Q 01/05

A visit to which Chicago industry's plants inspired the moving assembly line at Ford?

A) Brewing

B) Meatpacking

C) Grain milling

D) Steelmaking

Answer · why

B) Meatpacking

Meatpacking plants ran what was called a disassembly line. Ford's William Klann saw one at Swift & Company and reversed the idea, so that a car came t...

Q 02/05

Which Italian city's Arsenal could turn out nearly one war galley a day, centuries before car factories?

A) Genoa

B) Naples

C) Pisa

D) Venice

Answer · why

D) Venice

Venice fitted out galleys at its Arsenal with standardized parts on a production-line basis in the early 1500s. Galileo later advised its engineers as...

Q 03/05

Imports from which country prompted an 1887 British origin-label law, only for the label to become a badge of quality?

A) Germany

B) France

C) Belgium

D) Austria

Answer · why

A) Germany

Germany was where most of the falsely marked goods behind the Merchandise Marks Act came from. Instead of warning buyers off, the label grew into a br...

Q 04/05

Which small item did Adam Smith break into about eighteen steps to show the power of dividing labor?

A) Needles

B) Buttons

C) Pins

D) Thimbles

Answer · why

C) Pins

Pins were Smith's example in The Wealth of Nations. He reckoned ten men sharing the tasks could make upwards of 48,000 a day, where each working alone...

Q 05/05

Taiichi Ohno based Toyota's just-in-time kanban system on the shelf restocking of which American businesses?

A) Car dealerships

B) Department stores

C) Supermarkets

D) Gas stations

Answer · why

C) Supermarkets

Supermarkets stock only what they expect to sell, and shoppers take only what they need. Toyota began studying them in the late 1940s and carried thei...