AMIE Study Circle

The following table gives the activities in a construction project and other relevant information: Indirect costs vary as follows: (a) Draw an arrow diagram for the project. (b) Determine the project duration which will result in minimum total project cost. (AMIE Summer 2021, 15 marks) The network for normal activity times indicates a project duration of 13 months with critical path: A – D – G (1 – 2 – 4 – 5) as shown in following figure.  The crash cost slope for various critical activities of the project is given in following table. Among the critical activities A, D and G, the least expensive activity is A. This means that the duration of this activity should be crashed by maximum of one month. Thus, project duration reduces to 12 months and new total project cost is as follows: Total crashed cost = Total direct cost + Indirect cost due to crashing of activity A by one week + Indirect cost for 12 months = 713 + 1 × 30 + 250 = ₹ 993 Since existing critical path remains same even ...

  Answer the following in brief (2 marks each) What is quality? Quality means that the products meet and exceed all requirements, standards and specifications. For example, certain industry products may need to meet specific standards and specifications for legal or medical reasons. State, two essential features of scientific management. Higher Productivity: Increase in the rate of production by use of standardized tools, equipment’s, methods and training of the workers. Cost Reduction: Reduction in the cost of production is done by rational planning and regulation, and cost control techniques.  What is meant by productivity? Productivity is commonly measured in output per worker or output per worker per hour. For a manufacturing company, a measure of productivity might be the number or value of the finished products each worker can produce within a given time. State the difference between "feed-forward" and "feedback control".  Feedback Control System : Feedback co...

Answer the following in brief Financial Ratios and their implications A financial ratio or accounting ratio is a relative magnitude of two selected numerical values taken from an enterprise's financial statements. Often used in accounting, there are many standard ratios used to try to evaluate the overall financial condition of a corporation or other organization. There are six categories of financial ratios that business managers normally use in their analysis. Within these six categories are 15 financial ratios that help a business manager and outside investors analyze the financial health of the firm. Working Capital Ratio Earnings per Share (EPS) Debt-Equity Ratio The Bottom Line Quick Ratio Price-Earnings (P/E) Ratio Return on Equity (ROE) What do you mean by social audit? A social audit is a formal review of a company's endeavours, procedures, and code of conduct regarding social responsibility and the company's impact on society. For example, a local family store mak...

Answer the following in brief. Inventory control Inventory control is the process of keeping the right number of parts and products in stock to avoid shortages, overstocks, and other costly problems. Inventory control focuses on cutting the number of slow-selling products a company purchases while also increasing the number of high-selling products. An inventory control system also monitors their movement, usage, and storage. Control chart The control chart is a graph used to study how a process changes over time. Data are plotted in time order. A control chart always has a central line for the average, an upper line for the upper control limit (UCL), and a lower line for the lower control limit (LCL). These lines are determined from historical data. By comparing current data to these lines, you can draw conclusions about whether the process variation is consistent (in control) or is unpredictable (out of control, affected by special causes of variation).  Learning curve ...

Answer the following in brief Types of Organization A set-up where individuals from diverse backgrounds, different educational qualifications and varied interests come together to work towards a common goal is called an organization. Line or Scalar Organisation: This type of organisation is also known as a departmental or military type of organisation. In this type of organisation business activities are divided into three groups, namely fi­nance and accounts, production and sales. Each of these departments is sub-divided into certain self-contained departments, i.e., sections. Functional Organisation: The difficulties in finding all round qualified man to be foreman in the line organisation are overcome with this type of organisation. He is replaced by various functionalised people. This system is advantageous because each supervisor is specialised in a particular field and he attends to one factor in all the departments. Line and Staff Organisation: In a firm of large size operating ...

Write short notes Administration vs. Management Management is a systematic way of managing people and things within the organization. The administration is defined as an act of administering the whole organization by a group of people. Management is an activity of business and functional level, whereas Administration is a high-level activity. While management focuses on policy implementation, policy formulation is performed by the administration. Administration takes all the important decisions of the organization while management makes decisions under the boundaries set by the administration. Policies vs. Procedures Policies set some parameters for decision-making but leave room for flexibility. They show the “why” behind an action. Procedures, on the other hand, explain the “how.” They provide step-by-step instructions for specific routine tasks. They may even include a checklist or process steps to follow. Effectiveness vs. Efficiency Efficiency is defined as the ability to accompli...

Write short notes on Collective bargaining Collective bargaining, the ongoing process of negotiation between representatives of workers and employers to establish the conditions of employment. Quality control Quality control (QC) is a procedure or set of procedures intended to ensure that a manufactured product or performed service adheres to a defined set of quality criteria or meets the requirements of the client or customer. In order to implement an effective QC program, an enterprise must first decide which specific standards the product or service must meet. Then the extent of QC actions must be determined -- for example, the percentage of units to be tested from each lot. Basic EOQ model EOQ model. It is essentially a single formula for determining the optimal order size that minimizes the sum of carrying costs and ordering costs. Its formula is √(2DS/H) where Q = EOQ units; D = Demand in units (typically on an annual basis); S = Order cost (per purchase order); H = Holding c...

Explain the following terms Competence development Competence development is the practice of developing one or several competencies in a specific way and in a particular direction. Competence is more like an asset, while competence development is a more practical or at least action-oriented approach that aims to develop these assets or competencies. Competence development has set out to expand organizational measurement from command and control purposes towards enabling learning and self-renewal. Collective bargaining Collective bargaining, the ongoing process of negotiation between representatives of workers and employers to establish the conditions of employment. Balance Sheet A Balance Sheet is the financial statement of a company that includes assets, liabilities, equity capital, total debt, etc. at a point in time. Theory of production In economics, production theory explains the principles in which the business has to take decisions on how much of each commodity it sells and ...

True/False type questions In exponential smoothing, L is the weight assigned to the last period’s forecast. The service level refers to the number of customers that will be unsatisfied. Scheduling n jobs on m machines is easier than scheduling n jobs on a single machine. Dummy activities are used in project networks to show precedence relationships only. The main advantage of the Gantt chart is its simplicity. In ABC analysis, the A items are the largest percentage quantity of items in inventory. In the EOQ model, at the optimum point, the holding costs are half of the ordering costs. There is no correlation between the two variables when the value of r is -1. The amount of safety stock usually increases in direct proportion to the level of customer service desired. A product structure tree helps to illustrate how the bill of materials is arrived at for the quantities of each of the ingredients needed to obtain a desired quantity of the end product. Answers False. L is the lead time. E...

The modern management information system must use computers.  Management needs to know where their information comes from. Authority means only the right to act. Functional types of organisations were first proposed by F.W. Taylor. The standard deviation of the critical path in a PERT network is not calculated by adding the standard deviations of all the critical activities.  The return to scale for a production process, in which doubling the input quantities yield more than double the quantity of output, is more than one.  The CPM models are valid for situations with limited resources availability. Top management activities include a lot of planning and little organization and directing.  Break-even analysis is a method that analyses the cost, volume and profit relationship.  The concept of division of labour was proposed by F.W. Taylor. Answers True True False True. A functional organization is one in which work is organized on the basis of speci...