BSE Bachelor of Science in Engineering Management: Operations and Supply Chain 5 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Which performance metric measures the total time from when a customer places an order to when the order is delivered?
- Cycle time
- Order-to-delivery lead time (Correct answer)
- Takt time
- Throughput time
Correct answer: Order-to-delivery lead time
Order-to-delivery lead time (also called order fulfillment lead time) spans the complete customer-facing window from order placement to receipt.
Question 2: A manufacturer's takt time is calculated as:
- Total available production time divided by customer demand rate (Correct answer)
- Total units produced divided by total labor hours
- Maximum machine cycle time across all workstations
- Daily demand multiplied by average cycle time
Correct answer: Total available production time divided by customer demand rate
Takt time = (Available production time per period) / (Customer demand per period), setting the production heartbeat needed to meet demand.
Question 3: Sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) integrates which three dimensions into supply chain decisions?
- Cost, quality, and speed
- Environmental, social, and economic (triple bottom line) (Correct answer)
- Supplier, manufacturer, and retailer performance
- Inbound, operations, and outbound logistics
Correct answer: Environmental, social, and economic (triple bottom line)
SSCM explicitly balances environmental stewardship, social responsibility, and economic performance—the triple bottom line—across the supply network.
Question 4: In a regression-based demand forecast, an R² value of 0.92 indicates that:
- The forecast has a 92% chance of being accurate
- 92% of demand variability is explained by the independent variable(s) (Correct answer)
- The model will overestimate demand 92% of the time
- Forecast errors average 8% of actual demand
Correct answer: 92% of demand variability is explained by the independent variable(s)
R² (coefficient of determination) measures the proportion of variance in the dependent variable explained by the model's independent variables.
Question 5: Which sourcing strategy involves a buyer and supplier sharing cost, risk, and benefit information openly to jointly reduce total supply chain cost?
- Competitive bidding
- Open-book costing (collaborative cost management) (Correct answer)
- Spot market purchasing
- Reverse auctioning
Correct answer: Open-book costing (collaborative cost management)
Open-book costing requires the supplier to share detailed cost breakdowns, enabling joint improvement efforts that benefit both parties.
Question 6: A warehouse uses a 'goods-to-person' automation system rather than traditional pick-and-walk operations. The primary operational benefit is:
- Lower software licensing costs
- Reduced picker travel time and higher throughput (Correct answer)
- Elimination of receiving and put-away functions
- Simplified product labeling requirements
Correct answer: Reduced picker travel time and higher throughput
Goods-to-person systems (e.g., AutoStore, Kiva robots) bring inventory to stationary pickers, dramatically reducing non-value-added travel time and increasing pick rates.
Question 7: The SCOR (Supply Chain Operations Reference) model organizes supply chain processes into which top-level process categories?
- Plan, Source, Make, Deliver, Return, Enable (Correct answer)
- Forecast, Purchase, Produce, Distribute, Sell
- Acquire, Transform, Store, Ship, Service
- Inbound, Internal, Outbound, Reverse, Support
Correct answer: Plan, Source, Make, Deliver, Return, Enable
SCOR version 12 defines six top-level processes: Plan, Source, Make, Deliver, Return, and Enable, providing a standard framework for supply chain analysis.
BSE Bachelor of Science in Engineering Management: Operations and Supply Chain 5
Which performance metric measures the total time from when a customer places an order to when the order is delivered?