CASE STUDY

TITLE Operations, Strategy and Operations Strategy

TOPIC How Organization Might Use Their Operations to Gain a Competitive

Advantage

NAME OF
STUDENT

CLASS
NUMBER

Case Study # 3

When compared to its competitors, a corporation's competitive advantage

permits specialized capabilities. Having a competitive edge can create greater value for
the firm and its shareholders. Market leadership can be preserved by maintaining a
consistent competitive advantage. Any company's profit margins and market control can
benefit from a competitive advantage. A competitive advantage is a differentiating
feature in a market that drives a company's profit. Creating and maintaining competitive
advantages attracts customers, assists in maintaining fair pricing, and fosters loyalty..

1. An airline

The growth of the airline business has increased competition among

stakeholders. According to experts, the only way to defeat this competition is to devise
an effective strategy. For instance, a company may devise a marketing strategy that will
yield positive results. Customers were attracted to the airline because of its low-cost
flights.

If the company is competitive enough to maintain a competitive advantage over

its competitors in the aviation business, progressive outcomes will undoubtedly be
recognized and occur. Strong management ability and appropriate leadership, on the
other hand, should be taken into account because they will serve as a guide to the
organization's proper course. A corporation can obtain a competitive advantage over its
industry competitors if it can keep its staff. The personnel of any airline is quite
influential, which draws more clients. Management is in charge of formulating policies
that will help the company achieve its mission and vision. Management is in charge of
managing the organization's human resources, as well as other resources, to ensuring
that limited resources are utilized to their full potential. Human capital is essential to any
company's success. As a result, they must be treated with dignity and respect.
Resources should be used properly to avoid waste. competitors in the industry

2. A hospital
In the healthcare industry, the concept of value-based healthcare was revolutionary,
altering hospital competitive analysis and strategic planning. In order to deliver more
value, hospitals are integrating primary (generalist) and specialty care into what are
known as integrated practice units (IPUs). Multidisciplinary teams, which include both
main and specialty groups, provide condition-specific care. This empowers individuals
throughout the treatment process, acknowledging that illnesses are typically multifaceted
and linked. IPUs and condition-focused care have also been found to improve
efficiencies and health outcomes (e.g., lower patient care costs, integrated scheduling,
and so on). In the hospital operations, they get a competitive advantage.
Patient Outcomes: To determine value, healthcare institutions can track and
measure a range of patient-centered quality metrics. Examples include patient-to-staff
ratios, patient complaints, and occupancy rates. Each hospital must first determine the
most critical indicators for its needs, then track and compare them to set benchmarks.
The results will serve as indicators of the value of care. Positive outcomes have a high
monetary value and can provide competitive advantages. High prices and inadequate
healthcare are typically linked to bad outcomes.
Cost: Instead of treating each service or department as a separate line item,
hospitals can use time-driven activity-based costing (TDABC). This calculates treatment
costs and resources as a patient moves through the care cycle. As a result, expenses
are more precisely recorded, leading to a better understanding and communication of
the true cost of care, as well as improved cost management capabilities for teams.

Monitoring outcomes and costs can reveal both strengths and areas for improvement.
Making strategic improvements to improve the value of care is another technique
hospitals use to get a competitive edge in cost, distinction, or both.

3. A university

Only by focusing on the quality of service offered to its clients, who include
students as the key customers, can educational institutions gain a competitive
advantage. Due to the poor quality of school education services, an educational
institution lacks a competitive advantage.

The education business is humming with fresh ideas and methods now more
than ever. Educational institutions must spend time, money, and labor wisely while
aiming to be the best schools and universities possible. Many advancements in
educational software have been produced to help institutions work smarter rather than
harder.

Educational institutions must keep an eye on the following developments to stay

competitive.
a) Business Intelligence- In the idea of "doing more with less," BI will be non-
negotiable in the future. KPIs and Benchmarks are the two basic categories of BI.
Education leaders can use key performance indicators (KPIs) to track elements
that are crucial to the operation of their company. Internally and publicly,
 benchmarking or assessing performance against specified reference points is
beneficial. Business intelligence (BI) can help schools identify and correct many
sorts of waste. The implementation of a computerized maintenance management
system reduces equipment downtime by 20.1 percent and increases productivity
by 28.3 percent. Real-time data will always provide you the most accurate picture
of your business.

b) Predictive Maintenance- Wouldn't it be wonderful if you had a system that could

evaluate your data and forecast future trends and issues? Predictive
maintenance (PdM) has such a thorough understanding of an organization's
assets that it can foresee problems and communicate with you before they occur,
allowing you to improve each asset's performance based on its specific needs.
Being able to rely on smart technology means huge increases in operational
efficiency. This is the cornerstone of PdM, equipment, and other assets that use
smart technology to anticipate their own problems.
c) Energy Saving- Six important actions are required to implement a good energy
management strategy. Finding and hiring an energy manager is the first step.
The second phase is to control energy consumption by gaining a thorough
picture of how the organization is currently consuming energy, how its usage
compares to that of other organizations, and internal attitudes toward
implementing energy-saving measures. The third phase is to compile all of the
data and develop an energy policy that includes long-, medium-, and short-term
energy-saving goals. Step four is to establish an action plan that outlines the
activities your organization will take to attain its goals. Step five involves involving
employees at all levels of the firm, conducting training, and emphasizing the
strategy's benefits, all of which contribute to increased employee participation.
Step six is to keep track of your progress toward your energy-saving goals by
monitoring your performance on a regular basis.
d) Cost Recovery- The average school system hosts 1,072 hours of activities
outside of regular operation hours, necessitating the usage of utilities,
employees, cleanup, and supplies, among other things. With little money to
waste, it's vital to have not only an effective event management software at the
helm, but also a cost recovery plan in place..
e) Healthy and Safe Schools- Students do better on tests when they are in well-
functioning facilities, according to studies. In older facilities, problems like
insufficient heating and ventilation, noise bleed-over, and congestion might
develop. Consider illumination, sound, temperature, and air quality. The most
difficult people to acclimate to these situations are children, teenagers, and
individuals with learning difficulties.

