Reference no: EM133154794

Operations Management

Question 1: The local convenience store makes personal pan pizzas. Currently, their process makes complete pizzas, fully cooked, for the customer. This process has a fixed cost of $20,000, and a variable cost of $1.75 per pizza. The owner is considering a different process that can make pizzas in two ways: completely cooked (as before), or partially cooked and then flash frozen, for the customer to finish at home. This alternate process has a fixed cost of $24,000, but a lower variable cost (because much less energy is used in baking) of $1.25 per pizza.

a. What is the crossover point between the existing process and the proposed process?

b. If the owner expects to sell 9,000 pizzas, should he get the new oven?

Question 2: An executive conference center has the physical ability to handle 1,100 participants. However, conference management personnel believe that only 1,000 participants can be handled effectively for most events. The last event, although forecasted to have 1,000 participants, resulted in the attendance of only 950 participants. What are the utilization and efficiency of the conference facility?

Question 3: Environmental Glass Products, Inc. wants to build a new centralized facility to receive household, commercial, and industrial glass for recycling. This center will be supplied by trucks coming from four "collection points," where recyclable glass is dropped off by individuals and businesses. The volume and the map coordinates for the four collection centers are shown below. Where should the collection center be located?

Collection point	Load	(X, Y) Coordinates
A	9,000	(4,8)
B	4,000	(7,2)
C	2,000	(4,1)
D	5,000	(7,3)

Question 4: Develop a solution for the following line balancing problem, allowing a cycle time of 5 minutes.

Work Task	Task Time (seconds)	Task Predecessor(s)
A	70	-
B	60	A
C	120	B
D	60	-
E	240	C, D
F	100	A
G	190	E, F

Required:

a) Draw the precedence diagram for the set of tasks.
b) Calculate the theoretical minimum number of workstations
c) Balance this line using the longest task time heuristic.
d) What tasks are assigned to which stations?
e) Does the solution have the minimum number of stations? Explain.
f) How much idle time is there, summed over all workstations?
g) What is the efficiency of this line?

Alternative TOPICS
o Independent Demand Inventory Management
o Dependent Demand Inventory Management
o Supply Chain Management (SCM)

Individual -Article review

Part I: Article summary
Write a brief review of the article's aim and purpose by addressing the following questions.
• What is the research topic, and why it is (scientifically and/or socially) important?
• What is the research gap or knowledge gap as identified by the article's literature review?
• How does the paper aim to fill in that research gap?
• What are the major findings?

Part II: Assessment of data quality
• What is the source of data for the article? Describe the unit of analysis, time period covered by the data, the number of observations, the key variables, procedure of data collection etc.
• How appropriate is the data for the research topic?
• What are the potential limitations of the data (including issues in data collection and sample design, measurement of variables, missing values etc.)?

Part III: Assessment of research design and method
• How suitable is the research design for the research goal of the article?
• Is the research method suited for the data?
• What are the statistical (or data) assumptions of the research method (or the specific model)?
• Are you satisfied with the goodness-of-fit of the estimated models? Explain using specific results.
• What kinds of model diagnostics were implemented, and what kinds of (additional or substitute) diagnostics would you recommend?
• How many of the hypothesized relationships (if any) are supported by the analysis? Are there sufficient explanations for negative results (i.e. for hypothesis that were not supported by the analysis?)

Part IV: Critical evaluation of the article
• In terms of overall quality, and especially with respect to research design and method, what are the major strengths of the article?
• In terms of overall quality, and especially with respect to research design and method, what are the major limitations of the article?
• If you were to write a follow up paper on this topic, what potential improvements or extensions would you do in your article (in terms of data, research design, research method, or presentation)?

Attachment:- Operations Management.rar