performance
C) Firms can minimize total inventory cost
D) Both A & B
E) None of these

Question 51

Calculate the defects per million opportunities (DPMO) given the following: Blake, owner of Blakester's T-shirt Shoppe, keeps track of customer complaints.For each T-shirt sold, there are four possible complaints: T-shirt shrinks, poor quality, design wears off, and doesn't fit right.Each week, Blake calculates the rate of T-shirt "defects" per total T-shirts sold, and then uses this information to determine his company's DPMO.During the past week, his company sold 1200 T-shirts.His company received 22 customer shrinkage complaints, 16 poor quality complaints, 12 design wears off complaints, 8 doesn't fit right complaints.
Calculate his firm's DPMO.

A) 69,600
B) 0.193
C) 5.8 x 10^6
D) 12,083

Question 52

A company sells eggs in boxes with 12 cartons and 12 eggs in each carton, thus there are 144 eggs in each box.The organization wants to construct a P-chart to track the proportion of broken eggs in each sample (shown below).If the company used one box of eggs in each sample in the dataset below, what would be the centerline, upper control limit (UCL), and lower control limit (LCL) for the appropriate P-chart? (Use z = 3.) Choose the closest answer.

A) Centerline = 0.50, UCL = 0.625, LCL = 0.375
B) Centerline = 0.025, UCL = 0.64, LCL = 0
C) Centerline = 0.30, UCL = 0.70, LCL = 0
D) Centerline = 0.083, UCL = 0.152, LCL = 0.014