Q1.What do you understand by aggregate planning?

What are the various strategies used for

it?
Aggregate planning' is a marketing activity that does an aggregate plan for the production process, in
advance of 6 to 18 months, to give an idea to management as to what quantity of materials and other
resources are to be procured and when, so that the total cost of operations of the organization is kept
to the minimum over that period.
The quantity of outsourcing, subcontracting of items, overtime of labor, numbers to be hired and fired
in each period and the amount of inventory to be held in stock and to be backlogged for each period
are decided. All of these activities are done within the framework of the company ethics, policies, and
long term commitment to the society, community and the country of operation.
Aggregate planning has certain pre-required inputs which are inevitable. They include:
 Information about the resources and the facilities available.
 Demand forecast for the period for which the planning has to be done.
 Cost of various alternatives and resources. This includes cost of holding inventory, ordering
cost, and cost of production through various production alternatives like subcontracting,
backordering and overtime.
 Organizational policies regarding the usage of above alternatives.

Aggregate Plan Strategies

Level plans
 Use a constant workforce & produce similar quantities each time period
 Use inventories and back-orders to absorb demand peaks & valleys
 Use inventories in better way to absorb the peak of demand and valleys
Chase plans
 Minimize finished goods inventories by trying to keep pace with demand fluctuations
 Matches demand varying either work force level or output rate
Hybrid Strategies
 Build-up inventory ahead of rising demand and use back-orders to level extreme peaks
 Layoff or furlough workers during lulls
 Subcontract production or hire temporary workers to cover short-term peaks
 Reassign workers to preventive maintenance during lulls

Q2. Define demand forecasting? What are the different sources of data for forecasting?
Describe three method of it with suitable examples?
Demand forecasting is the art and science of forecasting customer demand to drive holistic execution
of such demand by corporate supply chain and business management. Demand forecasting involves
techniques including both informal methods, such as educated guesses, and quantitative methods,
such as the use of historical sales data and statistical techniques or current data from test markets.
Demand forecasting may be used in production planning, inventory management, and at times in
assessing future capacity requirements, or in making decisions on whether to enter a new market
Demand forecasting is predicting future demand for the product. In other words, it refers to the
prediction of a future demand for a product or a service on the basis of the past events and prevailing
trends in the present.
What are the different sources of data for forecasting?
There are mainly eight types
1. Qualitative forecasting
2. Quantitative forecasting
3. Cross-sectional forecasting
4. Drift method
5. Time series methods
6. Judgmental methods
7. Artificial intelligence methods
8. Other methods
Describe three method of it with suitable examples?
1. Qualitative Techniques
Qualitative forecasting techniques are generally more subjective than their quantitative counterparts.
Qualitative techniques are more useful in the earlier stages of the product life cycle, when less past
data exists for use in quantitative methods. Qualitative methods include the Delphi technique,
Nominal Group Technique (NGT), sales force opinions, executive opinions, and market research.
Delphi technique.
The Delphi technique uses a panel of experts to produce a forecast. Each expert is asked to provide
a forecast specific to the need at hand.
Nominal group technique.
Nominal Group Technique is similar to the Delphi technique in that it utilizes a group of participants,
usually experts.
Sales force opinions.
The sales staff is often a good source of information regarding future demand.
Executive opinions.
Sometimes upper-levels managers meet and develop forecasts based on their knowledge of their
areas of responsibility. This is sometimes referred to as a jury of executive opinion.
Market research.
In market research, consumer surveys are used to establish potential demand.
2. Quantitative Techniques
Quantitative forecasting techniques are generally more objective than their qualitative counterparts.
Quantitative forecasts can be time-series forecasts (i.e., a projection of the past into the future) or
forecasts based on associative models (i.e., based on one or more explanatory variables). Time-
series data may have underlying behaviors that need to be identified by the forecaster. In addition,
the forecast may need to identify the causes of the behavior. Some of these behaviors may be
patterns or simply random variations.
For example, GMDH neural network was found to have better forecasting performance than the
classical forecasting algorithms such as Single Exponential Smooth, Double Exponential Smooth,
and ARIMA and back-propagation neural network.
3. Time-Series Forecasting
Time-series forecasting is a quantitative forecasting technique. It measures data gathered over time
to identify trends. The data may be taken over any interval: hourly; daily; weekly; monthly; yearly; or
longer.
Time series methods use historical data as the basis of estimating future outcomes.
Moving average
Weighted moving average
Exponential smoothing
Autoregressive moving average (ARMA)
Autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA)
E.g. Box–Jenkins
Seasonal ARIMA or SARIMA or ARIMARCH [5],
Extrapolation
Linear prediction
Trend estimation
Growth curve (statistics)

