INTRODUCTION TO OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT

Operations Management is the area of management that is responsible for

planning, coordinating, and controlling the resources needed to produce goods and
services for a company. The goods are the physical or tangible products that requires
raw materials, machineries or human labor, and time to produce it. While on the other
hand, services are the activities offered by a business that is usually done by
professional experts, such as surgery operation by surgeons, air travel by pilots and
attendants, and education by teachers.

This business function is very important for a company because it ensures the
production process of each goods and services are truly done effectively and efficiently.
Moreover, to also meet the demand and supply needed of the economy and avoid
having excess in supply and capacity as it would also means excessive costs. On the
other hand, this can’t be done solely by the operations management area, it also needs
the support and inputs from other business functions such as the finance and
marketing. These three functions; marketing, finance and operations has to work
together in unity for them to achieve their desired short and long term plans for the
business organization.

 The scope of Operations Management

The conversion of inputs into outputs utilizing physical resources is included in

the scope of operations management, as is satisfying the intended demand of
consumers while also meeting other organizational objectives such as effectiveness,
efficiency, and adaptability. It is distinct from other business operations such as
personnel, marketing, finance, and so on in that its major goal is 'conversion through the
use of actual or tangible resources.' Facilities location, product design, production
planning, and control are just a few of the numerous tasks that fall under the category of
operations management. In addition, operations management is solely responsible for
actions directly connected to the production of goods and services.
 The operations manager has a vital role to the operation. They guide the
organizational activities and decision makings of the businesses, government agencies,
non-profit groups, and other organizations. One wrong move could affect the system
design and system operations. System designs are usually known as the strategic
decisions. This involves every actions and decisions that is usually long term goals,
broad in scope and related to the internal matters of the organization, such as
arrangement of departments, placement or acquisition of equipment, and service
planning. On the other hand, the system operation, typically known as the tactical
decisions includes management on matters that concerns a small group of issues and
short term in nature like inventory planning and control, scheduling, and quality
assurance.

Between the two, the operations managers are more likely to be involved in the
day to day activities of the business related in the system operations rather than the
system design activities. However, operations managers are not limited to that because
they are also functional in some areas of the system design. Even though it is not their
main responsibility, they still have a bearing in the decision making at times.

 Operations Management and Decision Making

The main role of an operations manager is to provide decisions, solutions, and a

planner maker. Through this, the operations manager should apply a considerable
influence that will contribute to attain the goals and objectives of the organization. The
solutions and decisions that will be offered by the operations manager should have
alternatives included to foresee the numerous possible results that will affect the
business organization.

Operations managers have so many approaches to decision making, the first one
is the use of a model, where it is used by a simple representation of reality. However,
the use of model approach does not guarantees good decisions. Second is through
quantitative approaches. It is used to solve a problem that is related with
mathematical problems, such as the allocation of resources. The third one is the
Performance Metrics, in which it is effectively used for managing and controlling
operations. Including those that are related to profit, assets, inventories and productivity.
Analysis of Trade-Offs approach is the fourth one, this occurs when an organization
cannot perform well on both performance dimensions at the same time: in order to
improve performance on one, performance on the other must be reduced. The fifth
approach is the Degree of Customization. It's employed when there's a lot of
customization and the process planning needs to be extra careful because of the
complication. When work becomes more complex, there are many different ways to
organize it so that it does not get pushed to the side. If a high degree of expertise and
goods are required to finish the planning process, a clear timeframe and more well-
thought-out designs are essential in the planning process. The sixth approach is the
Systems approach. It suggests that every manager's decision-making and information
flow should be significantly more precise. A corporation must have an overall system of
corporate objectives in order for this to work. To determine the optimal objectives, a
complete systems analysis will be required first, followed by the establishment of
subsidiary systems to achieve these goals as efficiently as feasible. And for the last
approach, we have establishing priorities. This simply means that a manager should
assess each circumstance, looking for the few things that will have the largest impact
and prioritizing them. In operations management, this is one of the most essential and
widespread ideas. In fact, this principle can be used at all levels of management and to
all aspects of professional and personal decision-making.

 The Historical Evolution of Operations Management

The production process have already existed since the ancient times that just
gradually innovate to adapt our present age. The Industrial Revolution began during
the 1770s where the normal production process was oblivious to machineries and were
only relying to craft production. 18th century came, as well numerous invention and
innovations that includes machine power. It has changed the primary means of
production as it brought huge help to create mass production of goods. The availability
of machine power has led to the rise of factories, providing countless jobs for the
citizens. However, despite of the major changes that occurred in the production means,
the management system did not progressed much at all.

Since factories were brought up during the Industrial Revolution, Frederick

Winslow Taylor then, the father of Scientific Management, brought a widespread
changes to management of factories. He introduced the “science of management” that
emphasizes maximizing output based on observations, measurement, analysis and
improvement of work methods and economic incentives. Then Taylor did study the work
methods and came up with a solution of separating work activities from management
activities. This is to make people distinguish easily the detail and kind of work they
belong in and provide a better performance in the business. Taylor’s method was easily
understood by the business owners and adapted his method. However, there are cases
reported that some companies uses it to abuse workers for not giving the enough
compensation. This case were heard by other industry pioneers, namely Frank Gilberth,
Henry Gantt, Harrington Emerson, and Henry Ford that then make contributions to help
Taylor improve his scientific management method.

Henry ford then introduced the idea of mass production to the automotive
industry by following the assembly lines. The first concept was using the
interchangeable automotive parts instead of Having it custom fitted so that it will be
easily find in the market and could also be used as replacement parts. Another concept
used by Ford was the division of labor, in which production process are proportionately
distributed in series of tasks among all the workers. This has been the root of human
relations movement, because this easily increase the mass production, however this
also resulted to workers to despise both Taylor and Ford for having low compensation
from factories.

A statistical procedures for sampling control was then developed after the factory
movement. Decision Models and Management Science was introduced as the result
of the World War II. The war created pressure on the manufacturing output and make
the industry wanted to achieve more advancements to the manufacturing and military
world. Since then, the quantitative models started to be frequently used in the industry.
This method continued to be used in decision making resulting to birth of other areas of
operations management, such as forecasting, inventory management, and project
management.

In connection with the success of management science techniques, they

somehow lost some favors. But on the other hand, the industry also gain an increase in
the use of computers and intelligence software in the workplace that resulted to the
popularity of these techniques.

The Japanese manufacturers then did contributed a refined management system

that made them very competitive in the business industry as their management
practices highly increase their production and quality of their products. Since then, the
Influence of the Japanese Manufacturers continues to spread as they are focused on
the quality improvement, worker empowerment, and continuously satisfying the
customers needs.

References:

Varon, L. (2021, May 24). Operations Management: Maximizing Production Efficiency in

Any Organization. SweetProcess. https://www.sweetprocess.com/operations-

management/

Mahmoud, M. A. (2014–2015). Scope of Operations Management. Industrial

Engineering Branch Department of Production Engineering and Metallurgy

University of Technology Baghdad - Iraq. https://www.uotechnology.edu.iq/dep-

production/branch3e_files/mah35.pdf

Stevenson, W. J. (n.d.). Operations Management (Eleventh ed.). McGraw-Hill

Companies, Inc.,.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iGJivIMRu2QlU0CQDnfaYVot3Bn5-t9z/view