What are the different types of inventories maintained by a typical business entity?
· What is the significance of inventory regarding customer service levels?
· What are some of your experiences with inventories from the customer service perspective?
· How would you improve those inventories

· A number of quality-management philosophies hold that prevention costs are the most critical quality-related costs. What is the logic behind this premise?
· Would you apply this logic as an operations manager? Explain why or why not

· What is quality management?
· Why is it important for every manager to understand?
· How might a quality-management program affect productivity?

· What are the major elements of project management?
· Describe the role of the project manager in conjunction with project control.
· What are the requisite skills that the project manager must possess?

· How might materials requirement planning (MRP) be applied to the surgery suite of a hospital, scheduling university classes, a chain of restaurants, and hotel renovations?

· What are the strategic goals of supply chain management and how does procurement, transportation, and distribution affect these goals?

· Where have you seen the operational components of planning, sourcing, making, and delivering applied inappropriately?
· How might the operations manager have improved the situation?

  Parker Earth Moving Company Consulting Business Process Recommendations

What are three of the primary obstacles encountered by the management team in adopting and installing a new information technology system?

We have seen many changes and innovations in the application of technology to operations management in recent years. Using information from your readings, identify the three most significant advancements in technology. Explain your choice of significant advancements.

Financial justification of a new information technology system is difficult at best because many of the advantages are intangible. Routine capital budgeting often overlooks six areas of cost savings or revenue-enhancement factors that are realized with new technology. What are four of these factors? Why are these factors important?