Operations management

Which of the following is an advantage of job production?

Which of the following pairs of legal structures both benefit from limited liability?

Which of the following is an economic influence on businesses?

Which of the following is a method of digital communication?

Which of the following is the formula for average unit costs?

Which of the following describes the lean production technique of just-in-time (JIT)?

Identify two factors a business may consider when choosing a supplier.

Explain one reason why a person might want to become an entrepreneur.

Explain one reason why the training of current employees may be needed.

Explain one disadvantage to a business of decentralisation.

Explain what is meant by opportunity cost for a business.

State and describe two documents which may be produced during the recruitment and selection process of employees.

Item C: Bootmills Ltd

State one benefit to a business of providing a high level of customer service.

Explain one benefit to Bootmills Ltd of using total quality management (TQM).

You should use information in Item C in your answer.

Bootmills Ltd recently started using local suppliers of raw materials who have agreed to meet its needs.

Analyse one factor which would have been considered when making the decision to change suppliers.

Item D: Bootmills Ltd

Explain how one financial method of motivation is being used at Bootmills Ltd to motivate employees. You should use the information in Item D in your answer.

Calculate the percentage (%) change in the value of the pound against the value of the euro from December to March.

Use the information in Table 1 in your calculation.

Show your workings.

In Europe, Bootmills Ltd sells boots to retailers for an average of £95. The business plans to maintain this selling price.

Analyse one impact of the falling value of the pound on the profits of Bootmills Ltd.

Item E: Bootmills Ltd

In China, retailers prefer ‘face-to-face’ meetings with the manufacturer. Chinese retailers are prepared to pay a premium price for British brands. The size of the Chinese boot market is $79 billion for sales of all brands.

Retailers in the USA have indicated that they are more likely to buy the product if the price can be reduced to £70. The size of the USA boot market is $99 billion for sales of all brands.

Bootmills Ltd’s directors are considering two options.

Introducing flow production. Boots can be made quickly using a fully automated process. The skilled workforce will be offered jobs elsewhere in the business. There will be an estimated 300 redundancies. Employees have indicated they will strike if this many jobs are lost.

The savings on salaries over 2 years will cover the cost of the new machinery and redundancies. After this, the cost saving can be passed on to customers. The variable costs of production will fall to £20 per pair of boots.

Changing the role of the workforce. Bootmills Ltd currently has 50 employees who deal with sales over the telephone and email. Thirty of these employees could change to being based abroad in countries such as China and the USA. These employees will meet with the local retailers to:

show new designs

take orders

get feedback on the needs and wants of customers in overseas markets.

These employees will be offered a £10 000 pay rise. The directors are confident many of the existing sales team will be interested in working abroad. This should reduce redundancies.

Bootmills Ltd wishes to make its boots more competitive abroad. The directors are considering two options.

1. Introducing flow production.

2. Changing the role of the workforce.

Analyse the effect of each of these two options on Bootmills Ltd.

Evaluate which of these two options will have the bigger impact on Bootmills Ltd competing internationally.

Which of the following is true for a public limited company?

Which of the following costs is an example of a variable cost?

Which of the following statements describes job production?

If an employee changes from full-time employment to job sharing, which of the following is true?

Which of the following is likely to be an effect of delayering in an organisation?

Which statement is most likely to be correct when interest rates rise?

Identify two stakeholders of a business.

Explain one cost of maintaining quality during the production of a product.

Explain one disadvantage to a business of poor customer service.

Describe one characteristic of an entrepreneur.

Explain what is meant by ‘induction training’.

State and explain two financial methods of rewarding employees.

Item C: Fone ltd

Using Item C, explain one advantage to Fone ltd of being a private limited company when expanding the business.

The business has decided to expand by introducing car phone holders to its product range.

Using Item C, explain the opportunity cost of this decision.

There have been 500 applications received for the team leader’s job and the business now needs to shortlist only the most suitable applicants.

Using Item C, analyse one way the person specification can be used to decide which applicants to invite for an interview.

Item D: Fone ltd

Identify one reason for diseconomies of scale occurring.

Using the information in Table 2, calculate the average number of phone cases per month produced from April to June.

Demand for the new ultra-thin phone cases is increasing.

Analyse one advantage to Fone ltd of introducing its new flow production process.

Item E: Fone ltd

Introduce a new lean production technique

Each department can have a group of up to three employees making suggestions on how to improve the process to lead to higher productivity.

It will be optional to join these groups.

Groups can be set up immediately and will have responsibility for reviewing roles and tasks within the department and suggesting changes.

There will be a bonus of £5000 for each department (to be shared within the department) if they improve productivity in the next three months.

Change the organisational structure and recruit internally for new assistant managers within each department

Internal recruitment for assistant managers can be completed within a month.

This will result in a pay rise of £5000 for successful applicants.

Assistant managers will have the authority to make some decisions and will oversee training.

Figure 1 Current organisational structure of Fone ltd

Table 3 Information about employees’ productivity in each department at Fone ltd

Anita wants to increase the productivity of all employees quickly and plans to use two options to achieve this.

1. Introduce a new lean production technique to each department.

2. Change the organisational structure and recruit internally for new assistant managers within each department.

Analyse the effect of each of these two options on all employees at Fone ltd.

Recommend which option Fone ltd should introduce first to improve productivity of all its employees in the short term.

Which of the following characteristics of an entrepreneur is the ability to develop new ideas/products?

Which of the following describes the chain of command?

Which of the following is a definition of a part time contract of employment?

Which of the following is the formula for total costs?

Which of the following is the next stage in the selection process after the closing date for job applications?

Enterprise is one of the four factors of production. Which of the following is a definition of enterprise?

State two financial methods of motivation.

Explain one method a business may use to expand.

Explain one benefit of job production to a business.

Explain one benefit to shareholders of limited liability.

Identify two stages of the process of procurement.

State and explain two employment laws.