Operation Strategy Flashcards
Define “trade-offs” and give an example
A trade-off is a negative relationship between two competitive targets. It could be e.g. flexibility aspects related to cost, or lead time vs cost in terms of WIP
In the article by Brown, he talks about ”traditional” and ”enlightened” companies.
- How does he describe them and in what way are they different?
- What are the consequences of being traditional or enlightened?
- The traditional companies focus on cost as their top priority and enlightened companies focus on satisfying the customers
Another difference is that enlightened companies make small incremental changes based on continuous improvement whilst traditional companies tend to do more drastic major investments
- The consequences relate to their differences.
eg enlightened will lower cost as a part of their customer focus. etc.
Dean & Bowen describes Quality Management (“Total Quality” in their article) as a set of principles, practices and techniques. Name the principles and give some examples of practices and techniques for each principle.
Customer focus:
Principle - Importance of fulfilling customer needs. Requires the whole organization to have customer focus.
Practices – Direct customer contact, collecting information about customer needs. Use the information for design and delivery.
Techniques - Customer surveys, QFD
Continuous improvement:
Principles – Customer satisfaction requires continuous improvement of processes that create products and services.
Practices – Process analysis, problem solving, PDCA
Techniques – Flowcharts, Fishbone diagrams, SPC
Teamwork
Principles – Customer focus and continuous improvement are best achieved by collaboration throughout the organization and by also including suppliers and customers.
Practices – Form various types of teams, group skill training
Principles – Organizational development, teambuilding methods
What is the difference between a 1st, 2nd and 3rd party audit?
The difference is related to who perform the audit.
1st = Internal 2nd = External, but within supply chain, eg is our supplier complying to our standrads? 3rd = We hire external personal to perform audit on us.
Why was Skinner upset in 1960?
He blamed American industry for the reduction in competitiveness by gradually having diminished the importance of production. Compare with the high status of production in the beginning of the 20th century, but in the 60ths production was not even represented in the company board rooms. USA had not taken care of talented researchers, such as Deming and Juran, who instead went to Japan and taught them how to improve production. This became more sever around 1965 when markets had become mature and industry had to go from mass production to enormous markets to competing and trying to sell over-production.
What is technophilia, and why may it become a problem?
Technophilia=the love of technology for its own sake
May become a problem because we may spend money on things that wont help us reach the actual goal. ( sub-optimizing)
“We’ve spent all this money and the plant is great from our engineers’ point of view but I’m not sure if we all understand it … I certainly don’t so I’m not sure how the whole company will benefit.”
What is the milestone effect?
When companies fail to recognize the relationship between manufacturing decisions and corporate strategy, they may become saddled with seriously noncompetitive production systems which are expensive and time-consuming to change.” In other words: lack of links between manufacturing and corporate strategies.
