Collection of example questions Solutions

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Question 1 – STRENGHTS OF A JOBSHOP Illustrate how flexibility is a primary strength of job shops; while doing this, clearly clarify the different flexibility dimensions discussed during the course and their relationships. Flexibility is the capability of the system to change itself in order to meet some changes in the context, caused by internal or external causes. The job shop configuration has a strong flexibility. Because of its configuration machines are grouped on the basis of their technological characteristics and therefore there are no fixed flows or routings. The fact that flows and routings can be switched easily both inside the department and between departments allows the company to easily change flows in the event of a new product introduction or a change in the aggregate volume. This highlights the VOLUME and PRODUCT flexibility achievable form the job shop. The fact that workers are skilled on a particular technology also ensures the high quality of the products made. On the other hand the fact that production flows can be changed and that we have different departments working on different technological processes allows us to work on a number of different products, guaranteeing therefore a MIX flexibility. Finally we can see that adding a new machine in a particular department is not difficult and only presents a physical constraint, therefore EXPANSION flexibility is also a characteristic of the job shop. Question 2 – PRODUCT FAMILY IDENTIFICATION Considering the Group Technology, focus on the identification of product families based on the classification of products (in the remainder, shortly referred to as PFI). In this regard, you are required to present the informal methods and the part coding analysis methods by means of: i) an illustration of…