Q&A Hero

Q: Consider the following data, which represent the number of miles that employees commute from home to work each day. There are two samples: one for males and one for females. Males: 13 5 2 23 14 5 Females: 15 6 3 2 4 6 Which of the following statements is true? A) Females have the larger mean. B) The coefficient of variation is larger for females than for males. C) The coefficient of variation is larger for males than for females. D) Females have the larger range.

Q: Which of the following is a way to manage capacity by shifting and stimulating demand? a. Adding peripheral goods and/or services b. Adding or sharing equipment c. Changing labor schedules d. Changing labor skill mix

Q: Magnira Hotels is a leading chain of hotels. Its managers reserve 30% of the rooms available only to the members of its club. They also provide the rooms at subsidized prices to these members. In this scenario, which of the following components of revenue management system is most likely used by Magnira Hotels? a. Investment b. Allocation c. Capacity expansion d. Capacity sharing

Q: Blyrie Inc., a sports goods manufacturing company, follows a policy that involves manufacturing only when the demand exceeds the amount of goods already manufactured. Given this information, Blyrie Inc. most likely uses a capacity _____ strategy to expand its capacity. a. lead b. reduction c. straddle d. lag

Q: _____ occur when the average unit cost of a good or service begins to increase as the capacity and/or volume of throughput increases. a. Economies of scale b. Diseconomies of scale c. Demand lags d. Nonphysical constraints

Q: In order to compute the mean and standard deviation, the level of data measurement should be: A) ratio or interval. B) qualitative. C) nominal. D) ordinal.

Q: Which of the following statements is true of setup time? a. It is independent of order size for manufacturing work orders. b. It varies with the volume of work orders. c. It is the most insignificant part of total system capacity. d. It is usually the same for manufacturing and service-providing applications.

Q: The following data reflect the number of customers who return merchandise for a refund on Monday. Note these data reflect the population of all 10 Mondays for which data are available. 40 12 17 25 9 46 13 22 16 7 Assume that this same exact pattern of data were replicated for the next ten days. How would this affect the standard deviation for the new population with 20 items? A) The standard deviation would be doubled. B) The standard deviation would be cut in half. C) The standard deviation would not be changed. D) There is no way of knowing the exact impact without knowing how the mean is changed.

Q: Lumeris Inc., an automobile manufacturer, has an inflexible work schedule and requires its workers to work nine hours a day and six days a week. Its laborers do not have adequate skills to perform their job efficiently. The inflexible work schedule and inadequate labor skills are examples of _____. a. physical constraints b. nonphysical constraints c. bottleneck activities d. work orders

Q: In the Theory of Constraints, a _____ activity is one that effectively limits the capacity of the entire process. a. nonbottleneck b. bottleneck work c. nonphysical d. core process

Q: The advantage of using the interquartile range versus the range as a measure of variation is: A) it is easier to compute. B) it utilizes all the data in its computation. C) it gives a value that is closer to the true variation. D) it is less affected by extremes in the data.

Q: A _____ matches capacity additions with demand as closely as possible. a. lag b. straddle c. lead d. reduction

Q: The following data reflect the number of customers who test drove new cars each day for a sample of 20 days at the Redfield Ford Dealership. 5 7 2 9 4 9 7 10 4 7 5 6 4 0 7 6 3 4 14 6 Given these data, what is the interquartile range? A) 3 B) 7 C) 4 D) 14

Q: Scorla Corp. is an apparel manufacturing factory. Its average resource utilization per year is calculated as 70%. The average safety capacity of Scorla Corp. is _____. a. 20% b. 30% c. 40% d. 50%

Q: The earliest revenue management systems focused solely on _____. a. forecasting b. overbooking c. allocation d. pricing

Q: Nonbottleneck management principles differ from bottleneck management principles because according to nonbottleneck management principles, _____. a. idle time is acceptable if there is no work to do b. an hour lost at a nonbottleneck resource is an hour lost for the entire process or factory output c. large order sizes should be used to minimize setup time and maximize resource utilization d. the input should always exceed the capacity

Q: A capacity _____ strategy is a strategy for expanding capacity that waits until demand has increased to a point where additional capacity is necessary. a. lag b. lead c. reduction d. match

Q: Which of the following measures is not affected by extreme values in the data? A) The mean B) The median C) The range D) The standard deviation