Q3 a. Define BPR? Explain the procedure of BPR? What are its applications?
Business process reengineering (BPR) is the analysis and redesign of workflows within and between
enterprises in order to optimize end-to-end processes and automate non-value-added tasks.
The concept of BPR was first introduced in the late Michael Hammer's 1990. Hammer and Champy
suggested seven reengineering principles to streamline the work process and thereby achieve
significant levels of improvement in quality, time management, speed and profitability
Explain the procedure of BPR?
Business process reengineering comprises of following steps:
1. Define Objectives and Framework: First of all, the objective of re-engineering must be
defined in the quantitative and qualitative terms. The objectives are the end results that the
management desires after the reengineering. Once the objectives are defined, the need for
change should be well communicated to the employees because, the success of BPR
depends on the readiness of the employees to accept the change.
2. Identify Customer Needs: While, redesigning the business process the needs of the
customers must be taken into prior consideration. The process shall be redesigned in such a
way that it clearly provides the added value to the customer. One must take the following
parameters into the consideration:

 Type of Customer and customer groups.

 Customer’s expected utilities in product and services
 Customer requirements, buying habits and consuming tendencies.
 Customer problems and expectations about the product or service.
3. Study the Existing Process: Before deciding on the changes to be made in the existing
business process, one must analyze it carefully. The existing process provides a base for the
new process and hence “what” and “why” of the new process can be well designed by
studying the right and wrongs of the existing business plan.
4. Formulate a Redesign Business Plan: Once the existing business process is studied
thoroughly, the required changes are written down on a piece of paper and is converted into
an ideal re-design process. Here, all the changes are chalked down, and the best among all
the alternatives is selected.
5. Implement the Redesign: Finally, the changes are implemented into the redesign plan to
achieve the dramatic improvements. It is the responsibility of both the management and the
designer to operationalize the new process and gain the support of all.

Applications of BPR?
  Productivity,
 Decreased cycle time,
 Inventory or cost
 Profitability,
 Increased economic growth
 Quality,
 Improved products
 Services and related information
Q3 b. what are the different technique of project planning &controls?
Planning techniques for construction projects include a work breakdown structure; Program
Evaluation and Review Technique, or PERT, charts; and Gantt charts. A work breakdown structure
reduces complexity by breaking down the work to be done into individual tasks that are the
responsibility of a particular employee. PERT charts put the tasks into sequence to establish what
has to be completed before other tasks can start. Gantt charts are horizontal bar charts, with each bar
representing the duration of a project; these give an overview of how the project has to proceed.
Applying these techniques to construction projects allows you to reserve the required resources and
assign responsibilities to ensure the smooth functioning of project management.
Cost Control
Construction project management requires cost control. Your planning activities have helped you
identify the tasks that have to be completed and assign corresponding work. Cost control starts with
distributing the total cost to the tasks and establishing reporting procedures to track costs as your
company incurs them. You can achieve close cost control with signature rules for purchase orders
and payments. If you have to sign all purchase orders, you will know what costs the project is
generating. If your signature is required for payments, you have control over booking costs to the
project.
Schedule Control
Controlling the schedule for construction projects is critical because tasks are mutually
interdependent and delays can increase costs. Your planning has established the overall schedule
and specifies when particular tasks must be completed. A good schedule control technique is to
establish milestones that are easily observed and verified. Another technique is to use outside events
like permits to check on progress. If you have scheduled a milestone like the raising of the building
structure, you can go to the site on that day to verify whether the project team has met the milestone.
If you know that the project requires a building permit at a certain date, you can check whether the
permit has been issued.
Quality Control
An important function for construction projects is to control the quality of the materials and the work
because it affect the value of the structure you are building. Quality control has three parts. You have
to identify the level of quality you want, ensure that the purchase orders specify the quality and
examine the finished product to make sure you received what you ordered. When you assign
responsibility for a task in the planning stage, you also have to assign responsibility for the quality and
for the required documentation. For each item, the documentation has to include the specified level of
quality, the corresponding order and the resulting test or inspection report.
Q4 a).Compare manufacturing organization with service organization?
Organizations can be divided into two broad categories: manufacturing organizations and service
organizations, each posing unique challenges for the operations function. There are two primary
distinctions between these categories.
First, manufacturing organizations produce physical, tangible goods that can be stored in inventory
before they are needed.
Second, in manufacturing organizations most customers have no direct contact with the operation.
Customer contact occurs through distributors and retailers. For example, a customer buying a car at a
car dealership never comes into contact with the automobile factory.
By contrast, service organizations produce intangible products that cannot be produced ahead of
time. However, in service organizations the customers are typically present during the creation of the
service. Hospitals, colleges, theaters, and barber shops are examples of service organizations in
which the customer is present during the creation of the service.

