Unit 4- Operations Management

Question 1

What is creativity?

Answer 1

process of coming up with new ideas and solutions to problems

Question 2

What are the 3 main components of creativity?

Answer 2

expertise, creative thinking skills and motivation

Question 3

What are the 5 stages of creativity?

Answer 3

recognition, rationalisation, fantasising, realisation & validation

Question 4

What does Belbins team roles (1993) show?

Answer 4

Belbins team roles (1993) shows that different strengths & weaknesses make people contribute in different ways (thinking, action & people)

Question 5

What does Micheal Kirton’s adaption-innovation theory (1984) explore?

Answer 5

Micheal Kirton’s adaption-innovation theory (1984) explores that efficient teams must consist of high innovators (doing things differently) & high adaptors (doing things better)

Question 6

What is Innovation?

Answer 6

Innovation allows organisations to stay relevant in competitive markets, and increase profitability & growth rates. It s the successful exploitation of ideas & has to create value

Question 7

What are the 3 phases of innovation?

Answer 7

exploration, exploitation & diffusion

Question 8

What is value creations & value capture?

Answer 8

Value creations= benefits that a product/service offers customers, value capture= all activities undertaken by organisation to capture value

Question 9

What is disruptive innovation?

Answer 9

Disruptive innovation (low-end or new-market disruptions) are inventions that enable companies to create NEW markets or SIGNIFICANTLY ALTER existing ones

Question 10

What is open innovation?

Answer 10

Open innovation= use of external & internal ideas to market, advance their technology in order to create VALUE

Question 11

What are the 3 components that organisation is split into?

Answer 11

Marketing, Operations & Finance

Question 12

What is operations management?

Answer 12

Operations management is the activities, decisions & responsibilities of managing the production & delivery of products & services. It is concerned with managing the individual processes as efficiently & effectively as possible.

Question 13

What are the 2 types of inputs in the transformation process?

Answer 13

2 types of input: Transformed resources (e.g. information, materials, customers, knowledge) & transforming resources (e.g. facilities, staff, capital, machinery etc.)

Question 14

What do manufacturing firms produce?

Answer 14

Manufacturing firms produce physical goods e.g. cars or food products

Question 15

What do service firms produce?

Answer 15

Service firms produce non physical outputs e.g. medical & transportation services

Question 16

What are the 4 V’s of operations?

Answer 16

Volume, Variety, Variation, Visibility

Question 17

What does volume refer to?

Answer 17

low unit costs are most closely matched with volume (high volume= high repetition, low volume= low repetition)

Question 18

What does variety refer to?

Answer 18

Variety refers to how many types of a product are manufactured (low variety= routine, high variety= flexible)

Question 19

What does variation refer to?

Answer 19

Variation refers to how much the level of demand changes over time period due to external factors (low= stable/predictible, high= flexible, in touch with demand)

Question 20

What does visibility refer to?

Answer 20

Visibility refers to a customers ability to see & track their experience or order through operations process (low= low contact with customer, time lag between production & consumption, high= short waiting time, high contact with customer)

Question 21

What is the strategy hierarchy?

Answer 21

1) Corporate Strategy (Business to be in), 2) Business Strategy (Tactics to beat the industry), 3) Functional Strategy (Operation methods to implement tactics)

Question 22

What are 4 strategy operations approaches?

Answer 22

top-down (what business wants operations to do), bottom-up (what standard experience suggests operations should do), operations resources (what operations can do) & market requirement (what market position requires operations to do), pressure for firms to meet market requirements

Question 23

What are the 5 operations performance objectives?

Answer 23

speed, cost, dependability, flexibility & quality (TRADE-OFFS)

Question 24

What are order qualifiers?

Answer 24

Order Qualifiers is the basic criteria to allow products to be made available for purchase to customers, for firms to enter market

Question 25

What are order winners?

Answer 25

Order Winners: the criteria that differentiates the product & significantly contributes to winnings of the business (must be better than competitors), to stay in market

Question 26

What are the main activities of operations?

Answer 26

creating capacity (ability to yield output from resources), setting standards, materials/resources, scheduling, control

Question 27

What are the product quality dimensions?

Answer 27

Functionality- what the product does, Performance- how well the product does its job, Reliability- consistency of performance over time, Durability- how robust product is, customisation- how well product fits the needs, Appearance- how product looks

Question 28

What is total quality management (TQM)?

Answer 28

Total quality management (TQM) involves the entire organisation’s contribution to meeting customer needs, customer focus approach, aim- continuous incremental improvement

Question 29

What are the 4 stages of control?

Answer 29

setting performance targets & services, measuring actual performance, comparing with standards, acting to correct deviations or change objectives (then repeat)

Question 30

What are the 3 types of control?

Answer 30

Feedforward control (most desirable)- anticipates problems, Concurrent control- corrects problems as they occur, Feedback control- corrects problems after they occur

Question 31

What are tactics for control?

Answer 31

direct supervision, organisational structure, rules & procedures, management by objectives, control through machinery, human resource management control and values & belief

Question 32

What are the 4 perspectives of the Balanced Scorecard?

Answer 32

Customer perspective, Internal Business perspective, Financial perspective and Innovation & Learning perspective