Deck 17: Cycle-Time Management Increases Productivity

Question 1

If demand volume justifies it,the high-volume,properly-balanced flow shop is the best work configuration to obtain lowest costs and best quality.

Answer 1

True

Question 2

Project management's interpretation of cycle time is similar to that of the flow shop.

Answer 2

False

Question 3

Decreasing cycle time by working smarter has the effect of increasing productivity,decreasing the breakeven point,and increasing the system's effective capacity.

Answer 3

True

Question 4

The three classes of line-balancing are deterministic,heuristic,and stochastic.

Question 5

Cycle time must be the length of time that a unit spends at each stop point along the production line.

Question 6

Precedence diagrams chart all relevant operations indicating which operations must follow others.

Question 7

The number of workstations n must always be an integer in both theory and practice.

Question 8

It is always beneficial to have some short operations that can be assigned to workstations more readily than long ones.

Question 9

Cycles do not exist in the repetitive intervals between placing an order and receiving supplies.

Question 10

Heuristic line-balancing methods are only economically feasible for job shop problems.

Question 11

The use of line-balancing for IFS is common when batch sizes are small enough to warrant a temporary serial form of production.

Question 12

Stochastic line-balancing exists when the assumption of fixed and deterministic times for all operations and total process time is correct.

Question 13

Stochastic line balancing exists when the assumption of fixed and deterministic times for operations and total process time is not correct.

Question 14

Technological factors exist that do not permit operations to be split.Such physical restrictions are called zoning constraints.

Question 15

Precedence diagrams are important graphic displays that show various ways of ordering the steps necessary to complete operations.

Question 16

The concept of continuous process improvement (instead of reengineering a radical change) never applies to cycle-time reduction.

Question 17

Lateral transferability is when precedence diagrams permit operations to be assigned to earlier but not later workstations.

Question 18

Line-balancing is the effort to nearly equalize the output rate capabilities of successive workstations on the production line.

Question 19

Cycle time can be no less than total work content time.

Question 20

The participation of people at the workstations in manufacturing,service systems,and along the supply chain decreases variability of output rates.

Question 21

From a systems perspective,cycle-time management has trade-offs to consider between longer cycle times using technology and shorter cycle times using people.

Question 22

For line-balancing,operation times (to be balanced at workstations) should be increased to reflect longest times that might be experienced with each operation.

Question 23

The behavior of single channel systems can be described as an input-output system with variable arrivals and variable service times.

Question 24

Queues can form when stochastic behavior characterizes any operation time,tᵢ,.

Question 25

Queuing models describe systems behaviors with different service resource allocations and they provide optimum solutions for output rates and cycle times.

Question 26

For Tonge's heuristic,all assignments are made subject to non-violation of any constraints based on precedence and zoning.

Question 27

Queuing models provide descriptive measures for output rates and cycle times.They do not provide optimum solutions.

Question 28

Production systems that signal for delivery from upstream stations are known as pull-production systems.

Question 29

Cycle time (CT) provides a measure of the input rates of different parts of the system.

Question 30

The big systems perspective connects customers' demand rate and suppliers' delivery rates with management's control over production output cycle time.

Question 31

Tonge's heuristic develops a learning procedure that rewards success and penalizes failure by always increasing the probability of selecting a good heuristic from a catalog of heuristics.

Question 32

Without planning for variability,bottlenecks can arise. When bottlenecks appear,it is likely that a WIP buildup will occur.

Question 33

Balance delay is characterized as a system measure of idle time because it takes the ratio of total idle time to the total work content of the job.

Question 34

In practice,acceptable complex formulations using linear programming have been devised to obtain optimal solutions to the line-balancing problems.

Question 35

Perfect balance with a small amount of idle time for rest and delay is expected for a serialized system of interconnected machines.

Question 36

With the K & W heuristic,when an operation with the smallest number of predecessors has too long an operation time to be included in the station,the heuristic is programmed to look for the operation with the next smallest number of predecessors that fits the available time at the station and observes precedent constraints.

Question 37

Rho (r) is the maximum percent of time that the station is providing service.

Question 38

An agreement that the buyer makes to purchase a quantity that entitles the buyer to a discount is a JIT release.

Question 39

A kanban is any method that calls attention to the fact that the next station wishes to stop further deliveries.

Question 40

Time-based management is dependent on cycle time design and control.

Question 41

There is often support to spend freely on line-balancing temporary flow shops at the same level as permanent ones.

Question 42

With IFS,people are often an important part of the production system.

Question 43

At which of the following work locations does the participation of people increase the variability of output rates?

A)workstations in manufacturing
B)service systems
C)along the supply chain
D)all of the above

Question 44

Tactical timing goals must synchronize cycles of all

A)machines.
B)participants.
C)projects.
D)all of the above

Question 45

Project management has a similar interpretation of cycle time as the flow shop.

Question 46

_____ is the effort to nearly equalize the output rate capabilities of successive workstations on the production line.

A)Line-balancing
B)Project management
C)Production management
D)Cycle time reduction

Question 47

Cycle-time management is the aspect of _____ that applies to running a better production process for a flow shop.

A)EOQ
B)MBO
C)TBM
D)ELS

Question 48

Line balancing is the effort to reduce and match excess idle time at the workstations.

Question 49

Line balancing synchronizes material flows by randomly assigning required resources.

Question 50

Cycle times of inbound and outbound supplies are interconnected with which of the following?

A)the fundamental schedules of the production line
B)line-balanced production systems
C)decreasing the breakeven point.
D)increasing the rate of profit (slope of the breakeven value,R - TC)

Question 51

Tactical vision is usually applied to situations with limited and/or immediate ends in view.

