Supply Chain Analytics Coursera Quiz Answers

Get Supply Chain Analytics Coursera Quiz Answers

Supply Chain Analytics Coursera Quiz Answers

Week 1: Supply Chain Analytics

Q1. Which of the following are the pain points of a supply chain?

Express shipping can serve individual customers fast but is very expensive.
A high investment of inventory can meet customer needs immediately but leads to a high inventory cost, e.g., cost/risk due to obsolescence.
It is challenging and costly for a warehouse to fulfill millions of individual orders fast and accurately.

Q2. What are the key differences between the push and pull supply chain strategies?

They are different by how they ship products. Push uses the regular / batch shipping to send products to stores while Pull uses express shipping to send products to individual customers.
They are different by where to hold inventory. Push holds a majority of inventory most down-stream and closest to customers (e.g., at stores) while Pull holds it upstream and further away from customers (e.g., at DCs).

Q3. Why are supply chains difficult to manage?

Conflicting objectives of customer satisfaction and cost efficiency
Multiple interacting forces (inventory, shipping, order fulfillment, store operations, etc.) of a high cost driving the performance of a supply chain with subtle trade-offs
Complex and large-scale systems with many facilities and products.

Q4. Why is data analytics a necessity for supply chain management?

Data and quantitative analysis are needed to assess the NET impact of a strategy on multiple driving forces.
Analytics (models and algorithms) can be easily ramped up to handle a large number of facilities and products.
Analytics is necessary to balance the conflicting objectives and discover the globally optimal solution.

Q5. In 2017, Hikvision is the market leader of the electronics monitor systems in China and Dahua is a market follower with a revenue about 50% of Hikvision. However, Dahua carries about the same amount (in $) of inventory as Hikvision. Does Dahua has an inventory problem or not?

No, Dahua does not have an inventory problem.
Yes, Very likely Dahua has an inventory problem.
Not sure; we need more information.

Week 2: Supply Chain Analytics

Quiz 1: General Principles of Supply Chain Planning

Q1. Name some key drivers and issues to consider for supply chain planning.

Inventory
Store operations
Shipping
Warehousing

Q2. Which statement(s) below correctly describe the trade-off between shipping and inventory in supply chain planning?

Express shipping from DCs can serve individual customers fast without the need to carry inventory at stores but requires a significant shipping cost.
If we fully stock up stores and replenish them infrequently, we will carry a huge inventory but can reduce the shipping cost significantly.
If we replenish stores more frequently using less than truck load (LTL), we can save inventory but have to spend more on shipping.

Quiz 2: Intuition of Pull vs Push Strategies

Q1. Which of the following statement(s) are correct regarding the push vs pull strategies?

Push can meet customer demand more quickly than pull.
Relative to push, pull can significantly reduce shipping cost.
Relative to push, pull can significantly reduce inventory cost.
Relative to push, pull can significantly reduce warehouse order fulfillment cost.

Q2. The effectiveness of the push / pull strategies can be product dependent. Which of the following statement(s) are correct?

The pull strategy tends to work better for high value (e.g., smart phone) and slow moving items.
The push strategy tends to work better for low value (e.g., feature phone) and fast moving items.
The choice of push / pull strategies is not product dependent.

Week 3: Supply Chain Analytics

Q1. What types of costs should we estimate?

Inventory holding cost rates, that is, the cost of holding one unit of product in inventory per unit of time (week, month, year, etc.).
Warehouse order picking / packing cost rates, that is, the cost of picking and packing one unit of product in warehouses.
Shipping cost rates, that is, the cost of shipping one unit of product.

Q2. Why do we need data on sales and inventory?

In order to estimate inventory holding and shipping cost rates.
In order to calculate demand volume and inventory statistics.
In order to calculate inventory holding and shipping cost.

Q3. In cost estimation, which of the following statement(s) are true?

In estimating warehouse order fulfillment cost, we need to consider the economies of scale in picking and packing.
Inventory cost includes capital cost (the loss of alternative investment of the money tied up in inventory) and obsolescence cost.
To estimate shipping cost, we should consider both urgency (overnight vs 2-day) and order size (batch vs individual shipping).

Q4. How to calculate the inventory and shipping for push / pull?

Inventory cost = inventory holding cost rate * average on-hand inventory
Shipping cost = shipping cost rate * number of products to ship

Q5. How to calculate the warehouse order picking / packing cost for push and pull?

For pull, the warehouse order picking / packing cost of N (individual) orders = the first pick / pack cost * N
For push, the warehouse order picking / packing cost of N orders in one batch = the first pick / pack cost + subsequent pick / pack cost * (N-1)