Ch 4. Production Processes
Related Lecture and Discussion
Identify or explain the following terms:
Lead time
Customer order decoupling point
Make-to-stock
Assemble-to-order
Make-to-order
Engineer-to-order
What is meant by inventory turns and days-of-supply? (This will come up again in more detail in a later
chapter)
What is Little’s Law?
Be able to apply Little’s Law to calculate flow time, throughput rate, and [work-in-process] inventory.
What are the two major dimensions in the product-process matrix that determine which type of production
process is most appropriate?
What are the situations or basic characteristics of the five types of production processes (facility layouts)?
Project layout
Workcenter layout
[Manufacturing] cell layout
Assembly line
Continuous process
What is break-even analysis? Be able to calculate and apply it to production process decisions.
What is the situation and objective in designing the layout of the following types of production processes
(facility layouts)?
Project layout
Workcenter layout
[Manufacturing] cell layout
Assembly line layout
Be able to determine the layout for an assembly line using assembly-line balancing. Be able to calculate
or apply the following: precedence graph, cycle time, theoretical minimum number of workstations,
longest operation time assignment rule, largest number of following tasks assignment rule, efficiency.
What is the difference between cycle time and flow time?
What will determine the throughput rate of a product layout? (ans: longest workstation time or bottleneck)
How can parallel workstations be used to address bottleneck workstations?
What other approaches can be used to address bottleneck workstations?
What could you do in a situation in which one person, although trying hard, is 20 percent slower than the
other 10 people on an assembly line?