SCM供应链综合管理练习(英文版).docx

Supply Chain Management Exercise
True or False
1. A supply chain includes only the organizations directly involved in supplying components needed for manufacturing.
Answer: False
Difficulty: Moderate

2. A supply chain consists of all parties involved, directly or indirectly, in fulfilling a customer request.
Answer: True
Difficulty: Moderate

3. A supply chain could be more accurately described as a supply network or supply web.
Answer: True
Difficulty: Moderate

4. The objective of every supply chain is to maximize the overall value generated.
Answer: True
Difficulty: Easy

5. The objective of every supply chain is to maximize the value generated for the manufacturing component of the supply chain.
Answer: False
Difficulty: Moderate

6. All supply chain activities within a firm belong to one of three macro processes – CRM, ISCM and SRM.
Answer: True
Difficulty: Easy

7. There is a close connection between the design and management of supply chain flows and the success of a supply chain.
Answer: True
Difficulty: Easy

8. A company’s competitive strategy defines the set of customer needs that it seeks to satisfy through its products and services.
Answer: True
Difficulty: Easy

9. The value chain emphasizes the close relationship between all the functional strategies within a company.
Answer: True
Difficulty: Moderate

10. A company’s product development strategy defines the set of customer needs that it seeks to satisfy through its products and services.
Answer: False
Difficulty: Moderate

11. A company’s product development strategy specifies the portfolio of new products that it will try to develop.
Answer: True
Difficulty: Easy

12. A company’s supply chain strategy specifies how the market will be segmented and how the product will be positioned, priced, and promoted.
Answer: False
Difficulty: Easy

13. A company’s supply chain strategy determines the nature of procurement and transportation of materials as well as the manufacture and distribution of the product.
Answer: True
Difficulty: Easy

14. The degree of supply chain responsiveness should be consistent with the implied uncertainty.
Answer: True
Difficulty: Easy

15. The degree of supply chain responsiveness does not need to be consistent with the implied uncertainty.
Answer: False
Difficulty: Moderate

16. The two major types of facilities are distribution sites and storage sites.
Answer: False
Difficulty: Moderate

17. Inventory is an important supply chain driver because changing inventory policies can dramatically alter the supply chain’s efficiency and responsiveness.
Answer: True
Difficulty: Moderate

18. Information is potentially the biggest driver of performance in the supply chain as it directly affects each of the other drivers.
Answer: True
Difficulty: Easy

19. The high utilization facility will have no more difficulty responding to demand fluctuations than one with a lot of unused capacity.
Answer: False
Difficulty: Easy

20. Stock keeping unit (SKU) storage is the warehousing methodology that uses a traditional warehouse to store all of one type of product together.
Answer: True
Difficulty: Moderate

21. Warehouse unit storage is the warehousing methodology that uses a traditional warehouse to store all of one type of product together.
Answer: False
Difficulty: Moderate

22. Distribution occurs between every pair of stages in the supply chain.
Answer: True
Difficulty: Moderate

23. Distribution only occurs between manufacturing and consumers in the supply chain.
Answer: False
Difficulty: Moderate

24. Companies in the same industry often select very different distribution networks, because the choice of the distribution network can be used to achieve a variety of supply chain objectives ranging from low cost to high responsiveness.
Answer: True
Difficulty: Moderate

25. The main advantage of a distribution network with local storage is that it can lower the delivery cost and provide a faster response than other networks.
Answer: True
Difficulty: Moderate

26. When designing supply chain networks, companies must build appropriate flexibility to help counter fluctuations in exchange rates and demand across different countries.
Answer: True
Difficulty: Moderate

27. Inventory and facility costs increase as the number of facilities in a supply chain increase.
Answer: True
Difficulty: Moderate

28. Transportation costs increase as the number of facilities is increased.
Answer: False
Difficulty: Moderate

29. When faced with a network design decision, the goal of a manager is to design a network that minimizes the firm’s costs while satisfying customer needs in terms of demand and responsiveness.
Answer: False
Difficulty: Hard

30. The supply chain network is designed to maximize total profits, taking into account the expected margin and demand in each market, various logistics and facility costs, and the taxes and tariffs at each location.
Answer: True
Difficulty: Easy

