ICAR AICE-JRF/SRF (PhD admission and fellowship) · India · National Testing Agency for ICAR
Original practice questions written to the published syllabus · not past papersMoving agricultural and food products efficiently from source to buyer: planning, procurement, inventory, transport, warehousing, cold chain and outsourced logistics.
In the exams: agribusiness management PhD entrance and fellowship examinations, logistics and supply chain management (heavy)
ICAR AICE-JRF/SRF (PhD) — Agri-Business Management, Unit 5 operations incl. logistics and SCM
Heavily weighted. Definitions and frameworks (Chopra-Meindl drivers, Fisher's efficient vs responsive chains, SCOR, bullwhip causes and remedies), inventory numericals (EOQ, reorder point, safety stock, quantity discounts, newsvendor), MRP netting, JIT and kanban, VMI and CPFR, 3PL/4PL, reverse logistics, cold chain, warehousing and IT tools. Expect one-step numericals and 'which of the following' recall on who proposed what.
How our questions for ICAR AICE-JRF/SRF spread across the units of Agri Supply Chain & Logistics Management. Difficulty: 23 easy, 43 medium, 25 hard.
| Inventory: MRP, JIT and vendor-managed inventory | 17 | |
| Supply-chain drivers, metrics and obstacles | 9 | |
| Cold chain | 8 | |
| IT in supply-chain management | 8 | |
| Demand planning and forecasting | 7 | |
| Procurement and the purchasing cycle | 6 | |
| Transport and fleet management | 6 | |
| Contract and corporate farming as procurement | 5 | |
| Elements of logistics | 5 | |
| Distribution strategies and pool distribution | 5 | |
| Third- and fourth-party logistics | 5 | |
| Reverse logistics | 5 | |
| Traditional and modern agri supply chains | 3 | |
| Warehousing in the supply chain | 2 |
Choose an answer, then open the working. Each explanation says why the right answer is right and why the others are not.
A grain terminal processes 400 tonnes a day and holds on average 6,000 tonnes in the system. By Little's law, the average time a tonne spends in the terminal is
C. 15 days
Little's law: inventory = throughput x flow time, so flow time = 6,000 / 400 = 15 days. Multiplying the two (2.4 million) or inverting the ratio (0.07) are the usual slips. 6,400 adds the two figures.
If forecast errors are normally distributed, the standard deviation of forecast error is approximately
B. 1.25 x MAD
For normal errors, sigma is about 1.25 times the MAD (the exact factor is the square root of pi/2, about 1.253); equivalently MAD is about 0.8 sigma. That is why 0.8 is the tempting wrong answer: it is the inverse relation.
Further reading: Heizer, Render and Munson, Operations Management
In the Kraljic purchasing portfolio matrix, an input with high profit impact but low supply risk, available from many competing suppliers, is a
D. leverage item
Kraljic classifies by profit impact and supply risk: high impact and low risk is leverage (use buying power and bidding); high impact and high risk is strategic; low impact and high risk is bottleneck; low impact and low risk is non-critical.
Further reading: Kraljic (1983), HBR
The first step of the purchasing cycle is
B. recognising and describing the need, with specifications
The cycle starts when a need is recognised and specified (usually in a purchase requisition); ordering, payment and performance review come later.
At the economic order quantity in the basic EOQ model,
A. annual ordering cost equals annual holding cost
Minimising (D/Q)S + (Q/2)H gives Q* where the two cost terms are equal. The other statements have no basis in the model.
Further reading: Heizer, Render and Munson, Operations Management
Which is an assumption of the basic EOQ model?
C. Demand is constant and known; replenishment is instant
The classic EOQ assumes constant known demand, fixed ordering cost, constant holding cost, instantaneous replenishment, no shortages and no quantity discounts. Seasonal demand, planned shortages and discounts need extended models.
Further reading: Heizer, Render and Munson, Operations Management
The total cost concept in logistics means that
B. transport, inventory, storage, packaging and order costs are traded off and minimised jointly
Cheaper slow transport raises inventory, fewer warehouses raise transport, cheaper packaging raises damage. Minimising each cost separately usually raises the total.
Further reading: Bowersox et al., Supply Chain Logistics Management
A seasonal fruit exporter needs cold-chain trucks and pack-house space for 3 months a year. Which choice is usually most consistent with make-or-buy logic?
C. Buy the service from a cold-chain 3PL, as owned assets would sit idle
When utilisation of owned assets would be low, a provider that serves many clients across seasons can offer lower cost per unit. Owning is cheaper only above a break-even level of use; ambient trucks risk the product.
Which pre-cooling method is especially suited to leafy vegetables such as lettuce?
C. Vacuum cooling
Vacuum cooling evaporates water from the large leaf surface under low pressure, cooling leafy greens rapidly. Onions must be kept dry, sealed bags block cooling, and curing is a different process.
Further reading: Kader (ed.), Postharvest Technology of Horticultural Crops
Why should ripe bananas not be shipped in the same container as leafy greens or cut flowers?
D. Ripening bananas give off ethylene, speeding decay of sensitive items
Climacteric fruits such as bananas produce ethylene, and sensitive products such as leafy greens and flowers deteriorate when exposed. Their temperature needs also differ, so treating them as identical is wrong too.
Further reading: Kader (ed.), Postharvest Technology of Horticultural Crops
Ten here, 91 in the app. The Laisha app has every practice question we have written to ICAR AICE-JRF/SRF in this subject, marked as you go, with timed papers, a jump-to-unanswered list and a certificate when you pass at 70 per cent.
Free for ten days, then one subscription of US$10 a month. We would rather say so here than have you find it later.
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