Deck 1: Business Results

Question 1

In order to drive performance the organization must create value for lean within the organization's culture. Which of the following factors enables the organization to create lean value?

A)A visual management system that makes problems visible.
B)A technical resource center.
C)Outsourcing of logistical supply operations.
D)Purchasing additional exercise equipment for employees.

Answer 1

A visual management system that makes problems visible.

Question 2

To drive business results for the organization you must measure what matters to the customer. Which of the following choices would NOT be a form of "voice of the customer" data collection?

A)Customer surveys.
B)Media advertising.
C)Product focus groups.
D)Personal inquiry by employees.

Answer 2

Media advertising.

Question 3

A trigger event occurs when a condition exceeds established process parameters, values, or normal conditions. Once a trigger event has occurred, what is the next step?

A)To determine if the process error was human in nature.
B)To determine what condition requires an immediate response.
C)To determine if the event was caused by equipment error or maintenance.
D)To begin collection of data on the process parameters.

Answer 3

To determine what condition requires an immediate response.

Question 4

Normal conditions are those we expect to meet a certain standard. Abnormal conditions are those which do not meet the standard. Which of the following factors does NOT impact a reaction to abnormal conditions?

A)An employee is assigned ownership for the abnormal condition.
B)Visual indicators make the abnormal condition easily visible.
C)The standard must be known by employees and followed.
D)No set standard of identification is required.

Question 5

Waste is identified as anything that does not add value to a product or process. Lean measurements reveal waste in processes. Which of these statements is incorrect concerning guidelines for lean measurements?

A)What gets measured in lean gets done.
B)Flow requires measuring process times.
C)Financial measurements can substitute for lean metrics.
D)Lean measurements should be real-time measurements, not averages over months, quarters, or years.

Question 6

Understanding customer demand and characteristics requires understanding of the "pull" of customers. Customer demand affects which of the following?

A)Kanban quantities.
B)Determination of Takt time.
C)Both A and B.
D)Process capability for attributes.

Question 7

Several factors may affect company business results and customer retention. Which of the following does NOT impact customer retention?

A)The level of customer service.
B)Provision of incentives such as samples.
C)Requesting feedback for what the customer wants.
D)Analysis of competing companies.

Question 8

Lean waste measurements impact a business's bottom line. Which factor given below can hide quality defects by increasing the time between the creation of a defect and when it is discovered?

A)Inaccurate calculations of the total cost of production.
B)Incorrectly managed cycle time.
C)An employee who is not properly trained.
D)A high level of inventory.

Question 9

Employees have to be developed to improve their capability with lean and sustain lean improvements. Which of the following is NOT an action management would take to be viewed as supportive in terms of "people development measures"?

A)Assessing the lead time in the production environment.
B)Assessing the management environment for level of lean engagement.
C)Identifying and optimizing competencies required for lean.
D)Describing roles and problem solving responsibilities in the strategic context.

Question 10

Which quality measure for business results would be used to measure repetitive wear and tear on employees working on an assembly line?

A)Ergonomic management.
B)Targeted training hours.
C)Days worked without a lost time accident.
D)Reportable incidents.

Question 11

Lean cost and productivity measurements may include employee labor productivity and individual or group sales productivity. Calculate the number of products produced per hour by a factory that produced 16,000 items with 8 employees working 8-hour shifts 5 days per week, with a total of 40 hours each per week, for 4 weeks.

A)16 products per hour
B)12.5 products per hour
C)42 products per hour
D)7 products per hour

Question 12

Lean measurements such as safety, quality, financial, employee, and responsiveness have a competitive impact in corresponding balanced scorecard measures. What measure would include the amount of manufacturing space used?

A)Lean quality measurements.
B)Lean responsiveness measurements.
C)Lean financial measurements.
D)Lean safety measurements.

Question 13

Lean metrics typically fall into the two categories of results or drivers. What do driver metrics tell you?

