Spring Lecture 6 "Taking Care of Business" - Operations management and operations strategy

Restaurant: ½ tangible output(food) as well as service

Operations as an activity
-Human resource processes
– Financial reporting processes
– Marketing processes

Literature
Operations management definition
 ‘Operations management… is the activity of managing the res
services and products’ Slack and Brandon-Jones(2018: 4)
 ‘Operations management is ‘the set of activities that creates va
services by transforming inputs into outputs’ Heizer et al (202
Taking a process view
 A process is ‘a structured, measured set of activities designed
for a particular customer or market….
 A process is thus a specific ordering of work activities across t
beginning and an end, and clearly defined inputs and outputs:
Processes are the structure by which an organization does wha
value for its customers’ Davenport (1993: 5-7)
 Corporate sustainability is a company’s delivery of long-term
environmental, social and ethical terms (UN (2014: 9)
 CSR [Corporate Social Responsibility] is essentially about how
its economic, social and environmental impacts in the way it o
benefits and minimising the downsides.’ UK Government, quo
Jones(2018: 15)
 ‘Operations strategy concerns the pattern of strategic decisions
objectives and activities of the operation’ Slack and Brandon-J
 Trade-offs: Given that, for all practical purposes, manufacturin
constrained"…, superior performance in one competitive objec
lowering performance in another (Da Silveira and Slack (2001
 The process of operations strategy: What is called the ‘process
concerned with ‘how’ strategies are put together…. In practice
depending in the experience from trying to make them happen
Jones(2018: 60)

IPO: Management
consultancy

 Input: client
problem
 Consulting and
transforming:
consultant, IT
systems and
facilities
 Output: Client
solution
Should All Operations be Managed in the Same Way?
Volume: of goods and services to be produced
Varity: range/ types of good providing to customers
Variation: when customers seek goods and services
Visibility: degree of visibility that customers have of the production process

Operations strategy
Compared to operations management, operations strategy is (Slack and Lewis, 2017: 9):
– Longer term
– Concerned with a higher level of analysis
– Involved with a greater level of aggregation
– Employing a higher level of abstraction
Operations strategy domain includes:
– Content: the strategic decisions that are made
– Process: formulating, implementing and monitoring strategy
Using the operations strategy Matrix
• Identify potential gaps or misalignment
• Identify areas for further analysis
• Identify potential areas for improvement
• Identify potential trade-offs

Trade-offs: Given that, for all practical purposes,

manufacturing systems are "technically
constrained"…, superior performance in one
competitive objective is gained primarily by
lowering performance in another (Da Silveira and
Slack (2001: 949)