Table 1-1 Comparing Manufacturing and Service Operations

Manufacturers Services
Tangible product. Intangible product.
Product can be inventoried. Product cannot be
inventoried.
Low customer contact. High customer contact.
Longer response time. Short response time.
Capital intensive. Labor intensive.

Q4 b). Define production and what are the different types of production?
Production system, any of the methods used in industry to create goods and services from various
resources. “Production is the organized activity of transforming resources into finished products in the
form of goods and services; the objective of production is to satisfy the demand for such transformed
resources”.
Three Types of Production:
For general purposes, it is necessary to classify production into three main groups:
1. Primary Production:
Primary production is carried out by ‘extractive’ industries like agriculture, forestry, fishing, mining and
oil extraction. These industries are engaged in such activities as extracting the gifts of Nature from
the earth’s surface, from beneath the earth’s surface and from the oceans.
2. Secondary Production:
This includes production in manufacturing industry, viz., turning out semi-finished and finished goods
from raw materials and intermediate goods— conversion of flour into bread or iron ore into finished
steel. They are generally described as manufacturing and construction industries, such as the
manufacture of cars, furnishing, clothing and chemicals, as also engineering and building.
3. Tertiary Production:
Industries in the tertiary sector produce all those services which enable the finished goods to be put in
the hands of consumers. In fact, these services are supplied to the firms in all types of industry and
directly to consumers. Examples cover distributive traders, banking, insurance, transport and
communications. Government services, such as law, administration, education, health and defense,
are also included.
Q 5 a.) Why it is necessary to study operation management for an industrial engineer?
Operations management is an area of management concerned with designing and controlling the
process of production and redesigning business operations in the production of goods or services. It
involves the responsibility of ensuring that business operations are efficient in terms of using as few
resources as needed and effective in terms of meeting customer requirements. It is concerned with
managing an entire production system which is the process that converts inputs (in the forms of raw
materials, labor, and energy) into outputs (in the form of goods and/or services), as an asset or
delivers a product or services. Operations produce products, manage quality and creates service.
Operation management covers sectors like banking systems, hospitals, companies, working with
suppliers, customers, and using technology. Operations is one of the major functions in an
organization along with supply chains, marketing, finance and human resources. The operations
function requires management of both the strategic and day-to-day production of goods and services.
In managing manufacturing or service operations several types of decisions are made including
operations strategy, product design, process design, quality management, capacity, facilities
planning, production planning and inventory control. Each of these requires an ability to analyze the
current situation and find better solutions to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of manufacturing
or service operations.
Q5b). What are the element of JIT system?
It originally referred to the production of goods to meet customer demand exactly, in time, quality and quantity,
whether the `customer' is the final purchaser of the product or another process further along the production line.
 
