Operations Management.
Instructions
You are to complete the questions below and submit them by Word document by email. The
assignment is worth 15%. You may work individually or in groups up to 4 students. Support
your answers as much as possible by showing all calculations and assumptions. Please
provide a cover page that includes the name and student id of each member in your group.
The assignment is due on October 3, 2015.
You must abide by the ethical rules of CUD as mentioned in the student handbook.
Academic Integrity
Cheating refers to attempting or using unauthorized materials or obtaining
unauthorized assistance in an academic activity, including all types of
examinations or evaluations. This may include impersonating another student;
looking at another student’s materials; using unauthorized notes/books/calculators;
talking to other students; using communication devices such as mobile phones or
any Bluetooth devices.
Plagiarism includes, but is not limited to, representation of others’ work, lending
unauthorized assistance, and using strategies or processes with the aim of
attaining dishonest grades on tests or examinations. Students may not submit any
material created by or acquired from another person or business. Plagiarizing any
type of course work will not be tolerated. All instances of plagiarizing shall be
documented, presented to the Chair/Dean of the program and to the Registrar, and
recorded in the student’s file. Any violations to the Academic integrity will be
sanctioned. Please refer to the Catalog for further information on student Academic
Integrity.
The assignment can cover material from the PPTs of Weeks 1-3 (chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6).
1. A manager of a company wants to evaluate if a new operations process they adopted last year has
resulted a 20% gain in productivity for the year. Employees went from servicing 400 customers to 600
customers in one year. Monthly training costs went from 3,000 AED to 4,000 AED for all employees.
Employees were reduced from 10 to 8 in the year. The consulting fees to implement the change cost
40,000 AED for the year. Suppose each worker earns 9,000 AED/month.
a) Evaluate the productivity using quantitative analysis (2 marks)
b) Analyze the validity of your answer in (a) by considering the issue of consistency in quality before
and after the changes. (1 mark)
2. A company following a cost strategy needs to select between 4 suppliers. It has chosen four
comparative categories of interest: price, ease of cooperation, reliability of delivery time, and promised
delivery time. These categories have been assigned weights of 30%, 20%, 20%, and 30%,
respectively. The suppliers were scored on each of those factors (see table below) using a scale of 1-
10, with a score of 1 meaning worst possible and 10 meaning best possible.
Supplier A Supplier B Supplier C Supplier D
Price 10 8 6 9
Ease of cooperation 5 5 6 8
Reliability of delivery time 4 9 9 5
Number of returned products 5 8 4 7
a) Evaluate which supplier should be selected. (2 marks)
b) Considering the strategy of the firm, would you change your selection in part a), why? (1 mark)
3. A quality analyst wants to construct a tool for measuring the average time of a process. She knows
from past experience that the process standard deviation is 2 minutes. Each day last week, she
randomly timed the process 5 times. The data from that activity appear below.
Process times
Day Timing 1 Timing 2 Timing 3 Timing 4 Timing 5
Monday 23 22 23 24 18
Tuesday 23 21 19 21 22
Wednesday 20 19 20 23 21
Thursday 17 19 20 19 23
Friday 16 20 25 20 16
a) By using 3-sigma for the control limits, propose a tool to monitor future average timings of the
process and discuss if the process is in control. (2 marks)
c) Criticize the tool by discussing its shortcomings and how other tools can help to complement the tool
in a). (1 mark)
4. You are to obtain once article through the CUD online library on one of the topics below. You are first
required to summarize the research contribution in one page. Secondly, you are to critically explain how
the research can be used for an operations management decision, and for which of the three basic
strategies is it more beneficial. (6 marks)
Topics:
– Global operations in the health industry
– Process design for mass customized goods or services
– Quality design in retail industry
– Capacity planning in manufacturing

Operations Management.
Instructions
You are to complete the questions below and submit them by Word document by email. The
assignment is worth 15%. You may work individually or in groups up to 4 students. Support
your answers as much as possible by showing all calculations and assumptions. Please
provide a cover page that includes the name and student id of each member in your group.
The assignment is due on October 3, 2015.
You must abide by the ethical rules of CUD as mentioned in the student handbook.
Academic Integrity
Cheating refers to attempting or using unauthorized materials or obtaining
unauthorized assistance in an academic activity, including all types of
examinations or evaluations. This may include impersonating another student;
looking at another student’s materials; using unauthorized notes/books/calculators;
talking to other students; using communication devices such as mobile phones or
any Bluetooth devices.
Plagiarism includes, but is not limited to, representation of others’ work, lending
unauthorized assistance, and using strategies or processes with the aim of
attaining dishonest grades on tests or examinations. Students may not submit any
material created by or acquired from another person or business. Plagiarizing any
type of course work will not be tolerated. All instances of plagiarizing shall be
documented, presented to the Chair/Dean of the program and to the Registrar, and
recorded in the student’s file. Any violations to the Academic integrity will be
sanctioned. Please refer to the Catalog for further information on student Academic
Integrity.
The assignment can cover material from the PPTs of Weeks 1-3 (chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6).
1. A manager of a company wants to evaluate if a new operations process they adopted last year has
resulted a 20% gain in productivity for the year. Employees went from servicing 400 customers to 600
customers in one year. Monthly training costs went from 3,000 AED to 4,000 AED for all employees.
Employees were reduced from 10 to 8 in the year. The consulting fees to implement the change cost
40,000 AED for the year. Suppose each worker earns 9,000 AED/month.
a) Evaluate the productivity using quantitative analysis (2 marks)
b) Analyze the validity of your answer in (a) by considering the issue of consistency in quality before
and after the changes. (1 mark)
2. A company following a cost strategy needs to select between 4 suppliers. It has chosen four
comparative categories of interest: price, ease of cooperation, reliability of delivery time, and promised
delivery time. These categories have been assigned weights of 30%, 20%, 20%, and 30%,
respectively. The suppliers were scored on each of those factors (see table below) using a scale of 1-
10, with a score of 1 meaning worst possible and 10 meaning best possible.
Supplier A Supplier B Supplier C Supplier D
Price 10 8 6 9
Ease of cooperation 5 5 6 8
Reliability of delivery time 4 9 9 5
Number of returned products 5 8 4 7
a) Evaluate which supplier should be selected. (2 marks)
b) Considering the strategy of the firm, would you change your selection in part a), why? (1 mark)
3. A quality analyst wants to construct a tool for measuring the average time of a process. She knows
from past experience that the process standard deviation is 2 minutes. Each day last week, she
randomly timed the process 5 times. The data from that activity appear below.
Process times
Day Timing 1 Timing 2 Timing 3 Timing 4 Timing 5
Monday 23 22 23 24 18
Tuesday 23 21 19 21 22
Wednesday 20 19 20 23 21
Thursday 17 19 20 19 23
Friday 16 20 25 20 16
a) By using 3-sigma for the control limits, propose a tool to monitor future average timings of the
process and discuss if the process is in control. (2 marks)
c) Criticize the tool by discussing its shortcomings and how other tools can help to complement the tool
in a). (1 mark)
4. You are to obtain once article through the CUD online library on one of the topics below. You are first
required to summarize the research contribution in one page. Secondly, you are to critically explain how
the research can be used for an operations management decision, and for which of the three basic
strategies is it more beneficial. (6 marks)
Topics:
– Global operations in the health industry
– Process design for mass customized goods or services
– Quality design in retail industry
– Capacity planning in manufacturing