The Role of Operations Management - Assignment Example

?MULTIPLE ESSAY QUESTIONS What is operations management? Why is it important? Is a good knowledge of operations management more important in service or manufacturing industries? Explain your answer. Operations management largely concerns a task that seeks to ensure that business operations go on without any hitches and inconveniences. This role is ensured through a number of means including planning, designing, supervising and controlling the process of production (Maloney, 1998). Operations management is highly important in ensuring the achievement of two major goals, which are the effectiveness and efficiency of the business operations. By effectiveness, reference is being made to the fact that it ensures that customer and consumer specifications and expectations are met whiles by efficiency, reference is being made to the need of ensuring that limited available resources are well used to accomplish estimated rate of production. Operations management is needed both in the service and manufacturing sectors but given the fact that the manufacturing sector requires several components of production than the service sector, it would be said that operations management is more needed in the manufacturing industries than in the services sector. After all, in the manufacturing industry, there are more processes to follow, which demand operations management than in the service sector. 2. Discuss the use of PERT/CPM techniques for managing projects. Describe what PERT/CPM does. Discuss advantages and disadvantages of using it. What other techniques might you choose to manage your project? With the advent of technology, there have been a lot more inventions and innovations that have been devised to ensure that project management go on more easily and accessibly. Most of such technologies make use of software that is integrated into existing roles played by project managers. Some of these tasks are statistics and algorithm. With program evaluation and review technique and critical path method, project managers are offered the opportunity to have a digitized versions of statistical and algorithm functioning in project management. More specifically, program evaluation and review technique and critical path method are structured to analyze and symbolize the individual tasks composed in getting the project completed (Maloney, 1998). The advantages associated with these two techniques are that they aid in analyzing the total time needed to finish given tasks. This is so because they analyze all independent tasks involved in the project. Again, they undertake the general scheduling of projects activities. All of these not withstanding; there come disadvantages in the sense that they are hardly scalable for minute projects (Campos and Root, 2006). In the absence of these two, beta distribution and activity diagram could be used to manage projects. 3. What are economies of scale in a manufacturing plant? Do they continue forever? What are diseconomies of scale? How might you decide the optimal size of a plant? In a typical manufacturing plant, the rate of production over time is often fixed. For example, for a given period of time, it is known that on each day, X number of goods will be produced. Due to business growth and decline purposes, there are times that the rates of production with changing economic factors. This is where economies of scale and diseconomies of scale come in. basically, economies of scale is said to have been reached or attained when the scale of output increases as the cost per unit declines (Campos and Root, 2006). In such a situation, the resulting short to medium term effect is that revenue and general turnover of the manufacturing plant will increase. Economies of scale often come about because of expansions that lead to several goods and products being produced at lower costs. Economies of scale do not occur forever because of fluctuating growth rate and microeconomic factors. Diseconomies of scale could be said to be the direct opposite of economies of scale because they signify a situation whereby there is increased per-unit cost even when there are fewer goods and products produced. To avoid diseconomies of scale, the optimal size of a plant must be known and to do this, a demand against supply inventory must be taken. This can also be achieved with an effective supply chain management in place. 4. What, in your opinion are the 3 most important issues in supply chain management. Discuss why you think these are the key issues. Supply chain management is a complex responsibility that demands that the right products are delivered in the right quantity and at the right time, with the right conditions and documentations (Supply Chain Council, 2012). Supply chain management also deals with producing at the right place and at the right price. These needs of supply chain management themselves speak of some of the most important issues to ensure in supply chain management. These issues include customer service, risk management and cost control. Customer service is critical because it gives a vivid idea of the expectation of the end user, who is the customer. There should therefore be the development of a supply chain management reference model to ensure that at every point in time, customers are supplied with products that meet them at the points of their need. Risk management is also an important issue as it gives supply chain managers the chain to regularly assess and redesign the scope of supply chain to meet market trends (Barney, 2001). Finally, an effective cost control would ensure that excesses that come as a result of underestimation or overestimation in the supply chain model are avoided. 5. Discuss why (or if) inventories are necessary. What are the benefits of inventories? What are the disadvantages of holding inventories? Basically, inventory describes the kind of goods and products that a manufacture holds in his reserved stock with an aim of reselling them. Inventory is very important because it helps the manufacturer in undertaking a comparative demand and supply study to know the right quantity of products and goods to manufacture. Another benefit of holding inventory is that it helps the manufacturer to manipulate time, especially the time from supplier to user, which in some cases creates a lead time. What is more, inventory holding takes care of uncertainties, especially of demand when they suddenly go up. All of these not withstanding, there is a disadvantage of keeping inventory in that if the economic climate is not well predicted, the stored goods may end up becoming waste goods (Al-Ghorfa, 2009). REFERENCE LIST Al-Ghorfa, (2009). Reducing Dependence on Expatriate Labour. Al-Ghorfa, No. 118. Sultanate of Oman: Oman Chamber of Commerce & Industry. Barney, J. (2001). Firm resources and sustained competitive advantage. Journal of Management, 17: 99-120. Campos, J. and Root, H. (2006). The key to the Asian miracle: making shared growth credible. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution. Maloney, W. (2008). The structure of labour markets in developing countries: time series evidence on competing views. World Bank Report. World Bank: Washington D.C. Supply Chain Council, (2012). The Five Most Common Supply Chain Challenges. Accessed November 28, 2012 from http://supply-chain.org/top-supply-chain-challenges Read More