Operations management

This chapter introduces the role and objectives of operations management and relates them to the organization's strategic plan.Topics covered will include: the role of the operations in the organization's strategic plans; how the contribution of operations to the organization's competitiveness can be assessed; the meaning of the five performance objectives for operations -quality, speed, dependability, flexibility and cost; the internal and external benefits which an operation can derive from excelling in each of its objectives. Chapter Operations StrategyThis chapter looks ahead to formulate the operation strategy within the overall strategic decision making in the organization.The chapter looks at the types of decisions, which an operation will have to take in order to establish the content of operations strategy.It will examine the strategy hierarchy of which operations strategy is a part and will demonstrate how performance objectives will have different priorities depending upon the organization's customers, competitors and the position of its products and services on their life cycle. Chapter Design in Operations ManagementThis chapter covers the basic principles of both the design of products and services and the design of the processes, which create them.The design principles will be related to an organisation's customers, as well as its competitors.Topics covered will include: the nature and purpose of the design activity in operations; the way in which the purpose of the design activity must always be to satisfy customers and the way in which products, services and processes are designed; how design can be considered to be a decision-making process. Chapter Design of the Operations NetworkThis chapter helps managers to understand the nature of operations networks and the concept of the 'supply-side' and the 'demand-side' parts of the network.It will examine the advantages of taking a network perspective in making strategic design decisions.It will also help to determine the extent to which an operation chooses to be 'vertically integrated' into the network, the location of each operation within the network, and the capacity of each part of the network. Chapter The Nature of Planning and ControlThis chapter introduces the nature of demand and supply and provides an overview of the principles and methods of planning and control and examines the influence of volume and variety on planning and control.It also provides specialist tools to planning and control in project environments. Chapter Supply Chain Planning and ControlThis chapter goes beyond the strategic and structural issues of designing supply networks presented in Topic 4 and considers the more 'infrastructural' issues of planning and controlling the 'strands' in the supply network.Topics covered will include: definitions of purchasing, physical distribution management, logistics, materials management and supply chain management; purchasing and supplier development; integration of the organization's functions through logistics and materials management; integration of organizations through supply chain management. E-commerce and Operations ManagementThis chapter continues from Chapter 6 and features on e-commerce and the Internet purchasing (e-procurement).In particular, it looks at how operations Chapter managers can use e-commerce and Internet purchasing to improve their operations.Topics covered will include: Economics of e-commerce, security in the e-commerce environment, e-procurement, technologies in services, information sciences in operations (transaction processing, management information systems and artificial intelligence), and scheduling and logistics improvement.A wide variety of examples of business-to-business electronic commerce illustrate the importance of this topic. Chapter Operations ImprovementThis chapter looks at how managers can make their operation perform better, how they can stop it failing, and how they can bring their improvement activities together.Topics covered will include: how operations can measure their performance in terms of the five performance objectives -quality, speed, dependability, flexibility and cost; the principles and stages of benchmarking; the way in which operations managers can quantify the importance of their significant competitive factors and their achieved performance using the importance-performance matrix; the business process re-engineering (BPR) approach to improvement; and the two contrasting improvement strategies of continuous and breakthrough improvement. Chapter Waiting Line Models for Service ImprovementThis chapter focuses on operating systems of service organizations.The chapter looks at how managers can reduce waiting time since waiting takes place in virtually every productive process or service.Topics covered will include: elements of a waiting line, the calling population, the arrival rate, service times, queue disciple and length, waiting line analysis and quality, and the single-channel, single-phase and multiple-channel, single-phase models. Chapter Project based Management TodayThis chapter covers the basics of project management and relates it to the broader operations management concepts covered in other chapters.Topics covered will include: project life cycle; project management bodies of knowledge and competencies; five functions of project management (scope, organization, time, cost, quality); project teams; project planning and control; work breakdown structures, Gannt, CPM and PERT charts; project management information systems. Chapter Project based Management FuturesThis chapter looks ahead to examine the implications of the evolution from hierarchical to flat projectised organizations.It will also examine the new paradigms of 'critical chain' versus the traditional 'critical path' approach to project scheduling.It finally examines how service organisations can benefit from the 'traditional' project management techniques. Chapter The Operations ChallengeThe last chapter in operations management looks into the challenges of operations strategy formulation from an international perspective and how the decisions resulting from operations strategies have an ethical dimension.It also examines the need for creativity in devising operations strategies and finally the challenge of implementing the chosen strategies are discussed. What you will needSuggested study time Textbook 5 hours Activities and exercises 2 hours Total 7 hours Other resources: Suggested readings 4 hours 4 Activity 1.2 -CASE PROBLEM Value-Added Operations at Lands' End Lands' End, headquartered in Dodgeville, Wisconsin, is the largest speciality catalogue company in the United States.The company's products include casual and tailored clothing for men, women, and children, shoes and accessories, soft luggage, and items for bedrooms and bathrooms.Fast, efficient operations allow Lands' End to offer convenient at-home shopping of quality merchandise at competitive prices.Lands' End catalogues are known for descriptive product narratives that tell customers everything they could want to know about a garment and its construction.The company's toll-free phone lines for sales and customer service are open twenty-four hours a day, 364 days a year.More than 1000 phone lines handle about 50 000 calls each day--almost 100 000 calls daily in the weeks prior to Christmas.Eighty-five percent of all orders are placed by phone.In-stock orders leave Land's End's Dodgeville distribution Center (a structure the size of sixteen football fields) the day after they are received.Standard delivery is two business days anywhere within the continental United States.Lands' End works directly with some of the best fabric mills and manufacturers in the world.Garments are produced to Land's End's own quality specifications, not to less stringent industrywide specifications.In addition to its booming U.S. business, the company now does business in 75 countries, with facilities or special licensing agreements in Canada, the United Kingdom, Japan, and Germany.The Land's End philosophy is outlined in its eight "Principles of Doing Business."Principle 1: We do everything we can to make our products better.We improve material, and add back features and construction details that others have taken out over the years.We never reduce the quality of a product to make it cheaper.Principle 2: We price our products fairly and honestly.We do not, have not, and will not participate in the common retailing practice of inflating mark-ups to set up a future phoney "sale".Principle 3: We accept any return, for any reason, at any time.Our products are

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