31. Decisions made during the supply chain design phase regarding significant investments in the supply chain, such as the number and size of plants to build, the number of trucks to purchase or lease, and whether to build or lease warehouse space, cannot be altered in the short term.
Answer: True
Difficulty: Moderate

32. Decisions made during the supply chain design phase regarding significant investments in the supply chain, such as the number and size of plants to build, the number of trucks to purchase or lease, and whether to build or lease warehouse space, rarely remain in place for several years.
Answer: False
Difficulty: Moderate

33. Decisions made during the supply chain design phase regarding significant investments in the supply chain, such as the number and size of plants to build, the number of trucks to purchase or lease, and whether to build or lease warehouse space, define the boundaries within which the supply chain must compete.
Answer: True
Difficulty: Moderate

34. Long-term contracts for both warehousing and transportation requirements will be more effective if the demand and price of warehousing do not change in the future or if the price of warehousing goes up.
Answer: True
Difficulty: Easy

35. Long-term contracts for both warehousing and transportation requirements will be more effective if either demand or the price of warehousing drops in the future.
Answer: False
Difficulty: Moderate

36. The present value of future cash flows is found by using a discount factor.
Answer: True
Difficulty: Moderate

37. The rate of return k is also referred to as the present value of capital.
Answer: False
Difficulty: Easy

38. A negative NPV for an option indicates that the option will lose money for the supply chain.
Answer: True
Difficulty: Moderate

39. The decision with the lowest NPV will provide a supply chain with the highest financial return.
Answer: False
Difficulty: Moderate

40. In reality, demand and prices are highly uncertain and are likely to fluctuate during the life of any supply chain decision.
Answer: True
Difficulty: Moderate

41. The goal of aggregate planning is to satisfy demand in a way that minimizes profit.
Answer: False
Difficulty: Easy

42. Aggregate planning is a process by which a company determines levels of capacity, production, subcontracting, inventory, stockouts, and even pricing over a specified time horizon.

Answer: True
Difficulty: Moderate

43. Aggregate planning solves problems involving aggregate decisions rather than stock keeping unit (SKU) level decisions.
Answer: True
Difficulty: Easy

44. Forecasting errors are dealt with in aggregate plans using either safety backlog or safety capacity
Answer: False
Difficulty: Moderate

45. Safety inventory is defined as inventory held to satisfy demand that is higher than forecasted.
Answer: True
Difficulty: Easy

46. Safety capacity is defined as capacity used to satisfy demand that is lower than forecasted.
Answer: False
Difficulty Easy

47. Companies should work with downstream partners to produce forecasts and with upstream partners to determine constraints when doing aggregate planning.
Answer: True
Difficulty: Easy

48. The aggregate plan should be viewed primarily as an in-house tool that does not need to be communicated to supply chain partners.
Answer: False
Difficulty: Easy

49. Given that forecasts are always wrong to some degree, the aggregate plan needs to have some flexibility built into it if it is to be useful.
Answer: True
Difficulty: Moderate

50. With supply and demand management decisions being made independently, it is easier to coordinate the supply chain, thereby increasing profit.
Answer: False
Difficulty: Moderate

51. A firm can vary supply of product by controlling production capacity and inventory.
Answer: True
Difficulty: Easy

52. A firm that uses flexible work hours from the workforce to manage capacity to better meet demand is using a seasonal workforce.
Answer: False
Difficulty: Moderate

53. Offering a promotion during a peak period that has significant forward buying creates even more variable demand than before the promotion.
Answer: True
Difficulty: Easy

54. Average inventory decreases if a promotion is run during the peak period and increases if the promotion is run during the off-peak period.
Answer: False
Difficulty: Easy

55. Promoting during a peak demand month may decrease overall profitability if a significant fraction of the demand increase results from a forward buy.
Answer: True
Difficulty: Hard

56. As forward buying becomes a smaller fraction of the demand increase from a promotion, it is less profitable to promote during the peak period.
Answer: False
Difficulty: Hard

57. As the product margin declines, promoting during the peak demand period becomes less profitable.
Answer: True
Difficulty: Easy

