Operation management questions.

Operation management questions.

Over the last few years, Japanese automakers have built a significant number of assembly plants in North America and now the Korean auto firms are also looking into it. Most of these plants produce 2 or 3 models of cars as opposed to a single model or many different models.
i. Explain briefly operational consequences of making a single product versus a large variety of products within a facility
ii. Give arguments that would support the “intermediate variety” strategy when a firm has a network of many plants.
iii. How are the operational metrics (cost, quality, time and availability) impacted across the 3 options (i) single product in a plant (ii) few products in a plant (iii) many products in a plant?