Q: Greyon Spinning Mills Inc. owns 600 spinning machines. Out of these, only 500 are used in a given year. Given this information, the utilization of spinning machines at Greyon Spinning Mills Inc. is _____. a. 0.75 b. 0.83 c. 1 d. 1.2

Q: Which of the following is the most frequently used measure of variation? A) The range B) The standard deviation C) The variance D) The mode

Q: For ordinal data, ________ is the preferred measure of central location. A) the mean B) the median C) the percentile D) the quartile

Q: Which of the following is a way to manage capacity by adjusting short-term capacity levels? a. Varying the price of goods or services b. Adding peripheral goods and/or services c. Providing reservations d. Shifting work to slack periods

Q: The box and whisker plot CANNOT be used to identify: A) skewedness. B) centerness. C) outliers. D) symmetry.

Q: At Rues and West Bros., a spare parts manufacturing company, the most important competitive priority is quality. Only a few key spare parts are produced using similar process designs. In this scenario, Rues and West Bros. _____. a. is a focused factory b. has no throughput c. is an unfocused factory d. uses a mass customization strategy

Q: If a distribution for a quantitative variable is thought to be nearly symmetric with very little variation, and a box and whisker plot is created for this distribution, which of the following is true? A) The box will be quite wide but the whisker will be very short. B) The left and right-hand edges of the box will be approximately equal distance from the median. C) The whiskers should be about half as long as the box is wide. D) The upper whisker will be much longer than the lower whisker.

Q: Harlose Suits owns more equipment than required for manufacturing goods during periods of regular demand in order to tackle sudden demand surges. It also has a certain reserve of produced goods to tackle material shortages. In this case, the reserve of equipment and produced goods are examples of _____. a. a physical constraint b. the capacity cushion c. overbooking d. capacity straddle

Q: At a sawmill in Oregon, a process improvement team measured the diameters for a sample of 1,500 logs. The following summary statistics were computed:Given this information, for a box and whisker plot which of the following statements is appropriate?A) Seventy-five percent of the trees in the sample have values between 8.9 in. and 15.6 in.B) Virtually all of the data should fall between 0 in. and 25.65 in.C) No tree will have a diameter of more than 22.3 in.D) Fifty percent of the trees will have diameters between 13.5 in. and 15.6 in.

Q: The traditional operations management definition of throughput is: a. the average number of goods or services completed per time period by a process. b. anything in an organization that limits it from moving toward its goal. c. associated with the capacity of a resource such as a machine, employee, or workstation. d. a physical activity in which idle capacity exists.

Q: Which of the following statements is true of a work order? a. It is also called the capacity cushion. b. It includes processing requirements for a type of work. c. It cannot be defined for services. d. It does not include resources needed for a type of work.

Q: A _____ consists of dynamic methods to forecast demand, allocate perishable assets across market segments, decide when to overbook and by how much, and determine what price to charge different customer classes. a. focused factory b. work order c. revenue management system d. nonbottleneck work activity

Q: If a data set has 1,133 sorted values, what value corresponds to the 3rdquartile? A) The 250thvalue B) The 850thvalue C) The 760thvalue D) The 849thvalue

Q: The Theory of Constraints focuses on eliminating all bottleneck activities in a process.a. Trueb. False

Q: If a data set has 740 values that have been sorted from low to high, which value in the data set will be the 20thpercentile? A) The average of the 148thand 149thvalues B) The 20thvalue C) The 148thvalue D) None of the above

Q: A work order is a specification of work to be performed for a customer or a client. a. True b. False

Q: A large retail company gives an employment screening test to all prospective employees. If a prospective employee receives a report saying that she scored at the 40thpercentile: A) she scored above the median. B) she scored better than 40 percent of people who took the test. C) she scored in the top 40 percent of people who took the test. D) her z-score was a 40.

Q: Diseconomies of scale are known as the capacity cushion. a. True b. False

Q: The ideas and methods surrounding a revenue management system are often called yield management. a. True b. False

Q: A major retail store has studied customer behavior and found that the distribution of time customers spend in a store per visit is symmetric with a mean equal to 17.3 minutes. Based on this information, which of the following is true? A) The distribution is right-skewed. B) The median is to the right of the mean. C) The median is approximately 17.3 minutes. D) The median is to the left of the mean.

Q: Offering complementary goods or services is an example of a short-term capacity strategy. a. True b. False

Q: A sample of people who have attended a college football game at your university has a mean = 3.2 members in their family. The mode number of family members is 2 and the median number is 2.0. Based on this information: A) the population mean exceeds 3.2. B) the distribution is bell-shaped. C) the distribution is right-skewed. D) the distribution is left-skewed.

