produce), innovativeness versus price (up-to-date fashion garments may need to be sourced from high cost locations rather than the Far East), etc. A medium-sized company designing and manufacturing sports bicycles and mountain bikes is worried about losing market share, because its competitors are bringing out new product ranges much faster than it is currently able to do. What specific advice would you give the company to improve their approach to new product development?Outline answer:The company needs to look at the product development process and how to improve it. Students should mention the concept of concurrent or simultaneous engineering, with integrated design teams. In this context, they should also mention the possibility of taking a modularised approach to the design of a range of sports bicycles and mountain bikes (for example, in the use of gear sets or brake levers).Explain what is meant by a service blueprint and sketch a simple service blueprint for a small medical (GP) practice. tOutline answer:Students need to clearly distinguish (with appropriate lines) between front-office activities involvi
ng close interactions between customers (patients) and service providers (medical staff etc.), on the one hand, and back-office and support activities, on the other hand. Any reasonable sketch with the necessary explanation will be acceptable.Many tailors in Hong Kong provide made-to-measure suits (based on a Make-To-Order approach). Explain both the advantages and the disadvantages of this approach. (ottfeettuOutline answer:A Make-To-Order (MTO) approach provides customer choice, customisation, flexibility, and lower stock-holding costs. However, it also has disadvantages in terms of slow speed, long (and less dependable) customer order lead times, and less efficient production.The manager of the Toyz-R-Uz retail store wants to adopt an Economic Order Quantity (EOQ) approach to control the stock of the best-selling Little Borrowed Car video game. On average, the store sells 200 of these video games per week (that is, 10400 games per year). These video games are bought directly from a Far-East distributor at a cost of £32 per unit. The manager reckons that it costs about £96 to place an order for an additional2