Operations

• strategic role of operations management – cost leadership, good/service differentiation
• Strategic Role - goods and/or services in different industries
• Influences - globalisation, technology, quality expectations, cost-based competition, government policies, legal regulation, environmental sustainability
• Influences - Corporate Social Responsibility - the difference between legal compliance and ethical responsibility, environmental sustainability and social responsibility.
• Processes - Inputs - transformed resources (materials, information, customers) and transforming resources (human resources, facilities)
• Processes - the influence of volume, variety, variation in demand and visibility (customer contact)
• Processes - sequencing and scheduling – Gantt charts, critical path analysis
• Processes - technology, task design and process layout
• Processes - monitoring, control and improvement
• Strategies - performance objectives – quality, speed, dependability, flexibility, customisation, cost
• Strategies - new product or service design and development
• Strategies - supply chain management – logistics, e-commerce, global sourcing
• Strategies - outsourcing – advantages and disadvantages
• Strategies - technology – leading edge, established
• Strategies - inventory management – advantages and disadvantages of holding stock, LIFO (last-in-first-out), FIFO (first-in-first-out), JIT (just-in-time)
• Strategies - quality management – control, assurance, improvement
• Strategies - overcoming resistance to change – financial costs, purchasing new equipment, redundancy payments, retraining, reorganising plant layout, inertia
• Strategies - global factors – global sourcing, economies of scale, scanning and learning, research and development