Operation management - publié le 11/02/2010

Résumé du document

According to me, Operation management seems to be a complex and wide subject. Nonetheless, it is precise and very useful. Anyway, it has endured many changes during the past centuries. Operation management concerns every part of the consumption society. It is the link between all the different parts of the process within a firm that makes goods or services. Actually, the Operations Manager must always keep in mind the effectiveness and the efficiency of the different processes in the organization. His goal is to optimize those variables in the organization. It is important not to reduce Operation Management to the simplistic act of creating a good or service. After being created, the product must be designed, rearranged, such as the layouts, the inventory, etc. Therefore, the Operations Manager has to work with different services of its company such as the Account Department or the Marketing Department because the product must be conformed to lots of criteria and match the demand in order to make profits and remain competitive. For those reasons, Operations Management could appear complex to define because it is a vague and wide subject. Today, what are the changes and implications of the Operation Management?

Extraits

[...] Then we will treat the implications of the Operational Management. As a conclusion, I will finish with a short overview of the Operation Management and eventual solutions for the future. I-Operations management and its changes 1/What is Operation Management exactly? Operation management concerns every part of the consumption society. It is the link between all the different parts of the process within a firm that makes goods or services. Actually, the Operations Manager must always keep in mind the effectiveness and the efficiency of the different processes in the organization. [...]

[...] Fast foods suffer from this trend and tend to produce more products or healthy products such as salads and fresh fruits and vegetables. However, they have to deal with the issue that it is more expensive to produce, stock and sell those products so the Operations Managers have to solve the problem maybe in offshoring the working force. The Internet represents a great invention for Operations Managers. It enables the company to find more customers , to lower the transactions costs, to be more efficient and promote the product worldwide. [...]

[...] The Operations Manager has to take into account the country factors (political, economical, demographic, etc.), the region factors (Is the region appealing enough? What are the regulations? etc.) and, last but not the least, decide the location of the site ( accessibility, size, influence of the competitors, etc.). In fact, selecting a location is the most dangerous decision the Operations Manager can take: it could directly infer positively or negatively on the revenues of the firm. Moreover, it is current to find two competitors relatively close because they have targeted the same place. [...]

[...] The particular changes that have implications in OM Globalization Globalization enables Operations Managers to think worldwide. It has a huge implication in the changes in Operations Management because it enables more potential customers, more impact of the firm but it means also more competitors, various cultures (hence different customs and different buying approaches), etc. Due to globalization, the firm must readapt itself entirely. It must redefine everything: product, design, customers, buying approaches, place, price . In order to optimize this readjustment, Operations Manager must also be flexible. [...]

[...] But it seems that it is Taylor that has really invented the Operations Management in the early 1900s with the scientific management. Taylor thought that to improve work methods and productivity, the management was the key. He contributed to the reduction of costs and time and the improvement of production with Henry Gantt (who invented the Gantt Chart) and Lillian Gilbreth (who worked on the motion and time science). Then people like Henry Ford or Walter Shewhart focused their efforts on mass production. [...]