GMAT Reading Comprehension

Home > GMAT Test > GMAT Reading Comprehension Questions

Next steps

Source: GWD

Level: 3

Companies that must determine well in advance of the selling season how many unites of a new product to manu-facture often underproduce products that sell well and have overstocks of others. The increased incidence in recent years of mismatches between production and demand seems ironic, since point-of-sale scanners have improved data on consumers' buying patterns and since flexible manufacturing has enabled companies to produce, cost-effectively, small quantities of goods. This type of manufacturing has greatly increased the number of new products introduced annually in the United States. However, frequent introductions of new products have two problematic side effects. For one, they reduce the average lifetime of products; more of them are neither at the beginning of their life (when prediction s difficult) or at the end of their life (when keeping inventory is expen- sive because the products will soon become obsolete). For another, as new products proliferate, demand is divided among a growing number of stock-keeping units (SKU's). Even though manufacturers and retailers can forecast aggregate demand with some certainty, forecasting accurately how that demand will be distributed among the many SKU's they sell is difficult. For example, a company may be able to estimate accurately the aggregate number of shoes it will sell, but it may be uncertain about which specific types of shoes will sell more than other types.

Question List: 1 2 3

According to the passage, which of the following has led to growth in the number of new products introduced in the United States each year?

  • A Reduced average lifetime of products
  • B Increased ability to forecast aggregate demand
  • C More cost-effective ways of keeping inventory for products
  • D Cost-effective production of small quantities of goods
  • E Increased ability to divide demand among a number of SKU's and to forecast how that demand will be distributed among those SKU's

Show Answer

Previous       Next