CPIM Practice Questions with Answers and Explanations
Read this guide in Arabic: اقرأ بالعربية
The CPIM exam is not a definitions test. Most questions drop you into a situation and ask what a planner should do next, and at least two of the four options usually look sensible. Candidates in our Riyadh, Jeddah and Al Khobar classes tell us that meeting this style early changed the way they studied.
Below are ten original scenario questions our trainers wrote in the style of the current exam, each with the answer and a short explanation. They are not ASCM items, because ASCM does not release live questions. Use them to test your reasoning, then read the advice at the end about mock exams. For booking and scoring, see our guide to the CPIM exam in Saudi Arabia.
Ten CPIM practice questions
1. Master scheduling and available to promise
A Riyadh distribution center holds 120 units on hand. The master schedule shows one receipt of 200 units in week 3. Customer orders already booked are 40 in week 1, 30 in week 2 and 60 in week 3. Using discrete available to promise, how many units can sales promise from the current on hand quantity?
A. 50 units
B. 80 units
C. 120 units
D. 140 units
Answer: A. Discrete available to promise takes the on hand quantity and subtracts the booked orders falling before the next scheduled receipt. That is 120 minus 40 minus 30, which leaves 50. The 200 unit receipt in week 3 supports a separate available to promise figure of 140 for that period.
2. Material requirements planning
An item has a two week lead time and is planned lot for lot. Gross requirements are 500 units in week 5. Projected on hand is 150 units and there is a scheduled receipt of 100 units in week 4. When should the planned order be released, and for how much?
A. Week 5 for 250 units
B. Week 3 for 250 units
C. Week 3 for 500 units
D. Week 4 for 350 units
Answer: B. Net requirement is 500 minus 150 on hand minus the 100 scheduled receipt, which is 250. Lot for lot means the order equals the net requirement, and the two week lead time offsets the release back from week 5 to week 3.
3. Safety stock and service level
A planner is asked to raise the target service level on a stable, fast moving item from 95 percent to 99 percent. Demand variability and lead time are unchanged. What should the planner expect?
A. Safety stock rises by roughly the same proportion as the service level
B. Safety stock rises sharply, because the service factor grows faster as you approach 100 percent
C. Cycle stock rises and safety stock stays flat
D. The reorder point is unaffected
Answer: B. The relationship between service level and safety stock is not linear. The last few percentage points cost a disproportionate amount of inventory, which is the argument planners need when a sales director asks for 99 percent on every item.
4. Order quantity behavior
Annual demand for a purchased component increases fourfold. Ordering cost per order and holding cost per unit stay the same. What happens to the economic order quantity?
A. It stays the same
B. It doubles
C. It quadruples
D. It halves
Answer: B. The economic order quantity varies with the square root of annual demand. Four times the demand gives twice the order quantity, so the number of orders per year rises rather than the order size exploding. This one appears in some form on almost every practice paper.
5. Sales and operations planning strategy
A plant in Jubail faces strong seasonal demand but wants to keep a stable, trained workforce and avoid hiring and releasing operators every year. Which production strategy fits best?
A. Chase strategy
B. Level strategy
C. Make to order with no finished stock
D. Postponement
Answer: B. A level strategy holds production steady and absorbs the seasonal swing with inventory. The trade is higher carrying cost in return for workforce stability, which is usually the right call where skilled operators are hard to replace.
6. Bills of material and dependent demand
Product A requires two units of subassembly B. Each B requires three units of component C. A firm order for 100 units of A is placed. There is no stock of A or B, and 150 units of C are on hand. What is the net requirement for C?
A. 600 units
B. 450 units
C. 300 units
D. 750 units
Answer: B. One hundred units of A need 200 of B, and 200 of B need 600 of C. Subtract the 150 units on hand and the net requirement is 450. Candidates who pick A have forgotten to net against inventory, which is the single most common slip we see in class.
7. Capacity planning
A master scheduler wants to check whether a proposed master production schedule is realistic before running material requirements planning. Which technique applies?