58. Cycle inventory exists because producing or purchasing in large lots allows a stage of the supply chain to exploit economies of scale and increase cost.
Answer: False
Difficulty: Moderate

59. A lot or batch size is the quantity that a stage of the supply chain either produces or purchases at a given time.
Answer: True
Difficulty: Moderate

60. Cycle inventory is the physical inventory in the supply chain due to either production or purchases demanded by the customer.
Answer: True
Difficulty: Moderate

61. The inventory profile is a plot depicting the level of inventory over time.
Answer: True
Difficulty: Easy

62. A discount is volume-based if the pricing schedule offers discounts based on the quantity ordered in a single lot.
Answer: False
Difficulty: Hard

63. A discount is volume-based if the discount is based on the total quantity purchased over a given period, regardless of the number of lots purchased over that period.
Answer: True
Difficulty: Easy

64. Pricing schedules with all unit quantity discounts encourage retailers to increase the size of their lots, which reduces the average inventory and flow time in a supply chain.
Answer: False
Difficulty: Moderate

65. Safety inventory is inventory carried for the purpose of satisfying demand that exceeds the amount forecasted for a given period.
Answer: True
Difficulty: Moderate

66. Safety inventory is carried because demand forecasts are accurate and a product shortage may result if the forecast demand exceeds the actual demand.
Answer: False
Difficulty: Moderate

67. Raising the level of safety inventory increases product availability and thus the margin captured from customer purchases.
Answer: True
Difficulty: Moderate

68. Raising the level of safety inventory increases inventory holding costs.
Answer: True
Difficulty: Easy

69. Carrying excessive inventory can help counter demand volatility when new products come on the market.
Answer: False
Difficulty: Moderate

70. The appropriate level of safety inventory is determined by the uncertainty of both demand and supply and the desired level of cycle inventory.
Answer: False
Difficulty: Moderate

71. As the uncertainty of supply or demand grows, the required level of safety inventories increases.
Answer: True
Difficulty: Moderate

72. As the desired level of product availability increases, the required level of safety inventory decreases.
Answer: False
Difficulty: Easy

73. Lead time is the gap between when an order is placed and when it is received.
Answer: True
Difficulty: Easy

74. Periodic review policies require more safety inventory than continuous review policies for the same level of product availability.
Answer: True
Difficulty: Easy

75. When using a continuous review policy, a manager has to account for the uncertainty of demand during the lead time and the review interval.
Answer: False
Difficulty: Easy
Multiply Choice
1. Which of the following is not a stage within a typical supply chain?
a. Customers
b. Retailers
c. Wholesalers/Distributors
d. Manufacturers
e. All of the above are stages within a typical supply chain.
Answer: e
Difficulty: Easy

2. Supply chain profitability is
a. not correlated to the value generated by the various stages of the supply chain.
b. the total profit to be shared across all supply chain stages.
c. the difference between the revenue generated from the customer and the overall cost across the supply chain.
d. the total revenue generated by the distributor stage of the supply chain.
e. b and c only
Answer: e
Difficulty: Difficult

3. Successful supply chain management requires which of the following decision phases?
a. supply chain strategy/design
b. supply chain planning
c. supply chain operation
d. all of the above
e. a and b only
Answer: d
Difficulty: Moderate

4. The objective of customer order entry is to
a. get the correct orders to customers by the promised due date at the lowest possible cost.
b. maintain a record of product receipt and complete payment.
c. maximize the conversion of customer arrivals to customer orders.
d. ensure that orders are quickly and accurately entered and communicated to other affected supply chain processes.
e. none of the above
Answer: d
Difficulty: Easy

5. The push/pull view of the supply chain is useful when considering strategic decisions relating to supply chain design, because
a. it categorizes processes based on whether they are initiated in response to or in anticipation of customer orders.
b. it specifies the roles and responsibilities of each member of the supply chain.
c. it clearly defines the processes involved and the owners of each process.
d. it focuses on processes that are external to the firm.
e. it focuses on processes that are internal to the firm.
Answer: a
Difficulty: Hard

6. Which of the following statements about pull processes is accurate?
a. May also be referred to as speculati