1.Explain how material flow information helps in work centre decision.

Consider the
example of a shopping centre to illustrate your answer.

The decision which involves during uses of material flow information is mentioned below
by considering the example of a shopping centre:

A work center (E.g. Shopping Center) is a production facility comprising of one or more
machines and one or more workmen considered as a single unit for purposes of estimation
of capacity. This shopping center may have a single operation/ process or a number of
them conducted on the input items. In the pipeline of receiving the material to supplying
to customers, each work center’s contribution is vital as materials are scheduled, routed
and loads to be sent to it.

They are even considered as cash centers. Location trust means relative position of
different centers so as to minimize the movement of materials, meet technological
sequences, to reduce congestion, maximize throughput, improve part tracking ability and
avoid repetitive movements. In addition another consideration is to provide for expansion
of production

Each work center receives information along with material that enters it in a shopping
center; the material also leaves the shopping center with information. The route sheet
contains information about the material, process, quantities, and inspection procedures.
Etc. the drawings or instructions tell the condition of the material of entry and the
required condition at exit

In this sense every operation consists of material transformation occurring on the basis of
information. Activities conducted are on the basis of information that flows with material.
Different locations have to accommodate the constraints of the basis of darning maximums
benefit of the information that is available. Basically, each location is determined on the
basis of from and to: where does it receive material goes. Some centers have to close as a
matter of necessity, some need not to be and some need to be as far away as possible.
This aspect has been given a rating scale in terms of alphabets as under:

Absolutely necessary to be close

Essential to be close
Important that they are close
Ordinary closeness
Unimportant that they are close or not

Not desirable that the centers are close It can be seen that this is only a guide for Indian
location as the work centers as there will many competing factors that have to be
accommodated.

2 . What are the reasons for failure of a project? Give suitable examples.

Before knowing the reasons of failure we have to know about project. Project is a set of
activities which are networked in order and aimed towards achieving goal of a project.

The reasons are project failure:

A. General

• Incidence of Project failure

• Higher cost of capital
• Projects being initiated of random at all levels
• Project objective not in line with business objective
• Project management not observed
• Project manager with no prior experience in the related project
• Non- dedicated team
• Lack of complete support from clients
• Misuse of financial resources
• Business strategy superseded
• Overspends in excess of agreed budgets

A. Management Reasons
• Ability to adapt to new resource combinations
• Differences between management and client
• Insufficient risk management
• Insufficient end-user management
• Insufficient training of users
• Inappropriate procedures and routines
• Lack of management judgement
• Lack of software development metrics
• Loss of key personnel
• Poor communication between stakeholders
• Poor contract management
• Poor financial management
• Project management capability
• Poor delegation and decision making
• Unfilled promises to users and other stakeholders

A. Technical reasons
• Inappropriate architecture
• Insufficient reuse of existing technical objects
• Inappropriate testing tools
• Inappropriate coding language
• Inappropriate technical methodologies
• Lack of formal technical standards
• Lack of technical innovation (obsolescence)
• Misstatement of technical risk
• Obsolescence of technology
• Poor interface specifications
• Poor quality code
• Poor systems testing
• Poor data migration
• Poor systems integration
• Poor configuration management
• Poor change management procedures
• Poor technical judgement

A. Factors contributing to project success not emphasized:

• Project objective in alignment with business objective
• Working within the framework of project management methodology
• Effective scoping planning, estimation, execution, controls and reviews,
project bottlenecks
• Communication and managing expectations effectively with clients, team
merits and stake holders
• Prior expectance of PM in a similar project
A.Overview of information and communication Technologies (ICT)
project:

• Involve information and communication technologies such as the world

wide web, e-mail, fibre-optics satellites

• Enable societies to produce, access, adapt and apply information in

greater amount, more rapidly and at reduce costs
• Offer enormous opportunities for enhancing business and economic
viability
• Common problems encountered during projects
• No prioritization of project activity from an organizational position
• One or more of the stages in the project mishandled
• Less qualified non-dedicated manpower
• Absence of smooth flow of communication between the involved parties

These basic reasons lead a project to failures. In the project failures business
management and project management is directly involved. From the
management point of view it is basic things to care above topics to success of a
project. Project is the core business of a company

3.Explain the various phases in project management life cycle?

