Ch 2 book: competitiveness, strategic planning, and productivity Flashcards
Competitiveness
the ability and performance of an organization in the market compared to other organizations that offer similar goods or services
Strategy
the long-term plans that determine the direction an organization takes to become (or remain) competitive
Strategic planning
the managerial process that determines a strategy for the organization
implements it through allocation of resources and action plans
mission, vision, and values can be very important for this in some organizations
productivity
a measure of productive use of resources
key purchasing criteria
The major factors influencing a purchase:
price
quality
variety
timeliness
In complex purchases, customers may use which two categories of purchasing criteria?
order qualifiers
order winners
order qualifiers
the purchasing criteria that customers perceive as minimum standards of acceptability for purchase
order winners
the purchasing criteria that cause the selling organization to be perceived as better than the competition
competitive priorities
The importance given to operations
characteristics:
cost
quality
flexibility
delivery
cost
the unit production cost of a good or a service to the organization
quality from an organization’s perspective
determining customers’ quality requirements
translating these into specifications for goods or services
consistently producing goods or services to these specifications
flexibility from an organization’s perspective
being able to produce a variety of goods or services
also includes customization
Delivery reliability and speed from an organization’s perspective
being able to consistently and promptly meet promised due dates by producing/delivering goods or services on time and quickly
quantity flexibility
the ability to increase or decrease the production quantity of goods or services
Strategic planning process
- starts with top management soliciting the performance of current strategy from stakeholders
- commissioning a market research study of the industry and where it is headed in the next five years or so
- the management team may form/adjust the organization’s mission and vision, determine a set of goals and objectives, and brainstorm and evaluate alternative ways (strategies) to achieve them
- the chosen strategy is implemented by determining a set of action plans at the department level
mission
where the organization is going now
its products
its markets
goals and objectives
Vision
where the organization desires to be in the future
Values
the shared beliefs of the organization’s stakeholders
should drive everything else such as culture, mission/vision, and strategy
Tactics
medium-term plans used as components of a strategy
more specific in nature than a strategy
they provide guidance for determining policies and carrying out an action plan
action plan
a medium- or short-term project to accomplish a specific objective
contains a deadline and the resources needed
assigned to an individual or a team
the hierarchy of strategic planning
is from top to bottom
Mission/Vision
Organizational strategy
functional strategies
tactics
policies and action plans
The difficulty of implementing a strategy depends on what?
its scale (size)
complexity (the parts of the organization it affects)
uncertainty (how novel it is)
Operations strategy
a set of well coordinated policies, objectives, and action plans
directly affects the operations function
this is aimed at securing along-term sustainable advantage over the competition
operations’ objectives/performance measures are usually determined in which terms of competitive priorities? what must be made among these priorities? why?
cost
quality
delivery
flexibility
trade-offs must be made
because operations cannot excel in all of them simultaneously