4. A domestic appliance manufacturer

 According to a recent study, firms' average time to keep a competitive advantage
has decreased over time. It is crucial for a firm to be able to detect internal talents and
differentiate itself from competitors. The purpose of this research is to offer a model of
technological capabilities and to investigate the potential differential influence of this
model on long-term competitive advantage in the global industry in greater depth. The
recent/ongoing global economic crisis has brought even more hurdles, driving
businesses to be more innovative and ambitious in their hunt for survival strategies. The
ability of a corporation to discover internal skills and differentiate itself from competitors
is clearly crucial. To sustain their competitive advantage, businesses must renew their
resource base as their environment evolves. Long-term survival and expansion have
always been dependent on innovation. The goal of this case study on a domestic
appliance for domestic manufacture is to show that technical innovation capabilities, as
one of the dynamic capabilities, are one of the most important sources for enterprises to
attain long-term competitive advantage and commercial performance. As a result, the
central hypothesis is that a company's ability to innovate technologically is a major
source of competitive advantage.

Firms should always be expanding their resource pool. In a globally competitive

sector, our capacity to be swift and innovative when searching for, choosing, and
implementing "the right" ideas and tactics is critical. Although the dynamic capabilities
approach has provoked a variety of debates over the previous decade, its central
concept of constantly finding, applying, and reconfiguring resources and skills has been
the dominant condition and focus of how to survive in internationally competitive sectors.
According to several studies, dynamic capabilities alone will not allow businesses to
maintain a competitive advantage. Dynamic capabilities, according to Eisenhardt and
Martin (2000), would not perform well in "high-velocity markets" because their "apparent
stability breaks down," resulting in unstable and difficult-to-maintain processes. We
believe that dynamic skills will perform particularly well in globally competitive
businesses such as the home appliance market, as Teece (2007) suggests. The
importance of the dynamic capacities perspective is supported by this study on domestic
appliance manufacturing. We wanted to emphasize the importance of constantly looking
and scanning for opportunities both inside and outside the company, and then choosing
which chances had the highest potential for the company's current and future
competitive position. As a result, regardless of firm size or industry, managers should
never stop thinking about how to build and sustain a competitive advantage through
technological innovation capabilities based on the concepts of dynamic capabilities.

3. Recommendation and Conclusion

Executives must choose the source of each firm mentioned above, gaining a
competitive edge by competing on low-cost features vs more expensive aspects that
distinguish their company from competitors. Furthermore, firms can better understand
their consumer base by targeting a restricted or broad market. Depending on their
decisions, companies will seek cost leadership, differentiation, focused cost leadership,
or focused differentiation initiatives. Best cost is another potentially effective business
strategy, in which companies provide relatively low pricing while yet managing to
differentiate their goods or services on crucial value-added characteristics. By failing to
deliver distinctive features or competitive prices, any business might get "caught in the
middle." We recommend that each firm clarify their strengths and limitations based on
our case study. Their business, like any other, has core competencies and strengths.
Processes, technology, and knowledge/expertise/experience are all possibilities. They
provide value to their consumers' lives and are what they want to acquire or purchase
from them, whatever they are. Consider how companies can leverage these assets in
new and innovative ways to win new business, expand into new markets, and so on, as
well as how they may leverage their core capabilities to add value to their clients. These
are the most important elements they should look at in order to get a competitive
advantage.

4. List of Reference
a) James M. (2016). Competitive advantage in the airline industry. Retrieved from
https://studymoose.com/competitive-advantage-in-the-airline-industry-essay
b) Matej L., Lidija B. (2014, January). Technological innovation capabilities as a
source of competitive advantage: A case study from the home appliance
industry. Retrieved from
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/268505043_Technological_innovation_
capabilities_as_a_source_of_competitive_advantage_A_case_study_from_the_h
ome_appliance_industry
c) Yanneri E., Ubud S., Djumahir, Atim D. (2019, May 17). Hospital’s competitive
advantage through service quality, information systems and Islamic work ethics.
Retrieved from
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333174889_Hospital's_competitive_adv
antage_through_service_quality_information_systems_and_Islamic_work_ethics
d) 2020. 5 Education Operations Management Trends to Know. [ebook] Dude
Solutions. Available at:
<https://www.brightlysoftware.com/sites/default/files/2020-08/EDU_5-Eduation-
Operations-Trends-to-Know_e-book.pdf> [Accessed 11 May 2022].2020. 5
Education Operations Management Trends to Know. [ebook] Dude Solutions.
Available at:
<https://www.brightlysoftware.com/sites/default/files/2020-08/EDU_5-Eduation-
Operations-Trends-to-Know_e-book.pdf> [Accessed 11 May 2022].