BA302 Final Exam Study Guide
The following are pointers toward some of the central concepts in the textbook and the course notes that we have put on-line for you to help you study the materials. Although you should not limit yourself to the points and issues mentioned below, they should help you get a good idea of the things that we care most about in this course.
Services overview:
· Be aware of the contributions of different economic sectors to the overall economy, both now and in the past.
· Consider the relationships between shifts in these contributions and productivity developments.
· Recall that productivity and efficiency are not identical concepts.
· Be aware of the different models of production in both general OM (job shop, batch, continuous. etc.) and the application of these same concepts in services (professional services, service shops, mass services, etc.)
· Study these concepts in relation to the process/product matrix and variables such as production volume, capitalization, required skill level, customization, customer interaction, labor intensity, etc.
· Be aware of the differences and commonalities between goods and services.
Systems & processes:
· What’s the difference between deterministic and stochastic processes?
· Can you give examples of both?
· Explain and provide examples of
o System
o Black box
o Elements & relationships
o Feedback
o Open & closed systems
· Provide some measures of process performance; e.g., process & cycle time.
· Decompose cycle time into its various components and provide examples.
Process models:
· Take a business process and be able to model it in an activity diagram.
· What’s the advantage of an activity diagram over a process diagram?
· Why do we represent processes with diagrams anyway?
· How do we represent our computers; e.g., an ERP system in an activity diagram? Can you give an example?
· What do the basic symbols in a process diagram represent (boxes, diamonds, etc.)?
· What’s the relationship between process modeling and BPR?
· What’s the relationship between process flow and information flow?
ERP issues:
· What is ERP and why are companies using it?
· How expensive is ERP to implement? Why is it so expensive?
· What are some of the components of an ERP system?
· Is ERP always successful? Why not? Examples?
· What’s the relationship between ERP and BPR?
· Why are companies doing BPR?
· Who are some of the larger ERP vendors.
Quality (Cost & Improvement):
· Understand and describe the importance of quality in products and services.
· Which/what are the types of ‘cost of quality?’
· Explain the traditional (ECM) and TQM / 'Quality is free' perspectives on quality improvement. Can you illustrate these perspectives with diagrams?
· Are you familiar with a few quality control frameworks; e.g., Baldridge, ISO, CMM(I), Six Sigma?
· Can you provide poka-yoke examples?
· Why was there a Six Sigma problem at 3M?
· Explain Six Sigma, Cp, Cpk, common cause errors, special cause errors and SPC.
· Explain the ‘C’ in CMM? Why does it stand for ‘Capability?’
· Can you show how both means and variation are important in business process performance using Cp and Cpk examples?
Capacity planning:
· Can you formulate situations that would benefit from capacity & demand planning?
· Do you recognize how capacity issues influence wait, setup & queue times?
· Formulate the three classical approaches to capacity planning and provide examples of each.
· Why are reservations & appointments examples of ‘demand management?’
· What are the advantages and disadvantages of overbooking? What factors into a rational overbooking strategy?
· Can you explain and read an unused capacity/overbooking expected loss table?
· Have a conceptual understanding of the critical fractile and its relationship to capacity planning.
Queues:
· Explain why queues form and recognize queues in the world around us.
· Can you explain the forming of queues in queue-theoretical terms (arrivals, service rates, 'in the system', etc.)?
· Do you know some of the basic queue disciplines?
· Why/how do we use probability distributions such as the exponential and Poisson distributions in computing queue performance measures such as the average queue time or average number in the queue?
· Make sure you can answer simple queue performance questions when given the queuing equations and the process’s λ and μ values.
· Consider the psychology of queuing and speculate on how to adapt business processes to cope with queues.
· Associate the psychology of queuing with variation rather than averages.
Simulation:
· Explain the need for simulation of business processes. What does simulation give you that the waiting line equations do not give you?
· What’s the difference between physical and computational simulation models.
· What do we mean when we refer to a model’s ‘correspondence’ and ‘parsimony?’
· What are Monte Carlo simulations and why do we need/use them?
· What is/are the relationships between Monte Carlo simulation and probability distributions?
· What did you learn from your simulation homework (‘nothing’ is not a good answer).
BPO:
· What does BPO stand for?
· What are some processes that are very often outsourced?
· Why would companies outsource processes?
· Why is India such a successful outsourcer?
· What sort of processes are /are not good candidates for outsourcing?
· Vocabulary: outsourcing, offshoring, nearshoring, multisourcing, crowdsourcing.
· Provide good arguments in favor of the statement ‘geography is history.’
Sustainability:
· What do we mean with the term ‘tragedy of the commons.’ Provide some examples; both environmental and nonenvironmental.
· What are some ways to reduce or control the tragedy of the commons. What are some advantages and disadvantages of each of them.
· What is dematerialization. Provide some examples.
· How would you compute the energy footprint of a business?
· Why does switching off the lights when we leave a room really make a difference?
· What is CSR and why do companies care about their CSR.
Spatial Processes:
· Provide good arguments against the statement that ‘geography is history.’
· Name (lots of) examples of spatial aspects of business processes.
· Recognize the role of Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Name types of businesses that are likely users of GIS and explain why they would be likely users.
· Explain the difference between vector and raster GIS.
· Explain that 'flat' maps are projections that imply distortion and that different projections imply different distortions. What is distorted?
· Explain, in concept, how regression models can be used in business site selection.