A. Rough cut capacity planning against critical resources
B. Capacity requirements planning against every work center
C. Input and output control on the shop floor
D. Resource planning at the production plan level
Answer: A. Rough cut capacity planning tests the master production schedule against a handful of key resources such as bottleneck machines, skilled labor or a critical supplier. Capacity requirements planning comes later and works from planned orders, so it cannot validate the schedule beforehand.
8. Inventory classification
An analysis of a warehouse in Dammam shows that 20 percent of the items account for about 75 percent of annual usage value. How should cycle counting be set up?
A. Count every item with the same frequency
B. Count the high value items most often and the low value items least often
C. Count only the items with the highest unit price
D. Stop cycle counting and rely on an annual physical count
Answer: B. ABC analysis ranks items by annual usage value, not by unit price or quantity. A items get the most frequent counts because errors there distort the plan most, while C items can be counted rarely without much risk.
9. Distribution requirements planning
A central distribution center in Riyadh replenishes branch warehouses in Jeddah and Dammam. The planner wants a method that anticipates what the branches will need rather than reacting once they order. What does distribution requirements planning use?
A. Historical shipments from the central distribution center
B. Time phased net requirements at each branch, exploded back to the central distribution center
C. A fixed reorder point at the central distribution center only
D. Equal allocation of available stock across the branches
Answer: B. Distribution requirements planning works like material requirements planning across a network. Each branch calculates its own time phased net requirements, and those planned orders become gross requirements at the level above, so the central site sees demand before it lands.
10. Constraints and throughput
A production line has four sequential workstations with hourly capacities of 120, 90, 140 and 110 units. Where should the operations manager invest to raise line output?
A. The first workstation, because it feeds the line
B. The second workstation, at 90 units per hour
C. The third workstation, because it has the most capacity to build on
D. Spread the investment evenly across all four
Answer: B. Output is set by the constraint, so the line can only produce 90 units per hour no matter what the other stations can do. Adding capacity anywhere else just builds work in process in front of the bottleneck.
How to actually use practice questions
Most candidates use practice questions as a scoreboard. Treat them as a diagnostic instead.
- Log every wrong answer by topic, not by question. Three misses in inventory means a concept gap, and reading three explanations will not close it.
- Say out loud why the three wrong options are wrong. If you cannot, you guessed correctly rather than answered correctly.
- Time yourself from the start. The paper gives 150 questions in 3.5 hours, roughly 84 seconds each, and candidates who never practice under a clock run out of time late in the paper.
- Do calculations on paper rather than in your head. The habit protects you from careless arithmetic under pressure.
Where to get full mock exams
For a realistic full length mock, the ASCM Learning System is where we send candidates first, because its practice tests follow the same content outline as the exam. Check what is included on the official ASCM CPIM page. Free question banks scattered around the internet are a mixed bag, and many still follow the retired version 8.0 outline.
Our own CPIM certification training includes timed mocks and a debrief where we work through the reasoning, which is the part self study usually misses. For the wider revision plan, our article on passing CPIM on the first attempt sets out a week by week schedule, and our CPIM course in Riyadh page lists the next intakes.
Frequently asked questions
Are these real CPIM exam questions?
No. ASCM does not publish live exam items, and anyone selling real questions is selling something they should not have. These ten were written by our trainers to match the style and reasoning of the current exam.
How many practice questions should I do before the CPIM exam?
Quality matters more than volume. As a rough guide, aim for 600 to 800 questions across your revision plus two or three full length timed mocks, and review every miss until you can explain why the other options fail.
How many questions are on the CPIM exam and how long do I get?
At the time of writing the exam is 150 questions in 3.5 hours, with a portion of those unscored pretest items mixed in. Results are reported on a scaled range of 200 to 350 and 300 is the pass mark. Confirm the current details on the ASCM website before you book.
Do practice questions still apply after the move to CPIM version 9.0?
The reasoning does, and so do the mechanics such as available to promise, netting logic and constraint thinking. What changed on 1 June 2026 is the structure of the content areas. Check that any question bank you buy is written for the current version.
What score do I need on practice tests before booking the exam?
We tell our candidates in Saudi Arabia to look for a steady 75 percent or better on timed full length mocks, with no single content area far behind the rest. A high average hiding one weak area is the pattern that most often produces a narrow fail.