A)Behavior changes which need to be made down the road.
B)Future operational planning parameters.
C)Financial indicators, both positive and negative.
D)Immediate feedback on how a process is running.

Question 14

Alignment of lean requires good measurement systems. A Measurement System Analysis (MSA) is a designed experiment that seeks to identify the components of variation in the measurement. Which of the following is NOT considered in a Measurement Systems Analysis?

A)Determining the design of experiments.
B)Assessing procedures and operators.
C)Assessing the measuring device.
D)None of the above are considered in a Measurement Systems Analysis.

Question 15

Measures and measurement systems are interdependent. Individual measures are tested in the measurement system to develop an analysis. Which metric element requires that the exact calculation of the metric be known?

A)The frequency of the measure.
B)The objective of the measure
C)The unit of the measure.
D)The formula for the measure.

Question 16

Internal measures should be aligned with the voice of the customer (VOC). Which of the following examples would provide a supporting measure for the voice of the customer?

A)Improvement ideas from employees.
B)A reduction in the cost of production labor.
C)Increased cost of input supplies.
D)Success of new products.

Question 17

Lean employees should be measuring the results of the "whole" system. Which of the following measures would be an example of a measure as a "whole"?

A)A workplace safety board which shows lost work days at 0.
B)A visual board in a break room which shows monthly productivity, customer satisfaction, and injury rates.
C)A quality improvement A3 which shows first pass yield results for the month of January.
D)Customer satisfaction numbers for the month of March are displayed at the entrance to the factory.

Question 18

Removing waste reduces lead time. When measuring waste in a process what is the lead time of that process?

A)The amount of time from order to initial processing
B)The sum of all the value-added and non-value-added steps in a process.
C)The total time on the production line.
D)The total time on the production line minus down time.

Question 19

Measuring flow requires measuring the time a process or a product takes from start to finish. This involves managing bottlenecks and constraints, as well as which of the following?

A)Aligning similar processes, cross training employees, and sharing employee resources.
B)Performing incremental tests of change using the plan, do, study, act (PDSA) cycle.
C)Showing humility to employees.
D)A and B.

Question 20

Lean accounting measurement is used to support lean thinking within the organization. In traditional accounting, waste is hidden. Which of the following is NOT one of the ways in which traditional accounting measures hide waste?

A)Incorrect standards.
B)Inadequate reporting in production, design, or sales.
C)Incorrect accounting formats.
D)Overhead allocations for the organization.

Question 21

Measuring the voice of the customer helps an organization validate customer expectations, requirements, and unhappiness with current processes. When performing a Voice of the Customer Analysis, which example would be a form of "reactive data"?

A)Complaints or comment cards.
B)Customer interviews.
C)Product focus groups.
D)Customer surveys.

Question 22

Measuring goals and objectives for service industries may require developing metrics for service. Which of the following would be considered a service metric?

A)A frozen dinner takes less than 3 minutes to microwave.
B)A wait time on the phone of less than 15 seconds.
C)An assembly line processes a package of cereal in 1.8 minutes.
D)A copy job takes 7 minutes to print.

Question 23

The SMART acronym is use by organizations to develop objectives. Under SMART, how do you know when a goal is achieved?

A)You can tell when it has been achieved because you have a way to measure completion.
B)You have specific aims employees shoot for.
C)You have a deadline which helps people focus on the tasks required for the goal.
D)You know resources and time were taken into account to ensure the goals are achievable.

Question 24

Measurements should be tied to the customer and their desires. The desires of the customer impacts whether your product meets their needs. Which of the following questions would you NOT consider to be an interview question for a Voice of the Customer Analysis?

A)What would threaten the potential of you doing future business with us?
B)Why should we continue to do business with you?
C)What do you like about our current processes?
D)What do you feel needs improvement in our current processes?

Question 25

Measurements should be analyzed to determine their precision. The precision of measurements is affected by confidence intervals. Using the statistical definition of the 95 percent confidence interval, if a poll of 100 people were taken _________________?