This is the initial phase of any project. In this phase information is collected from the
customer pertaining to the project and the requirements are analyzed. The entire project
has to be planned and it should be done in a strategic manner. The project manager
conducts the analysis of the problem and submits a detailed report to the top project
justification, details on what the problem is a method of solving the problem, list of the
objectives to be achieved, project budget and the success rate of completing the project.
The report must also contain information and the project feasibility, and the risks
involved in the project.

Project management life cycle is the integrated part of management. It is attach with
project responsibility or failure of a project.

The important tasks of this phase are as follows:

• Specification Requirements Analysis (SRA): It has to be conducted to determine the

essential requirements of a project in order to achieve the target.
• Feasibility study: To analyze whether the project is technically, economically and
practically feasible to be undertaken.
• Trade off analysis: To understand and examine the various alternatives which could be
considered.
• Estimation: To estimate the project cost, effort requires for the project and
functionality of various process in the project.
• System design: Choose a general design that can fusil the requirements.
• Project evolution: Evaluate the project in terms of expected profit, cost and risks
involved marketing phase.

Phases in Project Management Life Cycle:

• Marketing Phase:
A project proposal is prepared by a group of people including the project manager. This
proposal has to contain the strategies adopted to market the product to the customers.

Marketing phase
– This phase involves the study of inputs and outputs of the various project stages.
– Inputs received, consist of project feasibility study, preliminary project evaluation
details, project proposal and customer interviews.
– Outputs produced, consist of system design specifications, functional specifications of
the project, design specifications of the project and the project plan.

• Execution Phase:
In this phase the project manager and the team members work on the project objectives
as per the plan. At every stage during the execution reports are prepared.

Control, Inspection, Testing & Delivery Phase:

During this phase, the project team works under the guidance of the project manager. The
project manager has to ensure that the team working under his, implements the project
designs accurately. The project has to be monitored or tracked through its cost,
manpower and schedule. The project manager has to ensure ways of managing the
customer, perform quality control work.

Closure and post completion analysis Phase

Upon satisfactory completion and delivery of the intended product or service the staff
performance has to be evaluated. Document the lessons from the project. Prepare the
reports on project feedback analysis followed by the project execution report.

General practices involved in the above phases are:

The preparation stage involves the preparation and approval of project outline, project
plan and project budget.

The next stage involves selecting and briefing the project team about the proposals
followed by discussions on the roles and responsibility of the project member and the
organization.

The feasibility or research stage will establish whether the project is feasible or not and
establishes the risk factors likely to be faced during the course of project execution and
the related key factors to overcome the problems.

A detailed definition and plan for the project and its execution is prepared by the team
and coordinated by project Manager.

The final stage involves satisfactory delivery of the product/service to the customers.
Upon completion of the project, review is to be conducted by the project team along with
the sponsors and customers to discuss about the progress, performance and hurdles.

4. What are the Seven Principles of SCM?

1.Group customer by needs- Effective SCM groups, customer by distinct service needs,
regardless of industry and then tailors services to those particular segments.
2.Customize the logistic network- In designing their logistics network; companies need to
focus on the service requirement and profit of the customer segments identified.

3.Listen to signals of market demand and plan accordingly- Sales and operations planners
must monitor the entire supply chain to detect early warning signals of changing customer
demand and needs. This demand driven approach leads to more consistent forecast and
optimal resource allocation.

4.Differentiate the product closer to the customer- companies today no longer can afford
to stock pile inventory to compensate for possible forecasting errors. Instead, they need
to postpone product differentiation in the manufacturing process closer to actual
consumer demand. This strategy allows the supply chain to respond quickly and cost
effectively to change in customer needs.

5. Strategically manage the sources of supply- by working closely with their key suppliers
to reduce the overall costs of owning materials and services; SCM maximizes profit
margins both for themselves and their suppliers.

6.Develop a supply chain wide technology strategy- as one of the cornerstones of

successful SCM information technology must be able to support multiple levels of decision
making. It also should afford a clear view and ability to measure the flow of products,
services and information.

7. Adopt channel spanning chain performance measures- Excellent supply chain

performance measurement system do more than just monitor internal functions. They
apply performance criteria to every link in the supply chain-criteria that embrace both
service and financial metrics, including each account’s profitability.

5.Explain what is meant by bullwhip effect and how it could be prevented?

