Free Practice Questions for CIPS L4M7 Exam

Staged payments linked to milestones (order, delivery, and acceptance testing) provide a fair and structured approach for both buyer and supplier. They ensure:

Alignment with performance: Payment is contingent on the supplier meeting specific contract stages, protecting the buyer.

Risk mitigation: The buyer avoids full payment upfront, reducing financial exposure.

In whole-life asset management, this approach enables better cost control and accountability throughout the equipment’s lifecycle.

Explanation

Total productive maintenance (TPM) is an innovative concept in the manufacturing industry that evolved from the idea of preventive maintenance to adopt practices of productive maintenance, maintenance prevention, and reliability Engineering. What we now refer to as TPM, has become an ingenious approach to achieve overall equipment effectiveness by involving the workforce behind the machines (i.e. the operators).

8 pillars of TPM

1) 5S - Sort, straighten, shine, standardize, and sustain

Just like a physical structure starts with a grounded framework, building a strong TPM process requires a strong foundation in the form of the principles of 5S. This is a workplace organization method that is simplified into 5 basic steps:

Sort tools, equipment, and materials to identify which of these can be discarded

Straighten and set things in proper order to reduce unnecessary motion and efficiently travel be-tween working groups and locations

Shine refers to performing necessary housekeeping to clean up the work area

Standardize and schedule activities to systematically form the habits to keep the workplace orga-nized

Sustain the process and principles for long-term applications

The 5S approach provides a systematic approach to cleaning the workplace, thereby uncovering underlying problems and challenges.

2) Autonomous maintenance

Maintenance tasks and caring for equipment should start with the people using the equipment. The empowerment of operators to work on small maintenance tasks effectively allows the maintenance teams to focus on more specialized assignments.

3) Continuous improvement

Also known as the Japanese term Kaizen, Continuous Improvement promotes the attitude of pro-gressing towards zero losses and zero defects. Through small but continual tweaks to processes, the overall effectiveness and efficiency of the organization is developed.

4) Planned maintenance

Planned maintenance activities are essential to the prevention of equipment breakdown. Planned maintenance is performed by periodically evaluating the condition of equipment to proactively prevent deterioration and mechanical failures.

5) Quality maintenance

To ensure the satisfaction of the customer, manufacturing processes aim for zero-defect production. Standards for superior quality, and checks on whether the standards are being met, should be in place. The goal of quality maintenance is to identify any possible causes of deviations from zero-defect production.

6) Training

The idea of TPM is that everyone does their part to contribute to the overall productivity of the production process. In order to achieve optimum performance, and to build each member’s competence, proper training is required to equip each one with the theoretical and practical know-how of working with machines and equipment.

7) Office TPM

A key role that is often overlooked is the administrative department that works behind the scenes. Like the rest of the production teams and processes, the management and administrative functions are also subject to productivity improvement. Tins includes identifying and eliminating losses, and contributing to the overall performance of the plant.

8) Safety, health, and environment

The last of the eight pillars focuses on creating a safe workplace. The essence of this pillar is real-ized when actively applied to each of the other pillars. The successful implementation of this pillar will contribute to a secure and hazard-free workplace.

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.

Explanation

The system of slip sheet load handling involves the use of a thin sheet of material, the slip sheet, as a base on which items are assembled as a unit load for handling, storage, and transport. The slip sheet is used in conjunction with a pallet, if desired, at certain stages in the distribution cycle. If all lift trucks in the cycle are equipped with the proper attachment, an appropriate slip sheet is the only material handling base required. Slip sheet requires special push pull accessories and usually use thin and wide forks.

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Skids are generally described as single-deck pallets and do not have bottom flatted layer which makes them less bulky and cheaper than conventional pallets but also less universal in their use.

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Shrink wrap, also referred to as shrink film or shrink wrap, is a versatile polymer material used for the packaging of finished goods. Heat is applied to the film – by either a conveyor heat tunnel or an electric or gas heat gun – which catalyzes the film to shrink tightly around the item placed within. This process results in a clear, durable barrier of protection around the product.

Post pallets have a simple metal structure with four uprights and substantial feat to take the load. These may be free standing, but many are designed for the feet to interlock with the posts of another post pallet so that the stack can be created.