The Operations of a Business Organization - Essay Example

?Operation Management Introduction Operations management is the phenomenon of managing the operations of a business organization. The activities involved in this process are creation, distribution and delivery of services and goods. Operation management is a concept relevant to big business corporates where production of service or goods happens on a large scale basis. The operation manager makes strategic decisions and important business plans on short and long term basis. Operation managers monitors activities from production to distribution while making master schedule for short -term and long -term strategy. The plans and strategies of an operations manager depend on the demand a particular business service or product hold. The Concept of Operational Management The operations management as a business function has many issue related to it that needs to be satisfied to increase the efficiency and productivity of a business concern. These are capacity requirements, technology, facilities, workforce, supply and distribution, quality, production planning and organizational structure. According to Shim (1999, Pg.4)“Operation policy is concerned with setting broad policies and plans for using the production resources of the firm to best support the firm’s long term competitive strategy”. However, the four basic issues of operation management strategy are as follows. a) Cost : The cost of a product or service decides the profit or loss of a company. In every market segment, there is a class of people who opt for low -cost product or service. So to compete on this basis, a company should produce goods and services which are of low- cost. b) Quality : Needless to mention, quality is a prioritized element of any industry. Quality is classified into product quality and process quality. Product quality ensures better customer satisfaction and process quality make sure that products are defect free and is produced with total quality management. c) Speed of delivery : The speed with which a company delivers products and services to its customers decides the purchasing decision of a customer. The capability of a business firm to deliver products and services on a fast basis decides the price of their product and the company reputation. d) Flexibility : By the term flexibility, we mean that a company should offer various types of products and services to its customers. It also means how quickly a company can convert old products to new one to meet customer demands. These issues play an important role in understanding the challenges an operational manager can face in this competitive world. Challenges faced by Operational Managers a) Absence of Capital – Capital is the main resource of any business and this strengthen the foundation of a business. Capital is required from the launch of a business firm and al the strategic plans and operation of a business largely depend on capital availability. An operations manager needs enough capital to work in a full fledge way. An absence or lack of capital can restrict an operational manager in many ways. An operational manager with less available capital will contribute inferiorly to a business. Absence of capital can restrict an organization from many perspectives. A company with inefficient capital can offer fewer choices and solution to an operations manager. If a company is financially weak, the managers can dwindle on decision- making and planning proposals. b) Lack of efficient planning - Planning is crucial to business as it starts with proper intelligent planning. If planning is not proper, managers cannot align their functions with the goal of the firm. Planning needs to be extensive and if organizational leaders do not plan ahead of execution, then the business can doom to failure. If the basic decision - making is defective then an operations manager can do less about organizing and operating a company. An operations manager has the full responsibility of business functioning, if the planning is not well versed then the flow of business is interrupted consistently. c) Inadequate focusing ; Operations management involves many strategic decision –making, quality efficiency and logistic activities and as a result it demands high focusing. An organizational leader who is not focused can make many wrong decisions .A manager can be unfocused due to many aspects, it could his social life, office environment, or external business atmosphere. Only a focused operations manager can offer efficient and productive plans and ideas which can change the outlook of a firm. Lack of focusing on business processes, distribution of products and services, logistic functions can raise obstacles in an organization. d) Communication –Communication is an essential part of an organization. An operations manager has to engage in many decision -making activities where he need to communicate to people on various level in countries by means of phone, e- mail and meetings. To be effective in communication, an organization leader needs well-designed protocol and enabling tools. According to Huang(2012) “Lack of a systematic approach and continued use of ad-hoc methods leads to serious issues especially at larger organizations: delayed or non-reporting of issues, costly delays, excessive field travel, issues turning into crises, loss of good will with customers which bring us to the next point”. Communication needs to be precise and accurate and discrepancies can lead to misunderstanding, chaos and confusion. e) Co –ordination – Operations manager needs to co-ordinate the entire managers and staff of an organization. Since, the managers and lower level staff are highly skilled and competitive, managing them is tedious task. The logistics and entire operations of site need to be co – ordinated by an operations manager. In competitive world, the quality demand is high and minor defects can cause huge loss and customer dissatisfaction to company. Co-coordinating employees, suppliers and customers in competitive age is difficult and high skill is needed from operations department for the same. f) Customer Satisfaction : In any business, customer satisfaction is of critical importance and their preferences and needs has to be given utmost care. Customer preferences and demands changes swiftly in current times and an operations manager essentially needs to concentrate more on customer service quality and efficiency of products and services. To maintain high quality among products and services requires consistent quality and this challenges an operations manager on a continuous basis. g) Social responsibility: Social responsibility is an ethical obligation of an operations manager and he needs to take a proactive approach to fulfill it. Ethical unambiguous activities need to be initiated by operations manager and this is highly challenging task in an organizational culture with competitive environment. Explicit public values need to be projected by operations manager to enhance the mission and social obligation of a business concern. He needs full -fledged support from mangers at all levels for implementing company vision and statement strategy. Conclusion Operation management being the foundation of a company, the day to day activities of a company is highly depended on the skill and tactic of an organizational leader.. The main challenge is encountered in information technology, finance and communication areas. The operations manager requires support from many technical areas and business facilities and abnormalities can affect the quality of goods and services.. Today, there are many solutions available to organizational leaders to lighten the challenges faced by them. The technology has developed so has the opportunities and choices. Apart from this, educating oneself will allow them in adapting to uncertain business environment. Operations manager should have knowledge about product, pricing and quality standards. So considering all this facts, challenges should be studied and appropriate solution needs to be taken by organizational leaders to be more competent in their profession. Work Cited Huang,J. 2012. Operations Managers Tell of Top 5 Challenges. You agree?. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.scoopapponline.com/top-challenges-field-operations-management/. [Accessed 17 March 13]. Shim, J.K, 1999. Operations Management. 1st ed. New York: Barron's Educational Series. Read More