Q: Long-term capacity decisions usually involve adjusting schedules or staffing levels. a. True b. False

Q: A small company has 7 employees. The numbers of years these employees have worked for this company are shown as follows: 4 14 3 16 9 8 16 Based upon this information, the mode number of years that employees have been with this company is: A) 16 B) 2 C) 9 D) 10

Q: Indicate whether the statement is true or false.In the Theory of Constraints, constraints determine the throughput of a facility.a. Trueb. False

Q: The following table shows the data for the sales of a new music album at a store for 4 consecutive months. Find the forecast for the next month using a 3-month moving average.Month1234Sales112105125118a. The forecast for the next month is more than 90 but less than or equal to 100.b. The forecast for the next month is more than 100 but less than or equal to 110.c. The forecast for the next month is more than 110 but less than or equal to 120.d. The forecast for the next month is more than 120 but less than or equal to 130.

Q: The following table shows the sales data of a particular model of a DVD player. If the forecast sales for May is 36.25, calculate the sales forecast for July using the simple exponential smoothing (SES) model with a smoothing constant of 0.40.MonthSalesJan35Feb29Mar39Apr42May51Jun56a. The sales forecast for July is more than 30 but less than or equal to 35.b. The sales forecast for July is more than 35 but less than or equal to 40.c. The sales forecast for July is more than 40 but less than or equal to 50.d. The sales forecast for July is more than 50 but less than or equal to 55.

Q: Consider the following sample data: 25 11 6 4 2 17 9 6 For these data the median is: A) 7.5 B) 3.5 C) 10 D) None of the above

Q: _____ are needed to plan workforce levels, allocate budgets among divisions, and schedule jobs and resources. a. Make-to-order operations b. Intermediate-range forecasts c. Short-range forecasts d. Make-to-stock operations

Q: Consider the following sample data: 25 11 6 4 2 17 9 6 For these data the sample mean is: A) 8 B) 10 C) 3 D) 12

Q: The following table shows the sales data of server computers of Ziffcore Inc. for the past 5 years. The management plotted the data on a chart. The chart suggested that the sales appear to be increasing in a fairly predictable linear fashion and that the sales are related to time by a linear function Yt =240+340t. Using simple linear regression, calculate the forecast for sales in year 6.YearSales15802920312604160051940a. The forecast for sales in year 6 is more than 1800 but less than or equal to 2000.b. The forecast for sales in year 6 is more than 2000 but less than or equal to 2200.c. The forecast for sales in year 6 is more than 2200 but less than or equal to 2400.d. The forecast for sales in year 6 is more than 2400 but less than or equal to 2600.

Q: The most frequently used measure of central tendency is: A) median. B) mean. C) mode. D) middle value.

Q: _____ are necessary to plan for facility expansion. a. Long-range forecasts b. Intermediate-range forecasts c. Make-to-order operations d. Make-to-stock operations

Q: Which of the following statements is true? A) The mean of a population will always be larger than the population standard deviation. B) The mean of the population will generally be larger than the mean of the sample selected from that population. C) The population mean and a sample mean for a sample selected from that population will usually be different values. D) The population mean and sample mean will always be identical.

Q: _____ are used by operations managers to plan production schedules and assign workers to jobs. a. Balanced scorecards b. Intermediate-range forecasts c. Short-range forecasts d. Credit scorecards

Q: If a business manager selected a sample of customers and computed the mean income for this sample of customers, she has computed: A) a statistic. B) an ordinal value. C) a nominal value. D) a parameter.

Q: A population measure, such as the population mean, is called a: A) statistic. B) parameter. C) prime number. D) sample value.

Q: _____ is a method for building a statistical model that defines a relationship between a single dependent variable and one or more independent variables, all of which are numerical. a. The Delphi method b. Regression analysis c. Judgmental forecasting d. The Cooke method

Q: The distribution of dollars paid for car insurance by car owners in a major east coast city is bell-shaped with a mean equal to $750 every six months and a standard deviation equal to $100. Based on this information we should use Tchebysheff's theorem to determine the conservative percentage of car owners that will pay between $550 and $950 for car insurance.

Q: In the context of a fairly stable time series with relatively little random variability, which of the following statements is true of single exponential smoothing (SES)? a. Values of the smoothing constant larger than 0.5 place more emphasis on recent data. b. Exponential smoothing models completely forget past data if the smoothing constant is strictly between 0 and 1. c. Typical values for the smoothing constant are in the range of 1 to 1.5. d. Values of the smoothing constant smaller than 0.1 allow a forecast to react faster to changing conditions.

