A Science of Manufacturing - Strategic and Operational Objectives

4 important questions on A Science of Manufacturing - Strategic and Operational Objectives

Can you think of a reason how a higher utilization can actually lead to higher assets in figure 6.3? (So disregard the entire 'high profit' branch in the picture.)

When machine utilization is very high and it breaks down, there is either no, or only a very small capacity buffer. This means inventory can grow (as WIP), and thus assets can grow too.

Consider ''low-price'' in figure 6.3. What is a common trade-off here?

A lower price results in higher sales, but also in less profit per sale and vice versa. In practice it is therefor very hard to determine an optimal prices.
(Thus a too low price can result in profits dwindling. In my opinion it would've been better to use 'low cost price' as text.)

''All manufacturing firms make a value proposition to their customers that is some mix of: text-decorationprice,text-decoration time,text-decoration quality andtext-decoration variety." Using these terms, how is Aldi able to compete with Albert Heijn?

Aldi offers less text-decorationvariety in their products. Aldi's stores are less luxurious and there is less customer service (less employees per supermarket), so Aldi's text-decorationquality would be less good (although one could argue the quality of their products is equal to that of AH). The text-decorationtime it takes to shop at Aldi and AH are comparable. However, Aldi makes up for their lower variety & quality by charging lower text-decorationprices for their products.

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Consider figure 6.4. If you would replace "speed" by "quality" and you would consider the car market, where would you place Kia, Volkswagen and Rolls Royce on the efficient frontier?
Where would Rover be, which went bankrupt in 2005?

Rolls royce: all the way to the right -> high cost & high quality
Volkswagen: somewhere in the middle -> mediocre cost & mediocre/varying quality
Kia: somewhere on the left -> low cost & low(ish) quality
Rover: somewhere (high) up in the inefficient region and not on the efficient frontier.

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