Operations Management
f 1,000–1,200 words Details: Weekly tasks or assignments (Individual or Group Projects) will be due by Monday and late submissions will be assigned a late penalty in accordance with the late penalty policy found in the syllabus. NOTE: All submission posting times are based on midnight Central Time. You are a new member of the operations team of a midsize manufacturing company with 500 employees. The decision makers at your manufacturing plant are struggling to meet production performance levels. After evaluating the company’s performance level problems, you quickly realize that the company did not follow a standardized operations management process. The operations manager and the warehouse manager are the key decision makers in your business unit. They have asked for your assistance in presenting the benefits of incorporating a standardized operations management process. Draft a business memo to the operations manager and warehouse manager of 1,000–1,200 words, outlining the following: • How can your company apply operations management (OM)? • Discuss 2 examples of how OM is used to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of business operations. • Discuss the purpose of OM and how it could improve things like production, quality assurance, resource management, and customer stratification. • Use APA, 6th edition format for all citations and reference
Operations Management
Name:
Institution
Introduction
This is an analytical study of the various underlying factors that are at play in the company. While most of the employees have been working hard to see to the success of the company, the production performance levels have not been achieved, and it is from this great concern that the company tasked the operations team with analyzing the causes of the same. Hence, this paper shall indicate the options the company has in applying operations management and the various ways the options can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the business operations. Finally, the last section of the paper shall cover the ways operations management can improve production, quality assurance, resource management, and customer stratification.
Application of Operations Management
Because the company is not an independent entity in the market, when it comes to apply operations management in the company, references and comparison shall be done with other mid-sized companies which have made use of such a system (Murthy, 2005). However, while making the said reference caution must be taken to ensure that the model is not one derived from large companies. This is because most of them are generic and would require a lot of customizations and if not done well could lead to the crippling of the company or its failure altogether. Hence, the best operations management option should be that based on medium sized companies like this one.
Examples – Use of Operations Management
One example of how operations management can be used to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the company is via automation of the production line. This process would allow the number of workers in those stations to be reduced since most of the work shall be done by the machines. However, there should be no worries about anyone losing their job because those relieved from the production line, shall be absorbed into other sections of productions. That is, routines jobs shall be left for the machines while the workers shall concentrate more on high level tasks which cannot be done by the machines (Mahadevan, 2010). This means that, there will be savings in terms of operations costs because things to do with shifts will be a thing of the past since most of the work will be done by machines.
Another example that is related to automation is the use of automated machines which shall ensure production rates become faster i.e. the time it takes to produce a unit of the product will be reduced. This is because, with such machines in the inspection section, the turnover rate will improve. Thus the improved production, inspection and packaging rate will translate into a faster rate of incoming raw materials (Jones & Robinson, 2012). As a result, the suppliers of the raw materials will need to deliver the said resources in bulk as opposed to small qualities before causing reduced charges of acquiring the same.
Purpose of Operation Management
The purpose of operations management in the company is to increase the general performance of the company by improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the production process. The end results as postulated would be to ensure that these measures stir up the company’s position in the market and give the company a competitive advantage over its rivals. While the same cannot be achieve...