Problem 1: Uber Case Study

Private ride options such as Uber and Lyft have failed on promises to cut down on personal driving and car ownership, both of which are trending up. Ride-sharing options such as UberPool and Lyft Line have lured a different market that directly competes with subway and bus systems while failing to achieve significantly better efficiency than their solo alternatives this results in more driving overall.

A Close Look at the nine urban areas over six years, ride-sharing has created a total of 5.7 billion extra vehicle miles. Shared rides add to traffic because most users switch from non-auto modes. Also, there is additional mileage between trips as drivers wait for the next dispatch and then drive to a pickup location. Finally, even in a shared ride, some of the trips involve just one passenger for example between the first and second pickup.

Problem 2: Multiple choices (2 points each)

Q1. D

Q2. A & D

Q3. B

Q4. C

Q5. A & B

Q6. C

Q7. C

Q8. B

Q9. B

Q10. B

Q11. A

Q12. A

Q13. A

Q14. A

Q15. B

Q16. B

Q17. A

Q18. A

Q19. B

Q20. A

Q21. B

Q22. A

Problem 3: Buffer Strategy

a.

Boeing still earns significant profits, despite the holdup within the sales and production rates. Boeing’s implementation of the moving assembly is not in sync with the strategic profit initiatives, but found that moving the assembly line did help in reducing assembly time and also cut costs by incorporating Lean+ principles into the production process.

Boeing’s system is designed to highlight any hidden problems so that they will be able to fix them rather than live with them. The new production process forces the company to look at all waste and get rid of it.

Therefore, this is a cost-cutting strategy that Boeing is following. Moreover, any company with basic common sense would know that, if the costs were cut, profits would considerably increase.

b.

For the Boeing to put its focus on the profit, it would reduce the lead-time that is required to deliver the plane to its customers. The number of planes they deliver a year depending on the demand that Boeing has. But, by just reducing the lead time of delivering, Boeing can yield more profits.

Problem #3:  Quality Tools

Staff’s commitment: The staff members at Adventureland theme park needs to arrive early at work and be wholly committed to ensuring that customers get to ride the train at the scheduled time.

Routine Checks and Quality assurance: Gear mechanism and turnstile, should be routinely checked and repaired, to ensure that theme park is in perfect shape.

Customer satisfaction: The customer feedback and satisfaction score, must be continuously collected and assessed to make sure that quality improvement is making headway in the right direction.

Prevention vs. detection: Identify the issue of broken gears and take measures to prevent it. Precautionary steps must be in place vs. correctional steps.

Problem #4:  (Causal Forecasting)

1. Solution

Y=100+50x

For 1,000;

1000/50= 20

Y=100+20= 120 hours

For 10,000;

10000/50= 200

Y=100+200= 300hours

 

1. 50 because it is the gradient.

Problem #5:  (Variability and Strategy)

Increasing variability will force the organization to have the right technology in place, and this will assist in increasing performance and subsequently improve operations. In this technological era, it is wise to incorporate the right technology into ones day to day business operations. It enhances the productivity and efficiency of the business.

An example would be the implementation of small inventory control systems. It greatly assists in reducing inventory levels, improve profitability and speed up customer response time. The online and management systems integrate inventory information with the organization’s purchasing, accounting, and e-business systems so you can easily trade order status and movement of inventory within your business.

Results from increased variability can assist an organization in reviewing its business set up. It will prompt the business owner to have a look at the processes from the potential investor point of view. Doing this should not deter the business owner to forget the overall business objectives that are working towards ensuring the procedures meet the goals of the business and be of higher value to the company. For example, a layout or map capturing all the processes involved can develop to assist in visualizing and having a clear understanding of the links between various elements of the business production.

Thirdly, variability can force the organization to implement a continuous improvement approach. It can be achieved by benchmarking the competitors in the industry that the business is in. Also, consultations can be handy to assess the strengths and weaknesses to give an objective point of view of the company.

An organization may be forced to outsource various services due to increased variability this is not a far-fetched business strategy as it is cost effective in terms of allowing the focus on the internal efforts in the business give their best and make more profits.

Lastly, the organization can form strategic alliances that allow the business to grow without incurring expansion costs.

Problem 6: (Buffer Strategy)

The passengers seem agitated about what’s happening as they are not attended. There are long queues of these passengers who are hoping that the situation will be salvaged and they will be able to travel eventually. The best implementation will be to work on the ratio of the flier screening personnel to the passengers, the rate to be maintained should make the staff be able to attend to all the passengers and enable them to travel on time.

For this strategy to work,  the queues have to be reduced and made smaller by allowing a small number of people access the flier screening at a time,  this will make the personnel work faster, and the passengers will slowly reduce, and they’ll be able to catch their flights.

 

Problem 7:  Buffer Strategy

After a late surge in e-commerce orders and bad weather in 2013 which resulted in undelivered packages on Christmas Eve. The operations strategy that was used by UPS in the article to avoid the past incident was pulling delivery dates forward on days when it had excess capacity in its network and informing retailers of hard cutoff dates for packages to make it by Christmas using UPScheaper ground delivery service. It resulted in on-time delivery rate.

The strategy used revolved around their customers’ needs concerning delivery time and speed, good demand forecasting, capacity planning, and quantity control.

Problem #8:  (Buffer Strategy)

In this scenario what need to be buffered is time; therefore, Macy will be in a position to win due to the same day delivery which is an example of a suitable buffer strategy and proper capacity planning. Capacity can be viewed from various dimensions such as quantity to be handled, quality of the product packages, the location of productive resources and delivery time and speed. The appropriate dimension of capacity, in this case, is delivery time or speed this will meet Macy’s current and future demand.

 

 

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