Adam Smith Business School
Subject of Management
Degree of MA (SocSci)
Degree Exam
Operations Management, MGT2012
Mon, 09 December 2024, 13:30 - Tue, 10 December 2024, 13:30
Exam duration: 2 hours
How to complete this exam:
Students should answer ONE question from Section A and ONE question from
Section B.
Students should answer TWO questions.
Instructions to students:
Read the exam student guidance on Moodle.
For this exam, the required number of questions is TWO.
1. Advice on the contents of the exam and technical support
If you have questions about the contents of this paper, or you require
technical assistance, please contact our virtual invigilation team at the
University of Glasgow Helpdesk https://www.gla.ac.uk/help or on +44 (0)141
330 4800.
Questions relating to the contents of the paper should be raised within the first
3 hours of the assessment period, when an academic member of staff will be
available to answer these. Technical support will be available from 8am –
11pm each day. To ensure timely responses, and that all students receive
the same information, you should not contact academic staff directly but
instead use the Helpdesk.
2. You are about to sit an online assessment
You have a 24-hour period in which to take and complete this exam. 24 hours
is NOT the length of the exam.
It should take you no longer than 2 hours to complete this exam unless you
are entitled to time adjustments (see Section 3. below), or you experience
unavoidable disruption; and you should pay specific attention to guidance
provided on the exam paper regarding the total word count.
You should be able to complete the exam in the time indicated and are
unlikely to derive major benefits from taking longer. Note that spending longer
often leads to muddled answers which do not receive high grades. It is better
to answer in a clear and concise fashion within the time limit given.
3. Time adjustments for students with disabilities
If you have in the past been granted adjustments to your exam time, e.g.
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through the University’s Disability Service or at School or College, allowance
is made for these since you have a 24-hour period in which to complete this
exam.
4. Enlarging the text
If you need to enlarge the text of a PDF document: open Adobe Acrobat; click
on the VIEW tab; click on ZOOM and then ZOOM TO; select the desired
magnification level.
5. Planning your time
Only answer the number of questions specified. Any additional answers may
not be marked.
When planning your time, and where required, you should allocate time to
download the exam paper and to upload your answers to Moodle at the end of
the exam. For students instructed to do so, you should allow time to submit
your exam script on Turnitin within the exam period. Please report any
technical difficulties experienced as soon as possible via
https://www.gla.ac.uk/help.
6. Submitting your answers
Acceptable file types for submitting typed documents are: DOC/DOCX; RTF;
PDF; XLS/XLSX.
Acceptable file types for submitting high resolution images are: JPG; PNG;
TIF; PDF.
• Please check that you have uploaded the CORRECT FILE, that it is
readable and is the version that you want to be marked; if you use a
word-processing package other than Word, you are advised to convert
and upload as a pdf.
• Lastly please ensure you upload files to the correct course Moodle
assignment.
• Submit (at least) one file per question. You may submit up to 20
files. Sub-questions may be submitted in one file according to
question.
• Use the following naming convention:
StudentID_CourseCode_QuestionNumber (e.g. 1234567_ACCFIN1001
_1). DO NOT include your name.
This exam has been configured to allow submission of answers for two
hours beyond the scheduled exam time. Submissions made during this two-
hour period will be treated as ‘late’ and will be graded ‘H’. Any submissions
made beyond this time will be treated as non-submissions.
7. Declaration of Academic Integrity
The following information is very important – your degree may be at risk if you
do not adhere to these instructions:
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• You must not communicate with any other person about these
examination questions during the period in which you can submit your
answers
• You must follow any instructions on your examination paper regarding use
of resources such as internet sources, books, notes or any other material
that would not normally be allowed in examinations on campus.
• The work you submit must be entirely your own effort and must
demonstrate your understanding rather than reproduce text from notes,
slides, books, or online sources (which is plagiarism). You must not
consult 'homework help' sites.
• You must not submit answers you have discussed with or copied from
others, and you must not copy from notes you have prepared with or
shared with others. If your answers are similar to those of any other
candidate(s) you will both/all be suspected of collusion and referred to
Student Conduct
• This declaration incorporates the University’s Declaration of Originality
which applies to all academic work (see below).
8. Declaring that the work is your own
Before viewing the exam paper, you must check the box in the Exam Section
of the Moodle page to agree to both this declaration and the University’s
Declaration of Originality. You will be unable to access the exam paper until
you do so.
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Students should answer ONE question from Section A and ONE question from
Section B.
Section A
Students should answer ONE question from this section.
1. Typically, there are four types of manufacturing process, which are project/fixed position,
job shop/process layout, batch/cellular/group technology, and mass/continuous. Taking
a soft toy company as an example, discuss which manufacturing process type and
layout will be suitable to produce the soft toys the company makes. In general, each soft
toy model has a total annual order around 100,000 units.
In your answer, you need to justify why the process type/layout is appropriate for this
soft toy business and its characteristics, the pros and cons of the process type and how
line balancing could be used to streamline the operations and machine time to match
the production rate to the take time. You also need to demonstrate the understanding of
the soft toy industry in terms of its supply chains and demand patterns. (50%)
“Guideline: answer in a maximum of 1000 words; figures are not included in wordcount.”
2. Taking portable mobile devices (in particular, mobile phones) as an example, provide
an analysis of this market in terms of the order winners and order qualifiers.
Your analysis shall include a discussion on the order winners and qualifiers of the past
and the future. Your answer should also include a discussion how you would form an
operations strategy to ensure its success in the competitive market. (50%)
“Guideline: answer in a maximum of 1000 words; figures are not included in wordcount.”
Section B
Students should answer ONE question from this section.
3. During the recent COVID-19 pandemic, there was a huge challenge to the capacity
management of public healthcare services across the globe. Please select a country
(for example, the UK, Singapore, etc.) and describe two strategies employed by the
country for managing the supply of healthcare services, and two other strategies
employed for managing the demand. Give your opinion about how effective the
strategies were and what could have been done better by the country for balancing the
supply with the demand from a capacity management viewpoint. Please make sure
your discussion focuses on the chosen country. (50%)
“Guideline: answer in a maximum of 1000 words; figures are not included in wordcount.”
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4. Please name a specific manufactured product that’s a good fit to an assemble-to-order
(ATO) strategy, and another suitable product for a make-to-stock (MTS) strategy, and
briefly justify the fit between your named products and their respective order fulfilment
strategies. Draw a figure to illustrate each product’s order fulfilment strategy. Discuss
common problems in managing various inventories across their supply chains and how
supply chain bullwhip effect could amplify such problems. Make recommendations
about how to reduce bullwhip effect in their supply chain inventory management.
State any reasonable assumptions that you may make as part of your analysis.
(50%)
“Guideline: answer in a maximum of 1000 words; figures are not included in wordcount.”
(TOTAL 100%)
Before you upload your exam answers:
Please ensure that you have added the course code, your student ID and
the question number that you have attempted in the file names of your
answers.
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