In: Operations Management
1. What are the tradeoffs among on-site expansion, new location, and relocation?
2. Explain what the purpose of assembly line balancing is and briefly describe how it is done and supports the needs of product layout.
What are the trade-offs among on-site expansion, new location, and relocation?
Answer: The advantages of building a new location or moving are that the firm does not have to rely on production from a single plant, can hire new labor, can modernize with new technology, and can possibly reduce transportation costs. On-site expansion has the advantage of keeping management together, reducing construction time and costs, and avoiding the split-up of operations
Explain what the purpose of assembly line balancing is. Describe briefly how it is done. Explain how assembly line balancing supports the needs of product layout.
Answer: Assembly line balancing attempts to put equal amounts of work into each of the workstations that assemble a product. The technique begins with a task list and precedence chart; to this is added demand data, from which cycle time can be computed. This is the speed at which the line must move. Then the theoretical number of stations is calculated. Each required task is then assigned to one workstation. This approach holds down the amount of idle time in a product layout and leads to higher utilization of the plant, and to a higher volume of output
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