MBA 661A: Production & Operations Management
IIT Kanpur
Assignment 1
Group submission (hard copy); Due date: 06/02/2020, before the start of the lecture
1. Identify two organizations in the same industry with different operations strategies and discuss the same.
Are their respective operations and competitive strategies aligned? Comment on the performance of those
two firms (you may consider the annual report of the firms to justify the comments).
2. Consider the Executive Shirt Company (ESC) Inc case. Imagine that you are being appointed as an
operations consultant to ESC. Based on the proposals by Ike and Mike you are requested to give a new plan
(the new plan could be a hybrid of the existing two plans). Evaluate the new plan and compare the new
plan with the existing two plans on the financial (direct labor cost/shirt and total daily cost), response time
(manufacturing lead time), and utilization of capacity and labor dimensions.
3. The operations in a Financial service institution is as per the following process. All customers first go
to reception. Reception directs them to the respective sections. 25% requests for the service from deposit
section. 35% comes for loan related issues and opt for loan section. Remaining 40% of people requests
teller service. The first two types of requests require the interaction with manager. The office receives 100
customers per hour. Below table gives the activity time and figure gives the process flow diagram. Calculate
the implied utilization of each resource.
Activity
Reception
Deposit section
Loan section
Teller
Manager
Number of employees
1
2
3
3
1
Time (minutes/unit/employee)
0.4
6
10
4
3
25%
Deposit section
35%
Entry
Loan section
Reception
Exit
40%
Teller
1
Manager