Equifax Lean Test June 2014
- 1.What is the fundamental goal of Lean?
- A.
Take cost out of an organization and drive earnings by reducing staff levels
- B.
Reduce the time and resources needed to convert customer orders into high quality/low-cost deliverables
- C.
Get more life out of existing systems and processes to avoid upgrading
- D.
Effectively integrate newly acquired companies
- 2.What are 3 examples of factors that define value?
- A.
A raw material is transformed into a finished product
- B.
A feature is added to a product that customer is willing to pay for
- C.
A process step required by an internal business policy
- D.
A process with output that meets the customer’s quality specification without rework
- E.
Something that lowers the customer’s cost
- 3.Identify the non-value activity:
- A.
Changing raw data into a score that a customer pays for
- B.
Reworking a product to meet a customer’s requirement
- C.
Delivering a batch credit file at exact time specified by a customer
- 4.Lean thinking suggests that to fully understand a process you should...
- A.
Ask for all the data you can get and develop a visual map
- B.
Do a series of stakeholder interviews, request reports, and start capturing customer VOC
- C.
Engage directly with stakeholders at the real place they’re experiencing a problem and use that info to guide data requests, analysis, and hypotheses
- D.
Run a series of experiments to test the assumptions coming from customer feedback
- 5.For the following example, identify the three wastes: After receiving a customer specification, a developer codes to the requirement. She wasn’t sure about one of the requirements and had to reach out to the customer for clarification. She then had to recode some of her work. To be on the safe side, she figured she’d go ahead and include additional features that were part of the previous release. Then, deciding to work ahead, she built some extra features she thought the customer might appreciate.
- A.
Defects
- B.
Overproduction
- C.
Waiting
- D.
Transportation
- E.
Over processing
- F.
Motion
- G.
Inventory
- H.
Behavioral
- 6.A Lean practitioner should do what when there isn’t much documentation for a process and when stakeholders need a visual representation of a process to identify wastes?
- A.
Put together a Lean (Kaizen) event to get different view points
- B.
Capture metrics on how a process should work and how much waste is included
- C.
Develop a process map (or flow) or value stream map
- D.
Get direction from the project sponsor on what’s in or out of scope
- 7.A Value Stream Map is different from a simple Process Flow or Process Map in what key way?
- A.
High level summary of the activities from order to delivery, along with time to complete each activity step and wait times
- B.
Has a step-by-step view of process steps and major wastes
- C.
Can be used to identify wastes like rework loops
- D.
Focuses on the step-by-step tasks of one activity in an organization
- 8.What tool can help Lean practitioners think ahead about what kind of data elements they would want to gather around a process, what sources may be involved, how frequently, what units, etc?
- A.
Pareto Chart
- B.
Data Collection Plan
- C.
Baseline Data
- D.
Service Level Agreement
- 9.What are two tools used for Root Cause Analysis?
- A.
Fishbone Diagram
- B.
Poka-Yoke
- C.
The Five Whys approach
- D.
Jidoka Diagram
- E.
Five S Approach
- 10.You support one of Equifax’s customer service centers. Your manager asks you to find the root cause for why average call handle time has increased. Unfortunately, our internal systems do not have agent-level call detail. What approach should you take to get some data around agent-level performance?
- A.
Pick an individual agent and monitor all calls for two weeks
- B.
Build a business case to get $100K to modify the IT system to collect agent-level data
- C.
Travel to several similar service centers at peer companies to capture the agent-level data they have
- D.
Determine a representative sample of agents and hand-collect call-type data, call duration, as well as monitor a sample of calls to identify performance issues
- 11.You find that you enjoy Lean projects so much that instead of finding a hobby you help out your fellow classmates by reviewing their Project Charters in your free time. Your classmate included the following elements in his charter: Process, Problem Statement, scope, sponsor, owner, a bunch of stakeholders, a list of project objectives, start, & critical events. What’s missing?
- A.
The Root Cause Analysis
- B.
Baseline metrics, current performance, expected results, gap
- C.
The tools your classmate has used or intends to use
- D.
Feedback from stakeholders with their pain points
- 12.Since you’ve become a real stickler for Lean, you decide to critique your classmate’s problem statement: “The Russian Space Program is facing low morale because of a non-performing pencil vendor and needs a plan to switch to the Space Pen.” What problems would you highlight? Select all that apply:
- A.
Doesn’t have a root cause
- B.
Has a root cause embedded
- C.
Assigns blame
- D.
Is too long with too much information
- E.
Includes a solution
- F.
Too vague
- 13.What are the best example(s) of S.M.A.R.T Goals? Check all that apply.
- A.
Improve customer satisfaction
- B.
Reduce cost per customer service call from 10% to 5% by June
- C.
By Q3, reduce the product engineering cycle time from 30 to 10 days
- D.
