問15
頻出度★★☆
PC の生産などに利用される BTO の説明として, 最も適切なものはどれか。
平成25年度 春期 ITパスポート試験 問15
This question's explanation and your answers so far.
解説
問 15
Incorrectア
Having another company assemble products that bear your own company's logo (brand) is a description of OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer, manufacturing under the other party's brand). OEM expresses a form of outsourcing and accepting manufacturing work, in other words who makes the product, whereas BTO expresses when the product is made (whether it is built after an order arrives or built up in advance as stock), so the two are about different points.
- イ
正解 The correct answer is イ. BTO (Build To Order) is translated as production to order, that is, a method in which manufacturing starts only after an order has been received. Rather than building finished products in advance and holding them as stock, the maker keeps its inventory in the form of parts and components such as CPUs, memory, storage devices, and software, and at the moment a customer's order comes in it assembles and ships the product to match the content of that order (which CPU is combined with how many GB of memory, and so on). This makes it possible to offer customized products tailored to each individual customer while avoiding the risk of being left holding unsold finished-goods inventory. It is a method widely adopted in areas such as mail-order sales of PCs, and the statement in choice イ, “Keeping products stored as parts rather than as finished goods, and after receiving a customer's order, assembling the product according to the order's specifications,” is precisely the definition of BTO.
Incorrectウ
Procuring the required amount of raw materials and parts at the required time and producing while holding as little inventory as possible between production processes is a description of JIT (Just-In-Time, also known as the kanban method). JIT is a production management technique for cutting the waste of intermediate inventory between processes and of parts procurement; it does not state the characteristic of BTO, which is to assemble starting from a customer's order.
Incorrectエ
Having a single worker assemble one product alone is a description of cell production (also called one-person production). That is a method concerning how work is divided up, in other words how the production line is organized, in contrast to line production, and it is a different concept from BTO, which prescribes the timing of order receipt, namely assembling only after an order has been taken.
ここがポイント
- BTO (Build To Order) = production to order. No finished-goods stock is held; inventory is kept in the form of parts, and assembly is done after an order is received, according to the content of that order, so it achieves both customization and a lower finished-goods inventory risk.
- Distinguish the production and procurement methods that are easy to confuse: OEM is contract manufacturing under the other party's brand, JIT is procuring only what is needed, when it is needed, in the amount needed, so as to reduce inventory between processes, and cell production is assembling a product with a small number of workers (one person).
用語