Midterm Review Flashcards
operations strategy
setting broad policies and plans for using the production resources (operations function) to support the firm’s long term competitive strategy
- a pattern of decision-making
-reflected by competitive priorities & operations decisions
competitive priorities in operations strategy
-cost
-quality
–superior
–consistent
-delivery
–delivery speed
–product development speed
-flexibility
–customization
–variety
trade offs
-traditionally, they occur in providing:
–lowest cost (highest efficiency)
–high variety (different products/services)
–rapid delivery (least time to fulfill orders)
-operations processes usually make some degree of sacrifice in these areas to achieve better results in others
-new tech and approaches can help to mitigate the degree of trade-off
key operations management decisions: product/service design
what is offered to customers and how is it designed or delivered
key operations management decisions: quality management
how is quality defined (eg, superior performance and consistency) and what practices are implemented to achieve the desired quality level (eg, total quality management)
process capacity design
what activities are incl to produce a product and how are they performed (eg, job shop, assembly line)? how many units can be produced and when is more capacity needed
location selection
where should facilities be built (eg, domestic vs foreign) and should there be multiple or just one
layout design
how should the facility be arranged
HR and job design
how many employees needed and what skill level
supply chain management
who should our suppliers be, what is the supplier relationship, and how do we evaluate our suppliers
inventory
when should inventory be ordered (eg, after a time period or at certain levels)
scheduling
when do we produce the product (eg, make to order vs make to stock)
maintenance
when do we maintain the equipment (eg, repair as required or preventive maintenance)
process strategy
-determining how to produce a product or provide a service
-follows a continuum
project
-unique output for each iteration
-very high variety (so only key resources like managers, key personnel) are maintained over time, other resources rented
-reliance on skilled workers
job shop
eg. cake line
-low volume, high variety - highly customized
-produces products according to customer specification
-non specialized equipment (ie, general purpose)
-make to order
-less automation (ie, more training)
-easy to measure capacity (depending on availability of workers)
batch process
-eg, pastry line
-relatively stable product line, produced in periodic batches
-products created to producers specifications
-moderate volume
-moderate automation/ simple automation
-limited specialization equipment; can still be used on a variety of outputs
-moderate flexibility
-capacity change capability is moderate
line flow
-high volume;
-low variety (standard, repeat products
-facilities often assembly lines; tend to be characterized by modules
-sequence process
-highly specialized equipment; workers may have narrow skills
-make to stock
continuous flow
-few or one product (lowest variety)
-very high volume
-typically commodity products
-long continuous flows; few changeover req; difficult & expensive to start and stop the process
-highly capital intensive
-very high automation
-non custom
-low flexibility
-difficult to expand/change capacity
