Indirect supplies support operations without becoming part of the final product. They impact operating costs (e.g., maintenance supplies), supporting the production environment but not the end product. Managing indirect supplies is crucial in whole-life asset management to control overhead costs and ensure uninterrupted operations.

Maintenance can represent a significant portion of the cost in asset intensive organisations (such as Sidel - a food processor), as breakdowns have an impact on the capacity, quality and cost of operation. However, the formulation of a maintenance strategy depends on a number of factors, including the cost of down time, reliability characteristics and redundancy of assets. Consequently, the balance between preventive maintenance (PM) and corrective maintenance (CM) for minimising costs varies between organisations and assets. Nevertheless, there are some rules of thumb on the balance between PM and CM, such as the 80/20 rule.
Preventive maintenance is a type of proactive maintenance, while corrective maintenance is an example of reactive maintenance. Therefore, the answer should be "Balance between proactive maintenance and reactive maintenance".
Reference:
- Preventive and corrective maintenance - cost comparison and cost-benefit analysis
- CIPS study guide page 158-163
LO 3, AC 3.1

In the scenario, one of the requirements for the new software is that the new one will interface with current system. Compatibility testing would be the most appropriate test here.
There are also other acceptance tests that are mentioned in L4M7 study guide:
- Health and safety test aims at establishing new health and safety routines, providing guidance notices and documentation and ensuring designed-in safety in operation.
- Stress testing (sometimes called torture testing) is a form of deliberately intense or thorough testing used to determine the stability of a given system, critical infrastructure or entity. It involves testing beyond normal operational capacity, often to a breaking point, in order to observe the results.
- A dry run (or a practice run) is a testing process where the effects of a possible failure are inten-tionally mitigated. For example, an aerospace company may conduct a "dry run" test of a jet's new pilot ejection seat while the jet is parked on the ground, rather than while it is in flight.
The usage of "dry run" in acceptance procedures (for example in the so-called FAT = factory ac-ceptance testing) is meant as following: the factory - which is a subcontractor - must perform a complete test of the system it has to deliver before the actual acceptance by customer.
Reference: CIPS study guide page 150-151
LO 3, AC 3.1

The triple bottom line (TBL) framework evaluates organizational performance based on:
* Economic sustainability: Focusing on financial stability and profitability.
* Environmental sustainability: Ensuring that business activities minimize negative ecological impacts.
* Social sustainability: Committing to ethical practices and community well-being.
TBL aligns with whole-life asset management principles by incorporating sustainability into asset use and disposal, ensuring long-term organizational value beyond just financial metrics.

In a traditional warehouse, storage racks are arranged to create parallel picking aisles, perhaps with one or more cross aisles to allow workers to move quickly between picking aisles. This structure forces workers to travel rectilinear distances (north-south and east-west) to picking locations.

Kevin R. Gue and Russell D. Meller proposed alternative aisle designs:
- The 'Fan' shaped layout (or "Flying V"). This layout maintains parallel picking aisles, but al-lows the cross aisle to take on a different shape. If travel begins and ends at the bottom of the V, Gue and Meller expected distance to retrieve a single pallet is 10% less in this warehouse than in an equivalent traditional design.
- The Herringbone-shaped layout (or commonly referred as Fishbone layout) combines the verti-cal picking rows of a traditional warehouse with a second set of horizontal picking rows, divided by a V-shaped diagonal alley crossing the entire warehouse. This simple modification to the typical warehouse design allows employees (e.g. a forklift driver) to increase travel speed between picking locations. Efficiency gains achieved through a layout reconfiguration would reduce picking cost up to 23% compared to an equivalent warehouse using a traditional configuration.

Reference
Aisle Design - Kevin Gue
LO 1, AC 1.1