Summary Literature Seminar week 4

Question 1

To what extent could the five key performance objectives contribute negatively to the sustainability of operations process?

Answer 1

Quality: Might affect a lot of waste of the producer
Dependability: Counting on that the products arrive
Speed: Unnecessary transportation
Cost: unnecessary purchases of tools and machines that will consume energy in vain.
Flexibility: Choices of food to produce which could affect more products to control

Question 2

Differences if internal or external view is applied on five key objectives

Answer 2

External: What is important to me as a customer
• Cost – minimum price, highest value
• Dependability – dependable delivery
• Flexibility – frequent new products, maximum choice
• Quality – error-free products and services
• Speed – Quick delivery

Internal: What is important to the company 
• Cost – minimum cost, maximum value
• Dependability – reliable operations
• Flexibility – ability to change
• Quality – error-free processes
• Speed – Fast throughput

Question 3

Sustainable OM, production and operations management (kleindorfer, 2005) outlines areas of integration between OM and sustainability. Provide examples of sustainability initiatives associated to the sub-areas.

Answer 3

Green product and process development:
Investing in sustainability give a lot of uncertainties. First mover advantage, modular design. Identifying and managing environmental impacts are now prioritised in OM.

Lean and green operation:
OM ties to use lean concepts to add green metrics to the measure of excellence. Can aid productivity and increase revenue. Changing products and processes is costly.

Remanufacturing and Closed-loop supply chain:
Life cycle of a product. Reverse supply chain starts when customer returns a product and ends when the company has recovered its maximum value. Returned products part can be used again/remanufactured=close loop supply chain.
This fosters sustainability and increase profitability. positive effects in employment.

Question 4

Comparison store vs online in 4V and Key performance Objectives

Answer 4

Low- Volume- High
High- Variety- Low
High- Variation in Demand- Low
High- Visability- Low

Store has lower volume than online since there is a dependability that what you order online should exist. However the variety in stor is higher, since they should be more flexible with what the customer want. Variation in demand could be higher in store since the customer should be able to choose and feel, with gives certain quality. Visibility is higher in stor since customer expect to see what he/she wants. should be easy to find.

Question 5

Suggest one key performance objective that is useful and suitable for the online process. Motivate with process charatersistics (4V)

Answer 5

Flexibility - Should be able to both give what customer wants and customer should be able to return product as well.