Part Four: Improving Operations

1. The first step of reviewing performance is to:

Set standards that have to be met Select which aspects to measure and determine why they should be measured Determine how to improve current performance levels

2. An example of an analysis that would help to maintain or reduce cost is:

Review of delivery performance Analysis of customer lead times Price of the service or product

3. Benchmarking, the practice of comparing business practices and performances between companies:

Is only applicable to the automotive industry Has become widely adopted across all sectors Is not yet used in service businesses

4. Incremental improvements tend to:

Be based around improvements suggested and implemented by employees Involve specialist support functions making investments in operations Involves major changes to existing practices

5. Which of the following is not a method for identifying the causes of problems in process sequences:

Relationship charts Cause and effect diagrams Why-why reviews

6. When generating improvement ideas, it is important to:

Ignore wild ideas Evaluate ideas as they are generated Give participants the task of combining and improving on the ideas of others

7. The hallmark of successful improvement is that:

It ends once the ideas have been implemented It focuses on stepped improvement activities It is continuous in its nature

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