Excerpts from Assignments Submitted to Explain the Questions posed in Second Test (Quiz)

Q: What is routing plan?

Answer and excerpt from Debashishʼs assignment:
Designing the network of work centers through which the order must pass before it is completed. With the
help of something called as the MOVE TICKET the product is moved from one stage to the other.

Q: What is COVERT sequencing rule?

Answer and excerpt from Divya Prabhuʼs assignment:
Priority is given to the job with the highest ratio of cost of delay over processing time. This rule attempts to
operate like the SOT rule but also to consider the cost of delays.

Q: Visual Load Profile is

Answer and excerpt from Ishneetʼs assignment:
A graph comparing workloads and capacities on a time scale.

Q: It is a scheduling software based on synchronous manufacturing that develops a schedule

around the bottleneck of the operation:
Answer and excerpt from Ishneetʼs and Mahendraʼs assignment:
It is a production planning system that emphasizes identifying bottleneck work centres, and careful
management of materials and resources related to those bottlenecks, to maximize output and resource
inventories. OPT is a scheduling system based on synchronous production that develops a schedule around
the bottleneck of the production system.

Q: When an item shows all three modes of failure (hyper-exponential, negative exponential and
normal), then the whole-life figure of age-specific failure rate with respect to time-to-failure can be
drawn and the resulting curve is known as
Answer and excerpt from Pavneetʼs assignment:
Failure behavior can be studied with the help of failure statistics. There are 3 kinds of failure probability
distribution:
1. Normal distribution – items failing at some mean operating age, with some failing sooner or later.
2. Negative exponential distribution – the cause of the failure is external to the item. The failure rate is not
age specific.
3. Hyper – exponential distribution – the probability density of failure is much higher during initial ‘teething’
periods than during their subsequent life.
Age specific failure rate – suppose the product reliability is for time T. out of the items which survived till
time T, the fraction of them that will immediately fail after T is known as age specific failure rate or Hazard
function.
When an item shows all three modes of failure (hyper – exponential, negative exponential and normal), then
the whole-life figure of age specific failure rate with respect to time-to-failure can be drawn and the resulting
curve is known as ‘Bath-Tub Curve’.
Q: Mention two advantages of hiring part-time labor:

Answer and excerpt from Missyʼs assignment:

Advantages of using part time labor include the following:

• The organization saves money because part- time employees do not receive retirement and fringe
benefits.
• Part- time workers may not experience job monotony (and may therefore be more productive) because
they do not spend as much time as full- time employees.
• The organization saves money on wages and salaries because part time employees usually start at the
bottom of the wage scale and are not always covered by union or company merit increases.
• Part- time employees tend to be more willing to take on undesirable or less challenging jobs that full
time workers try to avoid or would not perform efficiently.
Part time work also has advantages for workers. A worker can keep his or her regular job and also take a
part time job to
• Gain job education, information, or new job skills.
• Earn extra money to increase standard of living
• Shop around for a new job.
• Break into another career

Q: Maintenance organization, usually, is made of these three components

Answer and excerpt from Manoj Kumar Pandeyʼs and Piyushʼs assignment:
MAINTENANCE ORGANIZATION IS MADE UP OF THREE COMPONENTS:
• Resource : Man, Tools, Spares
• Administration : Hierarchy of authority and responsibility.
• Work Planning and Control system.

Q: This condition based maintenance detects and diagnoses faults and it helps in planned
maintenance based on the equipment condition. This type of maintenance is called as
Answer and excerpts from Manoj Kumar Pandeyʼs, Piyushʼs and Shirishʼs assignment:
Condition Based maintenance detects and diagnoses faults and it helps in planned maintenance based
on equipment condition. This condition based maintenance strategy or predictive maintenance is preferred
for critical systems and for such systems breakdown maintenance is to be avoided.

Predictive Maintenance (PdM) attempts to evaluate the condition of equipment by performing periodic
or continuous (online) equipment condition monitoring.

Q: What are the difficulties that are faced in scheduling personnel in services industry? Mention two
such dificulties.
Answer and excerpt from Eshaʼs assignment:
Three difficulties may be encountered in scheduling personnel in services :
• Demand variability
• Service time variability
• Availability of personnel when they are needed
Q: The scheduling which is concerned with a set of activities that are subject to precedence
constraints, specifying which jobs have to be completed before a given job is allowed to start its
processing in minimum amount of time is
Answer and excerpt from Megha Groverʼs and Anshulikaʼs assignment:
Project scheduling is concerned with a set of activities that are subject to precedence constraints,
specifying which jobs have to be completed before a given job is allowed to start its processing in minimum
amount of time.

Project Scheduling: A Project may be broken into a set of inter-related tasks. Although some tasks can be
done concurrently, many tasks cannot be started until others are completed. Complex projects may involve
thousands of individual tasks that must be co-ordinated for the project to be completed on time and within
the budget. Project scheduling is an important component of the planning section.