Pass the CIPS CIPS Level 4 Diploma in Procurement and Supply L4M7 Questions and answers with CertsForce

Including a currency fluctuation clause protects against exchange rate volatility, which can increase the final cost if the currency depreciates. Whole-life asset management often incorporates such risk management measures to ensure cost predictability and avoid unanticipated financial impact on long-term projects.

Subjective forecasting methods, like market research and expert opinion, rely on qualitative judgment rather than numerical data. These methods are valuable when historical data is limited, or when anticipating market changes. Whole-life asset management may use subjective forecasts for long-term planning and to account for factors not captured in quantitative data.

RFID technology offers higher security compared to barcodes, as tags are harder to replicate. RFID also enables wireless scanning, without line-of-sight, and can store more information than barcodes. This enhances asset tracking and security, essential in whole-life asset management for tracking valuable assets and reducing losses due to theft or misplacement.

Explanation

Material requirement planning (MRP) is a production planning and material (inventory) control system used in manufacturing. Objectives of MRP are to ensure materials are available for production while minimising inventory and to plan production and procurement activities.

MRP software combines the master production schedule, the bill of materials and the inventory information to work out the net requirements (net MRP) of what to purchase or produce and when.

These net requirements are worked out using the following equation:

Net requirements = Total requirements - Available inventory

Where:

Total requirement = Gross requirements (gross MRP)

Available inventory = Inventory on hand + Units on order

In the other words, Gross MRP = Net MRP + Available inventory, so the answer should be "The gross MRP includes consideration of available inventory, whereas the net MRP does not"

LO 2, AC 2.3

Explanation

Last in, first out (LIFO) is a method used to account for inventory that records the most recently produced items as sold first. Under LIFO, the cost of the most recent products purchased (or pro-duced) are the first to be expensed as cost of goods sold (COGS)—which means the lower cost of older products will be reported as inventory.

Moving average: a calculation to analyse data by creating series of averages of different subset of full data set. It is commonly used with time series data to smooth out short-term fluctuation and highlight long-term trends or cycle

ABC analysis is a method of analysis that divides the subject up into three categories: A, B and C.

There is no technique called time-weighted series.

LO 2, AC 2.3

Explanation

Lean thinking aims to remove wastes from work processes. Before diving into the 8 wastes, it is important to understand what waste is. Waste is any action or step in a process that does not add value to the customer. In other words, waste is any process that the customer does not want to pay for.

The original seven wastes (Muda) was developed by Taiichi Ohno, the Chief Engineer at Toyota, as part of the Toyota Production System (TPS). The seven wastes are Transportation, Inventory, Motion, Waiting, Overproduction, Overprocessing and Defects. They are often referred to by the acronym ‘TIMWOOD’. The 8th waste of non-utilized talent or ‘Skills’ of workers was later introduced in the 1990s when the Toyota Production System was adopted in the Western world. As a result, the 8 wastes are commonly referred to as ‘TIMWOODS’.

Source: The lean way

Multiple approval levels for a small purchase request is an example of over-processing since this adds more unnecessary work to users and procurement professionals.

Holding costs, or carrying costs, include all costs associated with storing unsold goods. These typically consist of:

Insurance costs: Fees associated with insuring stored goods.

Deterioration costs: Potential loss from goods that deteriorate, expire, or are rendered unusable over time.

Pilferage costs: Losses due to theft or misplacement of goods.

These factors affect the total cost of ownership in asset management, ensuring that only essential stock levels are maintained to avoid unnecessary holding costs.

Options 1 and 2 include costs not generally classified under holding costs (such as the cost of sales), making D the correct answer.

Explanation

Minimum open aisle width for standard counterbalance forklift is 10.5-13.1 ft. You can look at the minimum aisle width for different equipment here, or calculate yourself with an instruction here.

LO 1, AC 1.3

Explanation

Delphi method was developed in the 1950s, originally to forecast the impact of technology on warfare. The method entails a group of experts who anonymously reply to questionnaires and subsequently receive feedback in the form of a statistical representation of the "group response," after which the process repeats itself. The goal is to reduce the range of responses and arrive at something closer to expert consensus. The Delphi Method has been widely adopted and is still in use today. Delphi method is a subjective forecasting technique

Holt-Winters forecasting is a way to model and predict the behavior of a sequence of values over time—a time series. Holt-Winters is one of the most popular forecasting techniques for time series. It’s decades old, but it’s still ubiquitous in many applications, including monitoring, where it’s used for purposes such as anomaly detection and capacity planning.

Time series analysis is a statistical technique that deals with time series data, or trend analysis. Time series data means that data is in a series of particular time periods or intervals.

Objective forecasting approaches are quantitative in nature and lend themselves well to an abun-dance of data. There are three categories of objective forecasting methods: time series, caus-al/econometric, and artificial intelligence.

LO 2, AC 2.3