Q: In the context of forecasting errors, _____ eliminates the measurement scale factor. a. normalized mean signed deviation b. mean absolute deviation c. normalized root mean square error d. mean absolute percentage error

Q: The distribution of bankcard balances for customers is highly right-skewed with a mean of $1,100 and a standard deviation equal to $250. Based on this information, approximately 68 percent of the customers will have bank balances between $850 and $1,350.

Q: A major automobile maker has two models of sedans. The first model has been shown to get an average of 27 mpg on the highway with a standard deviation equal to 5 mpg. The second model gets 33 mpg on average with a standard deviation of 8 mpg. Based on this information the first car model is relatively more variable than the second car model.

Q: In the context of data patterns in a time series, regular patterns in a data series that take place over long periods of time are called _____ patterns. a. orthographic b. seasonal c. cyclical d. parallel patterns

Q: Based on the empirical rule we can expect about 95 percent of the values in bell-shaped distributions to be within one standard deviation of the mean.

Q: An exponential smoothing model must have a smoothing constant (α) _____ to be roughly equivalent to a moving average model with a seven-month moving average. a. less than or equal to 0.10 b. more than 0.10 but less than or equal to 0.15 c. more than 0.15 but less than or equal to 0.20 d. more than 0.20

Q: The credit card balances for customers at State Bank and Trust has a mean equal to $800 and a standard deviation equal to $60.00. Kevin Smith's balance is $1,352. Based on this, his standardized value is 9.20.

Q: In the Delphi method of judgmental forecasting, _____. a. predictions are based on the assumption that the future will be an extrapolation of the past b. predictions are based on one or more independent variables, all of which are numerical c. people from outside an organization are not eligible to make predictions d. experts are not consulted as a group to make predictions

Q: Suppose a distribution has a mean of 80 and standard deviation of 10. It is found that 84 percent of the values in the data set lie between 70 and 90. This implies that the distribution is not bell-shaped.

Q: A _____ is the underlying pattern of growth or decline in a time series. a. trend b. planning horizon c. forecast error d. bias

Q: Based on the empirical rule we can assume that all bell-shaped distributions have approximately 95 percent of the values within 2 standard deviations of the mean.

Q: Forecast _____ is the difference between the observed value of the time series and the forecast. a. error b. consumption c. precision d. density

Q: Acme Taxi has two taxi cabs. The manager tracks the daily revenue for each cab. Over the past 20 days, Cab A has averaged $76.00 per night with a standard deviation equal to $11.00. Cab B has averaged $200.00 per night with a standard deviation of $18.00. Based on this information, the coefficient of variation for Cab B is 9 percent.

Q: The mean absolute deviation (MAD) for the forecasts shown in the following table is:MonthForecast DemandActual DemandApril190180May175200June190200July240220August225195a. more than 10 but less than or equal to 20.b. more than 20 but less than or equal to 30.c. more than 30 but less than or equal to 40.d. more than 40 but less than or equal to 50.

Q: Consider a situation involving two populations where population 1 is known to have a higher coefficient of variation than population 2. In this situation, we know that population 1 has a higher standard deviation than population 2.

Q: _____ is based on the assumption that the future will be an extrapolation of the past. a. Judgmental forecasting b. Statistical forecasting c. The Delphi method d. The Cooke method

Q: In comparing two distributions with the same mean, the coefficient of variation is the only way to assess which distribution has the greatest relative variability.

Q: In the context of data patterns in a time series, _____ are characterized by repeatable periods of ups and downs over short periods of time. a. random variations b. seasonal patterns c. cyclical patterns d. irregular variations

Q: Populations with larger means will also have larger standard deviations since the data will be more spread out for populations with larger means.

Q: When no historical data are available, _____ is the sole basis for predicting future demands. a. statistical forecasting b. regression analysis c. judgmental forecasting d. exponential smoothing

Q: Suppose the standard deviation for a given sample is known to be 20. If the data in the sample are doubled, the standard deviation will be 40.

Q: If the time series in an exponential smoothing model exhibits a negative trend, the _____. a. mean square error will be negative b. value of smoothing constant will either be less than zero or greater than one c. forecast will overshoot the actual values d. future forecasts will rely solely upon expertise of people in developing forecasts