Operations and Projects Strategy Flashcards
What is Operations Strategy?
The pattern of decisions and actions that shapes the long-term vision, objectives and capabilities of the operation and its contribution to overall strategy
Operational vs Operations strategy
Operational means detailed, localised, short-term and day-to-day (Operations management is very much like this)
Operations strategy is concerned less with individual processes and more with the total transformation process
What are the four perspectives on Operations Strategy?
- Top-down Perspective (what the business wants operations to do)
- Market Requirements Perspective (what the market position requires operations to do)
- Bottom-up Perspective (what day-to-day experience suggests operations should do)
- Operations Resources Perspective (what operations resources can do)
What are the four elements of operations strategy?
- Top-down (operations must directly reflect the businesses overall strategy)
- Outside-In (Operations must provide the things that position the business in its markets)
- Bottom-up (Operations must get strategic advantage by learning from day-to-day experiences
- Inside-out (Operations must develop the strategic capabilities its operations resources and processes)
What are the two most common meanings of ‘Quality’?
Quality as the specification of a product or service
Quality as the conformance with which the product or service is produced
What does Quality do externally & internally?
Whatever the specification, producing it so it conforms consistently brings organisational benefits:
- Externally, it enhances the product or service in the market, or at least avoids customer complaints
- Internally, it prevents errors from causing disruption
What is Dependability?
It means the operation or process delivers its products and services when it promises to, it is important in many different types of organisation
What does Dependability do externally & internally?
Externally, it enhances the product or service in the market, and like quality, helps avoid customer complaints
Internally, it brings other benefits to the operation:
- it prevents late delivery slowing down throughput speed
- it prevents lateness causing disruption and wasted time and effort, therefore saving cost
What does flexibility mean when looking at operations strategy?
It has several meanings but is always associated with an operation’s ability to change:
- the products and services it brings to the market = PRODUCT/ SERVICE FLEXIBILITY
- the mix of products and services it produces at any one time = MIX FLEXIBILITY
- the volume of products and services it produces = VOLUME FLEXIBILITY
- the delivery time of its products and services = DELIVERY FLEXIBILITY
- how long an operation takes to change/ how much it can change = RESPONSE FLEXIBILITY
How can you reduce cost through internal effectiveness?
- HIGH QUALITY: reduce time wasted on redoing things
- FAST OPERATIONS: reduce level of in-process inventory and unnecessary overheads
- DEPENDABLE OPERATIONS: eliminate wasteful disruption and allow efficient operations
- FLEXIBLE OPERATIONS: adapt to changing circumstances quickly and without disrupting other operations
What are the five performance objectives?
- Quality
- Speed
- Dependability
- Flexibility
- Cost
What are the three common operational trade-offs?
Fast response vs Resource utilisation (cost)
Customisation vs Consistency
Cost reduction vs Service level
What are strategic reasons for project selection?
- To capture larger market share
- To make it difficult for competitors to enter the market
- To develop an enabler product, which by its introduction will increase sales in more profitable products
- To develop core technology that will be used in next-generation products
- To reduce dependency on unreliable suppliers
- To prevent government intervention and regulation
