Introduction to Operations Management. Business & Marketing Essay

Introduction to Operations Management
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Introduction to Operations Management
Question 1
Explain the concerns of any FIVE of the kinds of stakeholders connected with a business.
The customers form an essential part of the stakeholders since they purchase the goods or services offered. Quality thus becomes a primary concern for customers who expect both high-quality products and services in addition to excellent customer service. This determines customer loyalty and retention to the business in the long run.
Employees depend on the business for income and benefits that enable them to support themselves. Therefore, concerns on the sufficiency of such income and benefits determine the amount of motivation and loyalty to the business by employees. More so, the working conditions must be conducive to encourage optimum working from the employees at all times.
Apart from that, investors stake the finances as capital for the business hence, a major concern lies in the return of investment. The business losing money affects their ability to invest further in the company due to the increased risk.
Suppliers provide goods and services to the business and assist in helping the company meet its obligations to other parties. As a result, suppliers need constant cash flow since they depend on the business for survival. Delayed payment of contracts thus raises significant concerns for suppliers and vendors.
Lastly, communities surrounding the business play an essential role in supporting the business. Consequently, the impact of the business on the environment, job creation, and economic development affect the community. Therefore, the lack of investment by the business into the community in terms of human resources and economic development may raise concerns for communities (Carroll et al., 2017).
Describe Porter's Cost and Differentiation strategies for the manufacture of a product
Porter's cost refers to a company's ability to create economies of scale through the employment of efficient operations to reduce the cost of the product to consumers. As a result, such companies must exploit any cost advantages to sustain production to command the prices in the industry. On the other hand, differentiation refers to the uniqueness of a company's product in a given market niche (Tanwar, 2013). In this case, the company can concentrate on specific attributes of the consumers and position itself accordingly to meet such demands.
Explain order-winning and order-qualifying criteria as put forward by Hill
Order-qualifying criteria refer to the minimum characteristics of products that enable them to be considered by consumers in a given market. In this case, such criteria must be met to stay afloat by maintaining the standards of the competitors. On the other hand, order-winning criteria refer to the traits that push consumers to purchase the product. This means that such a company must be better than competitors to guarantee the sale of the product or service (Hill, 1995).
Question 2
Explain with examples the concepts of Quality, Flexibility, Dependability, and Speed
Quality refers to the conformation of the product or service to standards or specifications. More so, clients must be satisfied with it and believe that they received value for their money. For instance, a product should perform exceptionally well as intended without any unexpected problems as guaranteed.
On the other hand, flexibility allows the business to configure their production to meet changing demands effectively. For example, the development of a new product requires changes in the operations to produce them without affecting other areas of production.
Dependability requires consistency of the product at all times with regard to quality factors, cost factors, and time-dependent factors. Consumers should be able to use their products without any unexpected failures over their expected lifetime. This means that once a consumer buys a product such as a television, it should function appropriately without the need for constant service and repairs.
Finally, speed requires a business to develop and deliver products in a timely manner. Therefore, the process of development, production, and delivery should minimize the waiting time to ensure that consumers are always able to access the products as required in the market. More so, higher production speeds are likely to increase satisfaction rates by customers, increasing loyalty (Wood, 2019).
Explain the effect of volume and variety in selecting a mode of production
The higher volume dimension in a business ensures that tasks are repeatable and systematic, thus increasing the outputs while reducing the overall unit cost of the product. This ensures that the company can continually produce more goods and services through proper organization. In production, companies involved in fast food require this dimension of business due to the large quantities of consistent products required at all times (Deif & ElMaraghy, 2017).
The variety dimension enables a company to choose on the specificity of the product or service provided. With increased variety, the business incurs more costs due to the customization aspect. However, reduced variety requires the employment of fixed strategies in production that reduce costs but offer less variety of products/services (Deif & ElMaraghy, 2017). In this case, mass production offers benefits to the company due to the shallow level of variety in production.
With respect to volume and variety and the likely types of equipment used, compare job-shop manufacturing and flow-line manufacturing.
Flow-line manufacturing is mostly used by high-volume companies that require consistent production techniques. This enables a highly automated process that increases production capabilities due to the repetitive nature of the jobs. In this case, this enables higher volume production of the same product but restricts flexibility.
On the other hand, job-shop manufacturing involves loosely planned products that can move across the factory with regard to the functionality of the processes. This means that production is easily flexible, thus enabling the business to provide a variety of products as required by the market (Deif & ElMaraghy, 2017). However, this reduces the ability to automate due to the different processes involved and problems in scheduling.
Question 3
Explain the three performance measures Throughput, Inventory, and Operating Expense
Throughput refers to the net revenue that a business may make from the o...