Operations Management Practice Flashcards

These vocabulary flashcards cover key terms and definitions from Lectures 1 through 10 of the Operations Management curriculum, covering strategy, design, quality, planning, and scheduling.

Operations

A function or system that transforms inputs into outputs of greater value.

Operations Management

The field concerned with the design, operation, and improvement of productive systems.

Value Chain

A series of activities from supplier to customer that add value to a product or service.

Productivity

A measure of competitiveness calculated as the ratio of outputs divided by inputs, expressed as $\frac{\text{Output}}{\text{Input}}$.

Single-Factor Productivity

Assessing productivity using only one factor of production, such as output per labor hour.

Total Factor Productivity

Assessing productivity by dividing the goods and services produced by all inputs used to produce them.

Corporate Strategy

Choosing a mix of industries to participate in and allocating resources to each to maximize the value of the entire organization.

Operations Strategy

A plan for developing resources and configuring processes such that the resulting competencies maximize Net Present Value ($NPV$).

Core Competencies

Activities or skills that a firm does better than anyone else, representing a sustainable competitive advantage.

Order Qualifiers

Characteristics of a product or service that qualify it to be considered for purchase by a customer.

Order Winners

The specific characteristics of a product or service that cause it to win orders in the marketplace.

Reverse Engineering

The process of examining a competitor's product to identify and improve upon its features.

Concurrent Design

A new approach to design that involves the simultaneous design of products and processes by design teams to break down barriers between functional areas.

Reliability

The probability that a given product will perform its intended function for a specified length of time under normal conditions of use.

Mean Time Between Failures ($MTBF$)

A measure of reliability expressed as the average length of time a product or service is in operation before it fails.

Mean Time to Repair ($MTTR$)

A quantitative measure of maintainability representing the average time taken to repair a failed item.

System Average Availability ($SAA$)

A measure derived from reliability and maintainability, calculated as $\frac{MTBF}{MTBF + MTTR}$.

Modularity

A design solution where standardized building blocks are combined in various ways to create unique finished products.

Quality Function Deployment ($QFD$)

A formal method for translating the voice of the customer into technical design requirements using a series of matrix diagrams.

House of Quality

A specific matrix layout used in $QFD$ that relates customer requirements to engineering characteristics and competitive assessments.

Quality of Design

The intention of designers to include or exclude specific features in a product or service to meet different grade levels.

Quality of Conformance

The degree to which goods or services conform to the specific intent and technical specifications of the designers.

Pareto Chart

A quality management tool based on the principle that most quality problems and costs result from only a few major causes.

Ishikawa Diagram

Also known as a fishbone diagram, it is a structured approach used to search for the possible causes of a quality problem.

Prevention Costs

Costs incurred to avoid poor quality, such as quality planning, product design, and employee training.

Appraisal Costs

Costs associated with measuring, testing, and analyzing materials and products to ensure quality specifications are being met.

Capacity Lead Strategy

An aggressive strategy where capacity is expanded in anticipation of demand growth to gain market share.

Capacity Lag Strategy

A conservative strategy where capacity is increased only after an increase in demand has been documented.

Level Production

A production planning strategy of producing at a constant rate and using inventory to absorb fluctuations in demand.

Chase Demand

A strategy of adjusting capacity (such as hiring and firing workers) to match the demand pattern exactly.

Project

A production process used for one-of-a-kind production for an individual customer, characterized by high flexibility and long completion times.

Mass (Repetitive) Production

A capital-intensive production system used for standardized products in large quantities, often using assembly lines.

Continuous Production

A system used for very-high-volume commodity products ($steel$, $paints$) where the output is measured rather than counted and operations run $24$ hours a day.

Break-Even Point ($v_{be}$)

The volume of demand at which profit is zero, calculated as $\frac{C_f}{P - C_v}$, where $C_f$ is fixed cost, $P$ is price, and $C_v$ is variable cost.

Process Reengineering

The total redesign of a process, necessary when continual improvement efforts no longer meet performance expectations.

Center-of-Gravity Technique

A location analysis method that identifies set coordinates for a new facility based on transport weight and distance from existing facilities.

Process Layout

A facility arrangement that groups similar activities together into departments based on the function they perform.

Product Layout

A facility arrangement that places machines or workers in a line according to the sequence of operations required for a specific product.

Cycle Time

The maximum amount of time a product is allowed to spend at each workstation in an assembly line to reach a target production rate.

Work Breakdown Structure ($WBS$)

A planning tool that breaks a project down into major components, activities, and individual tasks.

Gantt Chart

A project scheduling tool that uses a bar chart to show the passage of time and the start and completion times for project activities.

Critical Path

The longest path in a project network, which determines the minimum time required to complete the project.

Slack

The length of time an activity can be delayed without increasing the total project completion time, calculated as $LS - ES$ or $LF - EF$.

Project Crashing

A method for shortening the project duration by reducing the time of one or more critical activities through the injection of additional resources.

Bullwhip Effect

The phenomenon where order fluctuations increase at each step in the sequence as they are relayed from retailers to wholesalers to manufacturers.

Vendor-Managed Inventory ($VMI$)

A practice where the vendor monitors, plans, and manages the inventory on behalf of the consuming organization.

Shop Floor Control

The scheduling and monitoring of day-to-day production in a job shop, involving loading, sequencing, and monitoring.

Dispatch List

A shop paper that specifies the sequence in which jobs should be processed at a machine center.

Shortest Processing Time ($SPT$)

A sequencing rule that prioritizes jobs based on the lowest completion time.

Johnson’s Rule

A sequencing technique used to find the fastest way to process a series of jobs through a two-step serial system.