CPIM Operations Execution & Continuous Improvement 3 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: A manufacturer tracks OEE on a critical machine. Availability is 90%, Performance is 85%, and Quality is 95%. What is the OEE?
- 90.0%
- 72.7% (Correct answer)
- 56.8%
- 81.3%
Correct answer: 72.7%
OEE = Availability × Performance × Quality = 0.90 × 0.85 × 0.95 ≈ 72.7%.
Question 2: In a lean transformation, 'muda' specifically refers to:
- Unevenness in production load
- Overburden on workers or equipment
- Any activity that consumes resources without adding customer value (Correct answer)
- Variation in process output
Correct answer: Any activity that consumes resources without adding customer value
Muda is the Japanese term for waste — activities that use resources but create no value from the customer's perspective.
Question 3: Which dispatch rule minimizes the average number of jobs waiting in a queue by always processing the job with the shortest expected processing time first?
- First-come, first-served (FCFS)
- Earliest due date (EDD)
- Shortest processing time (SPT) (Correct answer)
- Critical ratio (CR)
Correct answer: Shortest processing time (SPT)
SPT minimizes mean flow time and average work-in-process queue length across a set of jobs.
Question 4: A company adopts a policy of never building product ahead of a customer signal. This is the core principle of:
- Make-to-stock (MTS) production
- Pull production (Correct answer)
- Push production
- Engineer-to-order (ETO)
Correct answer: Pull production
Pull production authorizes production only in response to actual downstream demand or a customer signal.
Question 5: A team performing a kaizen event on a packaging line identifies motion waste. Which of the following BEST describes this type of waste?
- Producing more units than currently needed
- Unnecessary physical movement by operators that does not add value (Correct answer)
- Time spent waiting for materials or equipment
- Moving products more than necessary between workstations
Correct answer: Unnecessary physical movement by operators that does not add value
Motion waste refers to unnecessary body movements by workers — reaching, bending, or searching — that add no value.
Question 6: A plant uses a heijunka box to schedule production. The PRIMARY purpose of heijunka is to:
- Eliminate all inventory from the shop floor
- Level production volume and mix over a planning period (Correct answer)
- Automate the scheduling of machines using AI
- Prioritize orders by customer due date
Correct answer: Level production volume and mix over a planning period
Heijunka (production leveling) smooths out volume and product-mix variation to reduce mura and enable flow.
Question 7: Under a drum-buffer-rope (DBR) scheduling approach, the 'rope' component serves to:
- Accumulate inventory ahead of the constraint as a buffer
- Synchronize material release to the pace of the constraint (Correct answer)
- Measure throughput at the bottleneck workstation
- Identify the location of the system constraint
Correct answer: Synchronize material release to the pace of the constraint
The rope ties material release at the gateway operation to the drum (constraint) pace, preventing overloading the system.
CPIM Operations Execution & Continuous Improvement 3
A manufacturer tracks OEE on a critical machine.
Availability is 90%, Performance is 85%, and Quality is 95%.
What is the OEE?