What is process strategy?

Process Strategy is a long-term plan of action that describes a certain process, explores its
goals and specifies how to bring about a desired outcome related to this process. It explains
what resources are available and how to best use them to achieve the outcome within fixed
time-frames.

Strategy determines the best possible way to implement a process under certain assumptions
and constraints. It specifies the process’s potential and recognizes the process’s impact on
surrounding environment. In business, process strategies are used to plan for successful
delivery of defined business goals such as competitive advantage, sales increase, turnover
reduction, others.

Development of process strategy involves the following general activities:

 Definition of process objectives

 Definition of process inputs
 Assessment of process resources available for meeting process objectives
 Description of process outputs
 Specification of high-level scenarios that explain how to use resources to transform
inputs into outputs
 Specification of process requirements that direct and limit use of process resources.

in operations management a good process strategy will help your processes to flow better and
this will have an impact on your overall operations management.

When you are creating a product or a service a good process strategy can hand you a lot of
benefits. These would include cutting cost because you are going to analyze all your different
processes in dept.

As a result of that you will start to notice processes that could’ve run at a cheaper rate. It will
also help your processes to operate more efficiently than before. Taking a microscopic view on
them you will again help you noticing areas of inefficiencies that need to be fixed.

Another important benefit is that it will allow you to create a cheaper product. Normally when
you’re processes gets cheaper your margins will improve and you can create products with
more quality at a cheaper rate and this can help you to gain market share.

As an operations manager there are four basic strategies you can implement in your operations
management to help it perform better. These are product focus, process focus, repetitive focus
and mass customization.

These strategies can help you to improve your operations. As an operations manager they can
make your life a lot easier than it usually is on a daily basis. You can see each in more detail
below.
Product focus

To implement this strategy your company’s operations must be consistent and quality must be
maintained at a high level at all times. It’s a low variety and high-volume process.

For this strategy to work effectively departments should be organized by product. The fixed cost
for this strategy is usually high, while leaving the variable cost low.

Process Focus

This is when you are going to organize your production processes in such a way that the
processes are going to run in a low volume and high variety basis, this strategy is going to allow
it to be more flexible. Because of that the products can be allowed to move in different periods
between the processes. While for example the repetitive focus processes are more systematic
and are done in a sequenced format.

Repetitive focus

These facilities are normally organized in an assembly format. As stated, before it is less flexible
than the process focused strategy but can tend to be more efficient. Modules may be combined
for many out put options.

Mass customization

This is identified as one of the most complex of the other processes. You produce goods at a
rapid pace at low cost to satisfy unique customer desires.  It is also usually seen as a flexible
strategy and can help your operations to maintain efficiency.

In summary by looking at all the strategies shown above, you can see that there are quite a few
important options you can choose from when thinking about operations management. For
operation managers it’s important to choose the right strategy for your business.

Continuous tracking of the processes to maintain quality is a must. There are companies who
have even used 3 of the strategies in an entire business year, because they want to know which
one works best for their organization.

What is process redesign?

A process redesign is often a firm finds that the initial assumptions of its process are no longer
valid. The world is a dynamic place, and customer desires, product technology, and product mix
change. Consequently, processes are redesigned.

 Process redesign (sometimes called process reengineering) is the fundamental rethinking of

business processes to bring about dramatic improvements in performance. Effective process
redesign relies on reevaluating the purpose of the process and questioning both purpose and
underlying assumptions. It works only if the basic process and its objectives are reexamined.

Process redesign

The fundamental rethinking of business processes to bring about dramatic

improvements in performance.

Process redesign also focuses ...