operations and supply chain managment

continuous process - like assembly line but the flow is continuous such as liquids break even analysis - to determine the point in units ( break-even point) produced where a company will start making profit on the process total revenue and total cost are equal to choose a

production processes are used to make all the tangible goods customer order decoupling point: where inventory is positioned to allow entities in the supply chain to operate independently types of production firms make to order assemble to order engineer to order

capacity management capacity: the amount of output that a system is capable of achieving over a specific period of time e.g. factory, restaurant, hospital  capacity management ( capacity planning): to determine the capacity level of the resources measurement capacity utilization rate capacity utilization rate reveals how close a firm is to best operating level capacity utilization rate = capacity/best ioerating level best operating level: capacity for which the process was designed

a process is a transformation of inputs into outputs process flow charting it is an ideal methodology by which begin analyzing a process use of a diagram to present the major elements of a process the basic elements can include task or operations flows of materials or customers decision points, and  storage areas or queues  flowchart symbols rectangle = task upside down triangle = storage area diamond = decision arrows flows of material or customers terminology buffer: a storage area between stages where the output of a storage is placed prior to being used in a downstream stage blocking: occurs when the activities in a stage must stop because there is no place to deposit the item starving: occurs when the activities in a stage must stop because there is no work

changing capacity external sources of capacity outsourcing sharing capacity internal capacity changing temporary permanent consideration when changing capacity maintaining system balance similar capacities at each operation deal with bottlenecks frequency of capacity additions learning curve a line displaying the relationship between unit production time and the cumulative number of units produced individual learning organizational learning can be used to estimate time and cost more accurate

concept development a description of the form, function and features of a product identify the needs of target market generate alternative concepts evaluate concepts system level design product architecture decomposition into subsystems assembly scheme output geometric layout of the product production ramp-up intend production system is used train workers resolve any remaning problems

eco design: incorporation of environmental considerations in the design and development of products or services the whole life cycle is considered