Lecture 6: Operations Strategy Flashcards
What is Operations Managment? (OM)
→ OM is about the Management of the processes that produce or deliver goods and services
- not every company has debartmend calles “operations” but everyone untertakes OP AC cause they produce/deliver goods/services
- OP manager has responsbility for managing resources involed in those procesess
What are the three type of transformed ressources in OM?
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Materials
- can be transformed physically (e.g. manufacturing)
- by location (e.g. transportation)
- ownership (retail)
- storage (warehousing -
Information
- can by transformed by property (e.g. accountants)
- by possesion (e.g. market research)
- by storage (e.g. libraries)
- location (telecommunication) -
Customers
- can be transformed physically (hairdresser)
- by storage (hotels)
- location (airlines)
- physiological state (hospitals)
- psychological state (entertainment)
What is a strategy?
→ Strategy is the direction and the scope of an organisation over the long term
Ideally which matches its ressources to its changing environment, and in particular its markets, customers or clients to meet stakeholder expectations
What are the 3 levels of strategy?
-
Corporate level strategy
- at highest or corporate level the strategy provides long-range guidance for the whole organisation -
Business Level Strategy
- concern is with the products/services that should be offered in the market defined at the corporate level -
Functional Level Strategy
- functions of the business (e.g. operations, marketing, finance) make long range plans which support competitive advantage by the business strategy
What is the Scope of OPS?
→ purpose of an OPS is to interpret the overall business strategy, which will be concerned with goals (e.g. growth/profitability), into goals that direct how operations will be managed
How can Operations Contribute to (Bus.Corp.) Strategy? What are the four stages/levels of Contribution?
- Stage 1: Internal Neutrality (reach minimum standard)
- OP functions has little contribution to competitive success and is seen a barrier to beeter performance (seen not so important)
- Stage 2: External Neutrality (
- OP functions begins to focus on comparing its performance with competitor organisations
- Stage 3: Internally Supportive
- operations function is one of the best in their market area aspires to be the best in market
- Stage 4: Externally Supportive
- OP become central to strategy making and provide foundation for future competitive success
What the perfomance objectives to measure the OP performance in achieving strategic goals?
- Quality
- Speed (Time)
- Dependability (Time)
- Flexibility
- Cost
Describe the Quality as part of measuring OP performance
→ Quality covers both quality of design of product/service itself and quality of process that delivers the product/service
→ from customer side quality includes reliability, performance and astethtics
→ from OP side quality is related how closely the product/service meets the specifications required by desing, termed the quality performance
Describe Speed (Time) as a performance measuring tool
→ speed is the time delay between a customer request for a product or service and then receriving the product/service
→ AC triggered from a customer request of a product/service is dependend whether the is make-to-stock or customer-to-order delivery systems is in place
→ advantage of speed is that it can be used to reduce costs and delivery time leading to better customer service
What is Dependability (Time) as a OP perfomance measurement
Def: refers to consitstently meeting a promised delivery time for a product or service to a customer
→ increase only helps if its produced in a consistent manner
→ measured by the percentage of customers who get their product/service withing the time promised
-sometimes its better to deliver on time (e.g. wet concrete for construction)
→ leads to a better customer service when customer can trust p/s is delivered when expected
What is Flexibility in terms of OP performance measurment?
Def: ability of the organisation to change what it does.
4 types can be identified:
- p/s: ability to quickly act in response to changing customer needs with new p/s designs (e.g changing the assembly line)
- mix: ability to provide a wide range of p/s (e.g. offering different cars on same assembly line)
- volume: ability to decrease/increase output in response to changes in demand
- delivery: ability to react to changes in timing of delivery
→ flexibility can be measured in terms of range (amount of the change from customer) and response (speed of the change of respond from customer)
Discuss the difference between range and response flexibility for the 4 types of flexibility
What is Cost in terms of OP performance measurement?
Def: Cost is the finance required to obtain inputs (e.g. transforming and fransformed resources) to manage the transformation process which produces finished p/s
→ is comany is competing on price, then its essential to keep cost below competion. With that they either make more profit if price is equal or gain market share if price is lower
→ also important to provide p/s to a market niche, which competitor cannot provide. (e.g luxury products)
What are Internal (operations) benefits 1) and External (market) benefits 2) can have form the 5 performance measurements
Quality:
1) Error-free process
2) Satisfying customer needs
Dependability
1) Minimize disruption
2) Meeting delivery commitments
Speed
1) Maximizes throughput
2) Get p/s to customers fast
Flexibilty
1) able to react to change
2) offer frequent new p/s, a wird p/s range and cope with changing volume and delivery requirements
Cost
1) High productivity from low cost
2) Market shar and/or high margin
From what perspectives can OS be seen/aranged from?
-
Market-based approach to OS make decision regarding the market and its customer in the market. The market position is translate to criterias that have to be accomplished to fullfill the need of the market
→ you have to make investement in terms of plants/production -
Ressource-based looks inside-out of the firm, rather then outside-in. A research of the operations tangible and intangible ressources/processes offer a view of the operations capability
→ investments in terms of marketing strategies
What is the OP strategy alignment?
→ Market requirements and OP Capability have to be in alignment to each other (company has to be in Line of fit)
- consquences if you are not on the line.
→ if one side is more apparent then you make investment from the other approach to reach the Line of fit again
What is Hills framework about OP strategy ?
→ Hill proposes that finding the Fit is part of the business level in terms of meeting corporate/strategic goals
- iterativ framewokr linking corporate objectives (organisational direction), the marketing strategy (defines how company competes in certain market) and operations strategy (provides capability to compete in those markets)
5 Steps:
- Define corporate objectives
- Determing marketing strategies to meet corporate objectives
- Asses how different product win orders against competitors
- Establish the most apporpriate mode to deliver these sets of products
- Provide infrastructure required to support operations
→ more on the market side approach