Reduce the processing time for high-urgency regulatory forms
- E.
Launch new revenue-generating products to match competitors
- 14.You’re facilitating your second event and unfortunately the first one didn’t go well. The free flowing, self-directed discussion you led has caused some problems: progress was uneven, 3 people got into a physical fight, and one person dominated the conversation in a pretty negative way. What Prevention techniques would you apply for your second event?
- A.
Contracting
- B.
Separate & call security
- C.
Conduct process checks
- D.
Force people to stand up
- E.
Agenda
- 15.Your SVP loves your project idea and is willing to serve as a champion even though it’s pretty controversial (using unmanned drones to gather credit information). She told you to work with a VP as the project lead to figure out who may be in favor of your idea, who may be neutral, who may be moderately supportive, etc. What kind of tool might you use for this?
- A.
Pareto Chart
- B.
Game Plan
- C.
Fishbone Diagram
- D.
Heijunka Mode Analysis
- E.
Stakeholder Analysis
- 16.What is a Lean Kaizen Event focused on?
- A.
Taking action and solving a defined problem
- B.
Getting in the queue for scarce resources
- C.
Get peoples’ intuitive, qualitative feedback to drive a solution
- D.
Driving a long list of action items
- 17.When preparing for a Lean event what things do you need to accomplish?
- A.
Have a project charter in place and meet with SMEs
- B.
Figure out the solution the project Champion wants
- C.
Put an implementation plan in place
- D.
Figure out which stakeholders should own which action items
- 18.A Lean/Kaizen event should result in the following except:
- A.
Recommendations and a solution to test or prototype
- B.
Control Plan
- C.
Action items with a communication plan
- D.
Meeting to determine why a solution didn’t get resources or didn’t work
- 19.A Lean practitioner leads a series of Lean events but seems to only get temporary gains before having to address some of the same problems again. What mistake has this person made in his or her approach?
- A.
Failed to recheck measurements to make sure he/she wasn’t mis-measuring
- B.
Hasn’t established the rigor for the improved processes to be standardized and sustained
- C.
Didn’t do a good enough job facilitating the Lean events
- D.
Chose the wrong technology system to support the change and had to switch a couple times
- 20.Select the item not done prior to a Lean Kaizen event or project.
- A.
Define solution
- B.
Reserve a room and send invitations for the event
- C.
Complete the charter and goal statement page and review with the Business Champion and Lean Leader
- D.
Gather data for the event
- 21.You have a problem you’re analyzing and you realize you have about 20 variables. You want to narrow this down to focus on a smaller number of variables that are driving the bulk of the impact. What tool should you use?
- A.
Heijunka Yoke
- B.
Pareto Analysis
- C.
Ishikawa Diagram
- D.
Toyota Variable Analysis
- 22.You’ve been working to improve data quality for a system. You implement an improvement to the data entry system that prevents people who enter data from entering the wrong format. What is this an example of?
- A.
Standard work
- B.
Mistake proofing (poka-yoke)
- C.
Value Stream Mapping
- D.
Standard work (Heijunka)
- 23.What is the benefit of a one-piece flow process vs. a batch process?
- A.
Reduces wait time, compresses lead time, work can run in parallel
- B.
Creates inventory just in case a customer needs it
- C.
Ensures that staff have adequate wait times between steps
- D.
Extends delivery times to convey to customer that lots of work had been applied to a product
- 24.You’ve been dealing with a lot of problems with the customer boarding process. You’ve worked with one colleague to capture data that quantifies the size of the problem. You and your colleague spend a day brainstorming ideas around a future vision for the boarding process and even come up with a good outline for a communication plan. You and your colleague start communicating the problem with customer boarding, the vision for how it could be improved throughout the organization. One month later, you’re frustrated by the lack of action or attention you’ve received. What do you think went wrong?
- A.
Your data analysis was incorrect, there really isn’t a customer boarding problem, the company is still growing and market share hasn’t taken a hit
- B.
The rest or the organization just doesn’t get it, they’re a bunch of b-players who aren’t worthy of your efforts
- C.
The future vision and the communication plan weren’t sufficient to meet the needs of the organization
- D.
You didn’t involve other people in the process early and build a coalition of other people suffering from the bad boarding process who could provide data and input on improvements.
- 25.The Analytics organization leadership is proposing a major shift in how it prioritizes and delegates resources to projects. Many of the management staff are openly averse to the concepts and are not following up on actions necessary to complete transition to the new workforce model. What advice would you recommend to leadership?
- A.
Continue to build on the sense of urgency until 75% of the upper management staff is supportive of the change.
- B.
Fire unsupportive managers.
- C.
Build a vision of the future organization that describes the value to the employees.
- D.
Declare victory and publically post banners celebrating success.
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