It has now come to mean producing with minimum waste. "Waste" is taken in its most general sense and includes
time and resources as well as materials. Elements of JIT include:

 Continuous improvement.
o Attacking fundamental problems - anything that does not add value to the product.
o Devising systems to identify problems.
o Striving for simplicity - simpler systems may be easier to understand, easier to manage and less likely
to go wrong.
o A product oriented layout - produces less time spent moving of materials and parts.
o Quality control at source - each worker is responsible for the quality of their own output.
o Poka-yoke - `foolproof' tools, methods, jigs etc. prevent mistakes
o Preventative maintenance, Total productive maintenance - ensuring machinery and equipment
functions perfectly when it is required, and continually improving it.
 Eliminating waste. There are seven types of waste:
o Waste from overproduction.
o Waste of waiting time.
o Transportation waste.
 o Processing waste.
o Inventory waste.
o Waste of motion.
o Waste from product defects.
 Good housekeeping - workplace cleanliness and organization.
 Set-up time reduction - increases flexibility and allows smaller batches. Ideal batch size is 1item. Multi-
process handling - a multi-skilled workforce has greater productivity, flexibility and job satisfaction.
 Levelled / mixed production - to smooth the flow of products through the factory.
 Kanban’s - simple tools to `pull' products and components through the process.
 Jidoka (Automation) - providing machines with the autonomous capability to use judgement, so workers can
do more useful things than standing watching them work.
 Andon (trouble lights) - to signal problems to initiate corrective action.

Q6 b) what do you understand by flexible manufacturing system? What are their applications
& Limitations?
A flexible manufacturing system (FMS) is a manufacturing system in which there is some amount of
flexibility that allows the system to react in case of changes, whether predicted or unpredicted. This
flexibility is generally considered to fall into two categories,
1. Routing flexibility
2. Machine flexibility
The first category, routing flexibility, covers the system's ability to be changed to produce new product
types, and ability to change the order of operations executed on a part.
The second category is called machine flexibility, which consists of the ability to use multiple
machines to perform the same operation on a part, as well as the system's ability to absorb large-
scale changes, such as in volume, capacity, or capability.
Most FMS consist of three main systems. The work machines which are often automated CNC
machines are connected by a material handling system to optimize parts flow and the central control
computer which controls material movements and machine flow.
Applications
 Metal cutting Machines
 Metal forming
 Assembly
 Joint Welding spot welding
 Surface treatment
 Inspection
 Testing
Limitations
 FMS is a complex system.
 Requires highly skilled technicians.
 Needs high level of planning.
 Demands high initial investment.
Q7a). Define the MIS? Explain the typical role MIS in business organization?
Management information system (MIS) refers to the processing of information through computers and
other intelligent devices to manage and support managerial decisions within an organization. The
concept may include systems termed transaction processing system, decision support system, expert
system, or executive information system. The term is often used in the academic study of businesses
and has connections with other areas, such as information systems, information technology, and
informatics, e-commerce and computer science; as a result, the term is used interchangeably with
some of these fresh cut areas.
The MIS plays exactly the same role in the organization. The system ensures that an appropriate
data is collected from the various sources, processed, and sent further to all the needy destinations.
The system is expected to fulfill information needs of an individual, a group of individuals, the
management functionaries; the managers and the top management.
Q7b) what do you understand by performance evaluation?
A. Formal evaluations of employee work behavior helps the employer and employee build on the
strengths of
The employee and identify those areas the employee needs improvement to be more effective and
efficient
in his/her job.
B. Performance evaluations enable the creation of reasonable performance standards so that both
supervisor
and employee are aware of work that is considered "acceptable performance." Because of the active
Involvement of both the supervisor and the employee in performance evaluations, an important
channel of
Two-way communication is opened. Communication can result in increased cooperation and
Understanding between supervisors and employees, which in turn can enhance work performance
and
Work environment thus providing better customer service to our community and each other.
C. Used properly, the Performance Evaluation will:
1. Inform - It allows the supervisor and employee to communicate openly about performance. This
Should happen throughout the year and not only at this time. Issues discussed now should not be
Unexpected to the employee. It also provides supervisors the opportunity to hear employees’
Views of the work situation.
2. Set Goals - The supervisor and employee mutually establish goals for progress. Goals should be
Realistic, measurable, and obtainable within six months to one year.
3. Develop - The supervisor and employee identify actions that can be taken to enhance
Development and performance of the employee.
4. Evaluate - The supervisor and employee evaluate results based on previously established goals
And performance standards, which provides a basis and documentation for transfer, promotion,
Reassignment, or disciplinary action.
5. Provide - Standards for decisions on merit advances