CPIM Cheat Sheet 2026

The 30 highest-yield CPIM facts, distilled from real exam questions. Print it, save it as a PDF, or study it here — free, no sign-up.

1. In demand management, 'available-to-promise' (ATP) is used to: → Commit to customer delivery dates based on uncommitted inventory and production
2. An advantageous competitive trait is one that: → A company must exhibit to gain new sales
3. Which planning horizon is most commonly associated with the Master Production Schedule (MPS)? → Weeks to months
4. In a fixed-order-quantity (Q) system, what triggers a replenishment order? → Inventory falling to a predetermined reorder point
5. Input/output control in PAC is used to: → Manage work center queue lengths by comparing planned versus actual input and output rates
6. What does 'flexible manufacturing system' (FMS) enable that traditional dedicated lines cannot? → Rapid changeover between different products with minimal manual intervention
7. What is 'queue time' in a manufacturing routing? → Time a job waits in front of a work center before processing begins
8. In quality management, 'statistical process control' (SPC) uses control charts to: → Distinguish between common-cause and special-cause variation in a process
9. Which shop floor scheduling priority rule selects the job with the earliest due date first? → Earliest due date (EDD)
10. Which concept allows MRP to plan components across multiple product levels simultaneously? → Explosion (BOM explosion)
11. Which of the following financial statements would include the cost of goods sold for an organization? → Income statement
12. What is a 'tracking signal' used for in forecast monitoring? → To detect when forecast errors are accumulating in one direction, signaling bias
13. Which MRP input file contains the product structure showing components needed for each parent item? → Bill of Materials (BOM)
14. What is 'net requirements' in MRP? → Gross requirements minus on-hand inventory and scheduled receipts
15. In ABC analysis, which category typically represents approximately 20% of SKUs but 80% of total inventory value? → A items
16. What is 'priority planning' in detailed scheduling? → Determining the sequence in which jobs should be processed at a work center
17. Which lean tool maps the flow of materials and information from supplier to customer to identify waste? → Value stream mapping
18. What does 'utilization' measure in capacity management? → The percentage of scheduled time that a work center is actually working
19. The EOQ formula minimizes the total of which two types of costs? → Ordering costs and carrying costs
20. What is the 'bullwhip effect' in supply chain demand management? → The amplification of demand variability as orders move upstream in the supply chain
21. What is 'planned order release' in MRP? → An MRP-generated order offset back by lead time, ready to be released
22. What is the primary goal of Material Requirements Planning (MRP)? → To determine when and how much material to order or produce
23. What does ABC analysis classify inventory items based on? → Annual usage value
24. Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) is calculated as the product of: → Availability, performance, and quality rates
25. In Theory of Constraints (TOC), the 'constraint' or bottleneck is defined as: → The resource that limits the system's throughput
26. Which of the subsequent industrial processes results in the production of a single item or a small batch of items? → Project manufacturing
27. Which of the following calculations is a major component that is used with extrinsic forecasting? → An economic indicator
28. Which of the following best describes 'collaborative planning, forecasting, and replenishment' (CPFR)? → A process where trading partners jointly develop demand forecasts and replenishment plans
29. What is a 'planning bill of materials' used for in master scheduling? → To represent a family of products for aggregate planning purposes
30. What does a 'tracking signal' in forecasting detect? → Whether forecasts are consistently biased in one direction