Question 52

Synchronization and orchestration are not strategic issues of cycle-time management.

Question 53

It is easy to increase cycle time significantly without radically changing the factory environment.The same goes for decreasing cycle time.

Question 54

Operational decisions made on the plant floor without requiring downward review provide significant competitive advantage.

Question 55

With respect to the O.O.D.A.loop,fighter pilots must achieve rapid orientation.Dictionaries define orientation in terms of both psychological as well as physical positioning.

Question 56

Stochastic line-balancing problems are related to queuing models.

Question 57

_____ is the interval of time that elapses between successive units of finished product coming off the production line.

A)Set-up time
B)Cycle time
C)Line cycle measure
D)Gap time

Question 58

The overriding objective of line-balancing is

A)to split operations between different stations so as to minimize the number of stations.
B)to achieve a balance of production resources that can deliver the right amount of production to satisfy demand requirements with minimum waste of resources.
C)to be clever about process design so as to achieve cycle time reduction with minimum defectives.
D)none of the above

Question 59

Cycle times of inbound and outbound supplies are interconnected with the fundamentals of the production line.

Question 60

Strategic thinking should include time-based and cycle-time management (TBM and CTM).

Question 61

Which of the following is the first to be chosen when a tie occurs in Kilbridge and Wester's heuristic procedure?

A)Choose the shortest operation times that can be used.
B)Choose the longest operation times that can be used.
C)Choose the operation with the smallest number on the precedence diagram.
D)none of the above

Question 62

Which of the following heuristics sets the pattern for random generation of feasible sequences?

A)Tonge's heuristic
B)H & B heuristic
C)Arcus' heuristic
D)K & W heuristic

Question 63

_____ create bottlenecks that cause disruptive backups of WIP to form.Such events can be costly.

A)Pull-type production systems
B)Push-type production systems
C)Work overload production systems
D)none of the above

Question 64

_____ line-balancing methods employ "rule of thumb," common sense,logical thinking,and experience to find near-optimal solutions for large problems.

A)Deterministic
B)Heuristic
C)Paced
D)Stochastic

Question 65

Which of the following is a percentage measure of unproductive time at the workstations that participate in the complete process cycle?

A)lateral transferability delay
B)balance delay
C)workstation percent delay
D)none of the above

Question 66

Among the varying set of heuristics,which of the following choices is employed to establish preference for choosing the next operation to be assigned to a station?

A)longest operation time,ti
B)largest number of immediate followers
C)random choice of the next operation,i
D)all of the above

Question 67

_____ is a transporter,usually a belt,that moves materials between workstations at a fixed rate of speed (station stop-times equal cycle time).

A)Conveyor belt
B)Line-neutral conveyor
C)Paced conveyor
D)Fixed conveyor
E)Line-adjusting belt transporter

Question 68

The Kilbridge and Wester heuristic assigns a number to each operation describing how many predecessors it has.This is done with the help of which diagram?

A)heuristic diagram
B)precedence diagram
C)Gantt layout chart
D)none of the above

Question 69

Heuristic models do which of the following?

A)replace mathematical optimization efforts when optimization is not feasible
B)use modular product designs to offer greater market variety
C)use rules of thumb to set for near-equal workloads at successive stations
D)utilize logical rules derived by observation and introspection
E)a,c,and d

Question 70

T is the interval used to match the time dimension of the cycle time with the time dimension of the

A)output rate.
B)number of orders per hour.
C)both a and b
D)neither a nor b

Question 71

_____ is a related measure to balance delay as it is used to assess how well the line is balanced.

A)Line-balancing
B)Line delay percent
C)Line efficiency
D)none of the above

Question 72

To instruct line-balancers to develop proper station layouts,which of the following are sensible statements?

A)Place in Station II operations that must follow those in Station I.
B)After stations I and II have no more room,carry further operations to station III.
C)The first feasible set of five stations is determined by the number of operations in the chart.
D)all of the above
E)none of the above

Question 73

Engineering design will be the preferred method for line-balancing

A)if the product or service output of the flow shop is expected to have a long and stable life cycle.
B)if the supplier inputs to the flow shop are expected to have a long and stable life cycle.
C)if the product or service output of the flow shop is expected to grow significantly as the product life cycle matures.
D)all of the above

Question 74

_____ describes flexibility with respect to the order in which operations will be done within a station.

A)Lateral transferability
B)Permutability of columns
C)Workstation permutations
D)Zone flexibility

Question 75

Which of the following factors is an established cause of unequal total work time assignments at successive workstations?

A)Precedence constraints limit flexibility.
B)It is difficult to change operation times.
C)Human performance does not vary.
D)all of the above

Question 76

Helgeson and Birnie call their approach the

A)ranked positional weight method.
B)ranked weight method.
C)K & W heuristic.
D)ranked operation time method.

Question 77

Which of the following is descriptive of TWC?

A)number of operations completed
B)sum of all operation times required
C)total units needed to complete an order
D)total number of stations in place

Question 78

_____ describe the length of queues and the average waiting times that can occur when lines are not balanced.

A)Precedence diagrams
B)Input-output-transformation diagrams
C)Flow diagrams
D)none of the above

Question 79

_____ heuristic first assigns to stations those operations whose followers have the largest total time.

A)Kilbridge and Wester's
B)Helgeson and Birnie's
C)Tonge's
D)none of the above

Question 80

_____ line-balancing exists when the assumption of fixed and deterministic times for operations and total process time is not correct.

A)Deterministic
B)Stochastic
C)Heuristic
D)Paced