A)Five percent of respondents would be within the calculated confidence intervals and 95 percent would be either higher or lower than the range of the confidence intervals.
B)95 percent of respondents would be within the calculated confidence intervals and only one percent would be higher than the range of the confidence intervals.
C)95 percent of respondents would be within the calculated confidence intervals and ten percent would be lower than the range of the confidence intervals.
D)95 percent of respondents would be within the calculated confidence intervals and five percent would be either higher or lower than the range of the confidence intervals.

Question 26

Reporting of measurements helps to speed improvements. The most effective measurement factors would include which of the following?

A)The ability to replicate data.
B)Using the most number of data sources possible.
C)Reliability of the measures of the system.
D)The ability to reproduce gage.

Question 27

Visual feedback on key measures should be provided to employees in real time. The information in the real time feedback will include all of the following EXCEPT:

A)The key metrics being measured.
B)The target value of the measures.
C)Possible process improvement initiatives.
D)Data source and the data collector.

Question 28

Which of the following key lean measures for quality includes the measure of potential process capability?

A)Defects per unit.
B)The ratio of the six sigma spread of a process distribution to the tolerance of the distribution, also known as Cp.
C)Cpk, which is calculated by dividing the distance of the process mean to the nearest tolerance limit by 3 standard deviations of the process.
D)A Defects Per Million Opportunities (DPMO).

Question 29

Rework measures are critical to operationally monitoring the level of waste caused by having to redo or rework a product. What does a First-Time-Through (FTT) rework measure?

A)The effectiveness of the cell's standardized work.
B)The accuracy of measurements for the process.
C)The attention to detail for employees.
D)Costs of products scrapped because they require rework.

Question 30

Overall Equipment Effectiveness is a composite metric for first pass yield. If 100 units of product are processed and 97 are completed to the required specifications with 4 requiring rework, calculate the first pass yield.

A)The first pass yield is 100%.
B)The first pass yield is 96%.
C)The first pass yield is 97%.
D)The first pass yield is 93%.

Question 31

Which of the following key lean measures for delivery is the time from the customer order until they receive the product?

A)Total lead time.
B)On-time delivery.
C)The processing cycle time.
D)The reorder rate.

Question 32

Takt time is a measure which calculates the longest period of time that can be spent processing a unit of product while still meeting the level of demand. Which of these steps is NOT included in the calculation of Takt time?

A)Calculating cycle time against Takt time.
B)Calculation of the demand in days, weeks, or months.
C)Calculation of the total available time.
D)Calculation of the delivery time.

Question 33

Cycle time is a key lean measurement in supply chain management and in lean enterprise planning. Which of the following is a measure of production cycle time?

A)It begins when an online order is placed and ends when sent to the production floor.
B)It begins when an order is released on the production floor and ends when the product is available for shipment to the customer.
C)It begins when the production line starts to move and ends when the customer signs for the product.
D)The total of each separate time in the cycle to produce the good.

Question 34

Lead time is the total time required to manufacture a product, including the order preparation time, queue time, setup time, process time, movement within factory, inspection time, and placement in inventory. An inventory cycle begins once a product is placed in inventory. The number of times that inventory cycles per year is known as which of the following:

A)Cycle time of the process.
B)Inventory turn.
C)Manufacturing lead time.
D)TAKT Time.

Question 35

Which of the following lean cost metrics would a process team be reviewing if they were comparing spending and wanted to know the current assets divided by the current liabilities?

A)The amount of working capital.
B)The overhead spending.
C)Team productivity and efficiency.
D)Organization cash flow.

Question 36

A Six Sigma Greenbelt is calculating key lean measures for inventory turns. Which inventory turn measure is calculated by adding beginning inventory and inventory purchases then subtracting the ending inventory?

A)Cost of Goods Sold.
B)Inventory Turnover Ratio.
C)Average Inventory.
D)Calculation of Inventory Turnover Ratio.

