UPSC Mains MANAGEMENT-PAPER-II 2012

In an educational institution, the stipends earned by the students in the first year summer internships of the two year post graduate programme are used to decide the amount of financial aid to be given to the students in the second year of the programme. The stipends earned by the students have the following distribution : Stipend earned (in₹) Number of students 0 - 49,999 231 50,000 - 99,999 304 1,00,000 - 1,49,999 400 1,50,000 - 1,99,999 296 2,00,000 - 2,49,999 123 2,50,000 - 2,99,999 68 3,00,000 or more 23 What is the mode value of the stipend earned ? If financial aid is restricted to those students whose stipend earnings are at least 10% lower than the mode value, how many of the applicants qualify ?

What is the difference between "Micro", "Small" and "Medium" enterprises in the Manufacturing Sector? What are the main arguments in support of Small Scale Enterprises in India?

What do you understand by the term "Strategy"? How do you distinguish between "Business Strategy" and "Corporate Strategy"? What role do "External Assessment" and "Internal Scrutiny" play in strategy formulation?

Why are information systems so essential for running and managing business today? Explain how Management Information System (MIS) differs from Transaction Processing System (TPS) and Decision Support System (DSS).

UPD Manufacturing produces a range of healthcare appliances for hospital and home use. Recently the company has undertaken a review of its inventory policies for blood pressure testing kit. The company manufactures all the components for the kit in-house except for the digital display unit. Presently these display units are ordered at six-week intervals from the supplier. Discussions with purchasing manager revealed a cost of ₹ 40 to order and receive a shipment of display units from the supplier. The number of kits assembled by the company per week is normally distributed and has an average of 90 units with a standard deviation of 5 units. The weekly inventory carrying cost is₹0.08 for each display unit. The supplier takes exactly 1 week to deliver an order from the date the order is faxed to the supplier. Assume one week has 5 working days. Assuming 52 working weeks in a year, what will be the sum total of ordering and inventory carrying costs for the digital display unit, with the present ordering policy?

What will be the stock level at which an order should be placed, with the present ordering policy?

If the company wanted to minimize the sum total of annual ordering and inventory carrying costs, what should the company's order quantity be for the display unit?

How much safety stock should the company provide if the company wanted to ensure that it will not run out of stock more than 1% of inventory cycles?

In the general context of vendors,, distinguish between MRP and JIT, with illustrations.

A car maker XY Motors sold 12,000 vehicles in the initial year 1994. By 2010, the company had sold 5,00,000 annually. Until 2002, XY ranked at the bottom of annual quality survey of new vehicle owners, with 2-12 defects per vehicle, and industry average of 1.33. XY offered a 10 year/1,00,000 Mile Warranty Program and paid for repairs on all warrantied items. XY had to create a system to report any defects, accidents, or injuries involving its vehicles to the Federal Government. The information was stored in at least seven different systems run by XY's warranty, parts, consumer and legal affairs departments. XY's management decided to create a defect early warning system to identify potential problems, such as faulty brake parts, by combining warranty claims, parts sales and orders, field reports and consumer complaints. A software consulting firm IZ created a software "engine" that examines six XY systems for warranty claims, parts orders and sales, vehicle identification number, master storage files, vehicle inventories and stores the essential information in a single common data repository. The system auto.natically breaks down and

What is the problem with the original information system for tracking the quality of parts?

How did the company improve the quality of its vehicles with the improved information system?

In general, what do you understand by information architecture ? What are the well known types of information architecture?

How do supply chain management (SCM) systems and customer relationship management (CRM) systems help integrate suppliers and customers better?

STU Company was a high variety manufacturer of high tensile (HT) fasteners which included over 3000 different types of bolts, nuts, screws, sockets, dry wall screws, specials, etc. The manufacturing plants were located in South India. Although, there were several other competitors, STU was by far the market leader in HT fasteners with a market share of over 60%. These markets mainly included automobile original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and retail hardware markets. Some product was exported to a variety of countries. The company's dominant position in HT fasteners was built on strong core competence it had built in two areas: cold forging and in-house tool making. However, the company depended heavily for over 90% of its total steel requirements on costly import. The company later began making cold extruded components and powder metallurgy components. The company's competences in these areas were not unique and other competitors claimed better capabilities. Although not a market leader, the company's market shares in each of these product groups was 25% approximately. While the growth rate of HT fasteners was rather low, the rate of market growth for cold extruded and powder metallurgy components was reasonably high. The total market size for the three product groups was as follows: HT fasteners - ₹2,000 crores, cold extruded parts – ₹600 crores and powder metallurgy parts – ₹400 crores. The company's break even point was rather high, at 80% of total sales, due to high cost of imported raw materials. On an average,

By what strategy was STU able to build a dominant position in the HT fastener market ? Why could it not replicate this in cold extruded and powder metallurgy components?

Draw the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) product portfolio matrix and show on it the position of the company's three product groups : HT fasteners, Cold extruded parts and Powder metallurgy parts.

What is the company's break even sales? What is the company's fixed cost?

Use a suitable strategy analysis technique to evaluate the three growth options. Which option should the company choose ? What will the company have to do to successfully implement the option?

MNP Manufacturing produces ornate, decorative wood frame doors and windows. Each item produced goes through three manufacturing processes : cutting, sanding and finishing. Each door produced requires 1 hour in cutting, 30 minutes in sanding and 30 minutes in finishing. Each window requires 30 minutes in cutting, 45 minutes in sanding and 1 hour in finishing. In the coming week, MNP has 40 hours of cutting capacity, 40 hours of sanding capacity and 60 hours of finishing capacity available. Assume that all doors produced can be sold for a profit of ₹500 each and all windows can be sold for a profit of ₹400 each. Formulate a linear programming model to solve the problem. Use the graphical method to find the optimal solution.

What is meant by "Statistical Process Control" ? What are range and mean charts? The range and mean charts were used to determine the mean and standard deviation of a process making a cylindrical component. The mean value of the outer diameter was found to be 7-724994 centimetres and the standard deviation of the outer diameter was 0-000433 centimetres. The specification for the outer diameter was 7.72500 ± 0-00050 centimetres. Does the process have desired capability to produce the component as per the specifications?

What is a "Strategic Alliance"? What are the different types of strategic alliances ? What are their advantages and disadvantages ? Distinguish between strategic alliance and joint venture.

What are the major capabilities of Data Base Management System (DBMS)? Why is a relational DBMS so powerful ? What are the principal technologies for accessing information from databases to improve business performance and decision making?

What is "Foreign Direct Investment" ? What is "Foreign Portfolio Investment"? How do these differ? Explain the product life cycle theory of "Foreign Direct Investment".

The Black Gold Oilfield Company has recently acquired rights to a new potential source of natural oil in Bay of Bengal. The current market value of these rights is ₹ 900 crore. However if there is natural oil at the site, it is estimated to be worth ₹ 8000 crore. In this case, the company would have to pay ₹1000 crore in drilling costs to extract oil. The company believes there is a 0.25 probability that the proposed drilling site actually will hit the natural oil reserve. Alternately, the company can pay ₹ 300 crore to first carry out a seismic survey at the proposed drilling site. Historically if the seismic survey produces a favourable result, there is a 0.5 probability of hitting oil at the drilling site. However, if the seismic survey produces an unfavourable result, there is only a 0.14 probability of hitting oil. The probability of an unfavourable survey when no oil is present is 0.8. The probability of a favourable seismic survey when oil is present at the drilling site is 0.6. What is the optimal decision strategy, using the Expected Monetary Value (EMV) criterion?