CPT CPT Production Planning & Scheduling 5 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Which production planning document authorizes the shop floor to begin manufacturing a specific quantity of a part?
- Bill of Materials (BOM)
- Work Order (WO) (Correct answer)
- Master Production Schedule (MPS)
- Routing sheet
Correct answer: Work Order (WO)
A work order is the formal authorization document that triggers shop floor activity for a defined quantity and due date.
Question 2: In finite capacity scheduling, what happens when a machine's available capacity is exceeded?
- Jobs are automatically cancelled
- Jobs are rescheduled or rerouted to stay within capacity limits (Correct answer)
- Overtime is added automatically without review
- The schedule ignores the constraint and flags it for review later
Correct answer: Jobs are rescheduled or rerouted to stay within capacity limits
Finite capacity scheduling respects real capacity limits and adjusts job timing or routing rather than overloading a resource.
Question 3: Safety stock is primarily used to protect against:
- Planned maintenance downtime
- Variability in demand and supply lead time (Correct answer)
- Excess raw material costs
- Long-term strategic demand growth
Correct answer: Variability in demand and supply lead time
Safety stock acts as a buffer inventory to absorb unexpected fluctuations in customer demand or supplier delivery variability.
Question 4: A production planner uses the Critical Ratio (CR) to prioritize jobs. A job with a CR less than 1.0 indicates:
- The job is ahead of schedule
- The job is behind schedule and needs expediting (Correct answer)
- The job has no due date assigned
- The job should be cancelled
Correct answer: The job is behind schedule and needs expediting
A critical ratio below 1.0 means time remaining is less than the work remaining, signaling the job is late or at risk of being late.
Question 5: Which of the following best describes a mixed-model production schedule?
- Producing one product family exclusively before switching to another
- Interleaving different product variants in a sequence to level demand (Correct answer)
- Running the highest-volume product first each shift
- Producing products alphabetically by part number
Correct answer: Interleaving different product variants in a sequence to level demand
Mixed-model scheduling sequences different variants throughout the day to level workload, reduce batch sizes, and match actual customer demand patterns.
Question 6: Capacity Requirements Planning (CRP) is performed after MRP to:
- Determine raw material purchase quantities
- Verify that planned work orders can be completed within available machine and labor capacity (Correct answer)
- Set the master production schedule for the next quarter
- Calculate finished goods safety stock levels
Correct answer: Verify that planned work orders can be completed within available machine and labor capacity
CRP translates MRP-generated work orders into capacity loads and compares them against available capacity to identify overloads or underloads.
Question 7: A planner observes that actual cycle time consistently exceeds standard cycle time on one workstation. The most appropriate first step is to:
- Immediately hire additional operators
- Investigate the root cause of the cycle time variance (Correct answer)
- Increase the standard cycle time to match actual
- Move production to a different facility
Correct answer: Investigate the root cause of the cycle time variance
Root cause analysis should precede any corrective action to ensure the solution addresses the actual problem rather than masking it.
CPT CPT Production Planning & Scheduling 5
Which production planning document authorizes the shop floor to begin manufacturing a specific quantity of a part?