Question 37

Queue times are important lean measures in processing times. There are five elements of the cycle time of a process: run time, queue time, move time, wait time, and setup time. Of these choices, which one is the only value-added time?

A)Queue time of a process.
B)Setup time of a process.
C)Move time of a process.
D)Run time of a process.

Question 38

A hospital is trying to improve patient flow through a chartered process team. Which of these will NOT improve the flow?

A)Set up of a discharge unit.
B)Limit the use of access entry points.
C)Limit hours of operation.
D)Use visit pre-planning.

Question 39

Which key lean measure for "delays" would be affected if special packaging or pallets were required to ship a good?

A)Outside Processing Time.
B)Shipping Transit Time to Customer.
C)Process Time for Individual Step.
D)Material Lead Time.

Question 40

The performance factor for Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) is the speed with which the machine or process produces products compared to the design speed or normal operating cycle. Which of the following correctly shows the formula for OEE?

A)Availability x Performance x Quality.
B)Opportunity x Precision x Errors.
C)Time/Down Time x Cost.
D)Error Rate x Throughput.

Question 41

Changeover time is a critical lean measure in processing plants and manufacturing environments. SMED (Single-Minute Exchange of Dies) is a system for reducing the time it takes to complete equipment changeovers. Which of the following is NOT one of the benefits of SMED?

A)Larger lot sizes with faster changeovers.
B)Lower inventory levels.
C)Improved response to customer demand.
D)Lower manufacturing costs.

Question 42

Lean measures which have financial impact are those that create cost reduction, inventory reduction, or increased revenue. Which measure would be used if the hourly wage rate is computed and counted each time a process is executed?

A)The financial impact of errors.
B)The financial impact of inventory.
C)The financial impact of revenue.
D)The financial impact of time.

Question 43

Typical measures for cash flow include Net Present Value (NPV), Return on Investment (ROI), and internal Rate of Return (IRR). What is the formula for productivity?

A)Productivity = (T-OE)/I
B)Productivity = T-OE
C)Productivity = TxOE
D)Productivity = T/OE

Question 44

Customer satisfaction is the main goal of lean. Which of the following is NOT included in the lean measures for customer satisfaction?

A)Attribute Satisfaction Measurements.
B)Cost Savings Measurement.
C)Loyalty Measurement.
D)Intention to Repurchase Measurements.

Question 45

The Role of Performance Measurement is to provide all of the following EXCEPT:

A)Determine behavior.
B)Information for decision making.
C)External communication with stakeholders.
D)Closing the gap between planned and actual performance.

Question 46

Strategic lean metrics include return on capital, revenue, cash flow, and market position. Dr. Genichi Taguchi was a Japanese engineer and statistician whose work determined what product specification meant and how it could be applied to a cost effective production. Taguchi Product Development includes three stages. Which of the following is NOT included?

A)Finding the balance between manufacturing unit cost profit and loss.
B)Organizational strategic planning.
C)System designs.
D)Determining how the product should perform.

Question 47

The desired characteristics of Performance Measurement Systems would include all of the following EXCEPT?

A)Should supporting the strategic intentions of the organization.
B)Should be easily understood by employees.
C)Should not include both drivers and results for activities.
D)Should include visual indicators.

Question 48

Regression analysis is be used to build process models, as well as which of the following ?

A)Prioritize relationships between variables
B)Determine potential causes
C)Anticipate potential problems
D)Indicate the measures of the KPI

Question 49

Which tool used in management decisions to build the improvement strategy includes a quadrant-based tool of performance measures?

A)Organizational benchmarking.
B)ISO 9000.
C)A Gap Analysis.
D)A balanced scorecard.

Question 50

The concept of "time economy" for quality improvement teams typically leads to all of the following EXCEPT:

A)Reduced data collection costs
B)Too much information
C)Slow data collection process
D)Data management issues