An organisation will always have ups and downs. It is necessary that the managers of the
organisation keep track on the market conditions and analyze the changes. They must take
decisions on the resources and make necessary changes within the organisation to meet
the market demands. Failing to do so may result in wild swing in orders. This may
adversely affect functioning of the organisation resulting in lack of coordination and trust
among supply chain members. The changes may affect the information and may lead to
demand amplification in the supply chain. The bullwhip effect is the uncertainty caused
from distorted information flowing up and down the supply chain. This has its effect on
almost all the industries, poses a risk to firms that experience large variations in demand,
and also those firms which are dependent on suppliers, distributors and retailers.

A bullwhip effect may also arise because of:

a. Increase in the lead time of the project due to increase in variability of demand.
b.Increase in the stocks to accommodate the increasing demand arising out of complicated
demand models and forecasting techniques.
c. Reduced service levels in the organisation.
d.Inefficient allocation of resources.
e. Increased transportation costs.

Measures to prevent bullwhip effect:

Bullwhip effect may be avoided by one or more of the following measures:
a. Avoid multiple demand forecasting.
b.Breaking the single orders into number of batches of orders.
c. Stabilising the prices, avoid the risk involved in overstocking by maintaining a proper
stock.
d.Reduce the variability and uncertainty in Point Of Sale[POS] and sharing information.
e. Reduce the lead time in the stages of the project.
f. Always keep analysing the past figures and track current and future levels of
requirements.
g.Enhance the operational efficiency and outsourcing logistics to a capable and efficient
agency.

5.What do you understand by line balancing? What is the importance of order picking
in material handling? Give suitable examples.

Line Balancing: Productivity increases when product moves the various operations toward
completion without any holdovers. Balancing a variety of operation is the major concern
which is addressed by design and allocation of machines at workstations.

Material handling has become one of the important functions of operations management
owing to the necessity of making them efficient and economical. The necessity is the
outcome of worldwide outsourcing and meeting demands of a global market. Assemblies
take place at various locations and distribution is across the world. Many companies do not
have main stores at their manufacturing facilities. Suppliers deliver the required
quantities to the places where they are required for further processing or assembly. To
reduce the inventory only required quantities have to be made and delivered at
appropriate times.

This necessitates that the flow lines are smooth. Balancing flow lines, different
equipments to achieve the same is the objective of line balancing.

Production lines have a number of work enters in particular sequence so that the material
that gets processed has to move further without encountering any bottlenecks. The
quantities processed the rate of production at each centre, the number of operations and
the total production required are factors taken into account.

The purpose of balancing is to see that no shortages occur between work centres and
minimum inventory gets created. The principles of Linear Programming, JIT and Lean
Manufacturing are used to achieve these.

The importance of order picking in material handling:

Order picking is a process by which items or products for which supply is to be made have
to be retrieved from specific storage locations. It is found to take 60% of labour activities
in a warehouse. Since it is critical to the business to meet customer’s demands accurately,
lot of attention is being given to this aspect of operations. In the manufacturing arena, we
desire to move towards small lot sizes, point of use delivery and cycle time reductions.
Efficient order picking is necessary for being competitive. In the supply chain, storage,
retrieval, and delivery do not add value to the product, but are necessary.

Types of equipments that help in bring efficiency to the process:

a. Horizontal Travel – These are in the aisle, picker to part systems. The picker, a worker
walks or rides a vehicle and pickers the item or product and puts into the vehicle, or
conveyor. The storage system could be pallet racks, shelves or gravity racks.

b.Person Abroad- In this system the picker is on a platform of a vehicle he can move up
and also horizontally along the aisle.

c. Part to Picker – these are mechanised systems here a storage / retrieval device carries
the trays or bins to the person picking. More than one picker can also access the system

d.Special equipment – for high throughput and space efficiently special equipments are
made which are in the form of movable shelves, rotary racks mobile shuttles that travel in
lanes.

e. Workplace equipment – items can be kept in work benches and be picked up. The carts
are used to keep items for being picked up.

Before implementing any of these systems, a detailed study of alternatives, a plan for
expansion or reduction will have to be considered. Some of these factors are:

A. Material Properties
– Size, weight and nest ability
– Carton counts, pallet counts
– Fragility
– Value
– Environment[ temperature, humidity]

A. System Requirements
– Volume per product
– Number of orders to be shipped
– Response time
– Supporting processes [labelling, pricing]
– Growth factors

A. Economic factors
– Investment required
– Product life
– Rate of return

A. Design considerations
– Total number of products that are to be stored
– Number of products received per shift
– Total number of retrieved per shift
– Labour force
– Variability of the product
– Management Information System