Lecture 6 - Operations management and operations strategy Flashcards
What are operations as a function?
- the part of the org that creates and delivers goods and services for external customers
- Production
- Delivery
- Customer service
What are operations as an activity?
- the management of process within any of the org’s functions
- HR process
- Financial reporting process
- Marketing proccesses
How do operations impact on three performance levels?
- Societal level (operations sustainability)
- Strategic level
- Operational level
What is operations management?
- Activity of managing resources that create and deliver services and products
- set of activities that creates value in form of goods and services by transforming inputs into outputs
What do operations managers do?
- Directing (overall operations strategy)
- Designing (operation’s process and systems)
- Delivery (planning and controlling process delivery)
- Development (improving the process performance)
What is the Input-Process-Output (IPO) model?
Take inputs (transformed resources), transform them with the use of transforming resources to create an output
What are dominant transformed resource inputs?
- Materials
- Information
- Customers
What are processes in non-operations functions?
- Organisational function
- Key input
- Example process
- Primary outputs
- Customers of the output
What is a process hierarchy?
Analysing the supply network, operations, processes and job/performer levels of an org and how processes flow through them and their relation between each other
What factors affect how an operation should be designed, managed and improved?
- Volume of goods/ services produced
- Variety of different goods/services provided
- Variation in demand
- Visibility degree that customers have of the production process
What are implications of the four V’s?
- Position on 4Vs reflects underlying demand and decisions on how operations position
- Performance is contingent upon fit with the profile of demand
- Operations may need different processes to fit with different types of demand:
-Make-to-stock/make-to-order- Different client/customer groups
- Front office/ back office
What is operations strategy?
- Concerns the pattern of strategic decisions and actions that set the role, objectives and activities of the operation
- Longer term than operations management
What are examples of perspectives on operations strategy?
- Top-down perspective
- Resource capabilities perspective
- Bottom-up perspective
- Market requirement perspective
What are five generic operations performance objectives?
- Quality
- Speed
- Dependability
- Flexibility
- Cost
How do organisations compete in operations?
- Differentiation
- Cost leadership
- Responsiveness
What is the resource-based view of operations?
- Tangible or intangible
- Structure or infrastructure
- Potential long-term CA from resources that are:
- Scarce
- Not very mobile
- Difficult to imitate/ substitute
What is a systems view of resource capabilities?
- systems are goal oriented or purposive
- Systems consist of interconnected elements
- Interactions between the parts determine the overall behaviour of the system
- Alignment needed between system elements, components, objectives
- Control mechanisms used to achieve system objectives
What are the features of the PPTI framework?
- Process
- People
- Technology
- Information
What is alignment?
- Degree of ‘fit’ between operations resource capabilities and market requirements
What are the benefits of using an operations strategy matrix?
- Identify potential gaps or misalignment
- Identify areas for further analysis
- identify potential areas for improvement
- Identify potential trade-offs
