Operations Management and Process Improvement Flashcards
6 cards from real BEC practice questions. Tap to flip, then mark Knew It or Still Learning — missed cards come back until you master them.
Read the first 6 Operations Management and Process Improvement flashcards as text
A balanced scorecard measures organizational performance using which four perspectives?
Answer: Financial, Customer, Internal Business Processes, and Learning & Growth
The balanced scorecard framework, developed by Kaplan and Norton, evaluates performance across four linked perspectives: financial results, customer value, internal process efficiency, and organizational learning and growth.
Activity-based costing (ABC) allocates overhead costs based on:
Answer: The actual activities that drive costs, traced to specific products or customers
ABC identifies cost drivers for each overhead activity and assigns costs to products or services based on their actual consumption of each activity, yielding more accurate product costing.
Process costing is most appropriate for companies that produce:
Answer: Homogeneous products in a continuous or mass production process
Process costing averages costs across all units produced in a period, making it suitable for industries producing identical or similar products continuously, such as chemicals, oil refining, or food processing.
Variance analysis in standard costing compares:
Answer: Actual results to budgeted (standard) amounts to identify and explain differences
Variance analysis breaks down differences between actual costs/revenues and standard (budgeted) amounts into price and efficiency components to guide corrective management action.
Which of the following best describes throughput accounting?
Answer: A management accounting approach focusing on increasing the rate at which the system generates money through sales
Throughput accounting, derived from the Theory of Constraints, focuses on increasing throughput (sales minus variable costs) while controlling operating expenses and investment to maximize profit.
Outsourcing a business process is most justifiable when:
Answer: An external provider can perform the activity at lower cost or higher quality while freeing internal resources for core competencies
Outsourcing makes economic sense when external providers have specialized expertise or scale advantages that reduce cost or improve quality, and the function is not a strategic differentiator.