UNIVERSITY EXAMINATIONS: 2018/2019
EXAMINATION FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF SCIENCE IN
INFORMATION SYSTEMS MANAGEMENT
MISM 5304: OPERATIONS SYSTEMS MANAGEMENT
DATE: AUGUST 2019 TIME: 2 HOURS
INSTRUCTIONS: Answer Question One & ANY OTHER TWO questions.
QUESTION ONE
ABC Ltd. is the country’s largest manufacturer of spun yarn with well-established market. ABC
Ltd. has good reputation for quality and service. Their marketing department identified that the
potential for global market is expanding rapidly and hence the company undertook exercise for
expansion of the capacity for export market. The company formed team of Marketing and
Materials department to study the global logistics possibilities. After extensive study, the team
came up with a report on global logistics and submitted that global logistics is essentially same as
domestic due to following similarities:
• The conceptual logistics framework of linking supply sources, plants, warehouses and customers
is the same.
• Both systems involve managing the movement and storage of products.
• Information is critical to effective provision of customer service, management of inventory,
vendor product and cost control.
• The functional processes of inventory management, warehousing, order processing, carrier
selection, procurement, and vendor payment are required for both.
• Economic and safety regulations exist for transportation.
The company had very economical and reliable transportation system in existence. For exports as
well they decided to evaluate capabilities of their existing transporter and entrusted them with the
job of transport till port. For customs formalities they engaged a good CHA after proper cost
evaluation and entered into contract for freight with shipping company agent.
The response for company’s export was very good and the company could get as many as 15
customers within first two months and reached to a level of USD 250,000 per month by the end of
first half of the year. Based on this response the export volumes were expected to grow to a level
of USD 400,000 per month by the end of the year. When the review was made at the end of the
year, company found that export volumes had in fact come down to the level of USD 120,000
which was much lower than it had reached in the first half of the year.
The managing committee had an emergency meeting to discuss this and the export manager was
entrusted with the task of identifying the reasons for this decline. Mr.Ganesh decided to visit the
customers for getting the first hand information. When he discussed the matter with the customers,
the feedback on the quality and price were good but the customers were very upset on the logistic
services due to delayed shipments, frequent changes in shipping schedules, improper
documentation, improper identifications, package sizes, losses due to transit damages etc.
After coming back, the export manager checked the dispatch schedules and found that production
and ex-works schedules were all proper. Then he studied the logistics systems and found that the
logistics cost was very high and all the logistics people were demotivated due to overwork and
were complaining of total lack of co-ordination and the system had become totally disorganised.
a) Explain the problems experienced by ABC Ltd. What is the main cause of these
problems? 10 Marks
b) What logistics model should the company go for to ensure proper operations of the
company? 10 Marks
QUESTION TWO
a) Discuss the main reasons for globalization 6 Marks
b) Explain the activities of project planning 5 Marks
c) What are the steps followed in forecasting? 4 Marks
QUESTION THREE
a) Design helps businesses connect strongly with their customers by anticipating their real
needs. Benefits: • 90% of growing businesses say design is important, but only 26% of
static businesses say design is important. Discuss the Product Development System
9 Marks
b) What are the implications of quality? 6 Marks
QUESTION FOUR
a) Discuss ethical behavior that Reduce the negative impact on the environment
5 Marks
b) What are the factors to consider in service location strategies? 5 Marks
c) Reorganizes people and machines into groups to focus on single products or product
groups Group technology identifies products that have similar characteristics for
particular cells. Volume must justify cells and Cells can be reconfigured as designs or
volume changes. Explain the benefits of work cells. 5 Marks
