Operations Management
Operations: Review Standard Operating Procedures
Question 1 company's operations function on the most basic and general level involves organizing work, selecting processes, arranging layouts, locating facilities, designing jobs, measuring performance, controlling quality, scheduling work, managing inventory, and planning production. For instance, operations at a bank might involve transferring funds from one bank to another or to different branches, processing funds on site, providing checks for customers, cashing checks for customers, preparing monthly statements on a regular basis, reconciling statements when needed, approving loans upon request, loaning money, keeping regular track of loan payments, and approving credit cards if part of the bank's functions. Operations at a retail store might, depending on the nature of the store -- it is service-based or good-based for instance -- involve purchasing goods, stocking goods, selling goods, keeping track of inventory, scheduling workers, laying out the store, locating the store, forecasting demand for goods and services, and while operations at a cable TV company might involves taking and renewing orders for cable service, installing new equipment, maintaining older, keeping 'the right' (i.e. most popular shows) on the air, scheduling work for contractors installing service, processing statements of customers and making sure payments are made by customers.
Question
Competitiveness
The Year's Best Business Books." (December 8, 2003) Business Week.
This article is a review of The Innovator's Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth. But by reviewing this book, the article examines the thesis that the decline of large companies is inevitably, competitively. The book suggests that large, traditional companies can defy the long-term odds of the marketplace if they disrupt their operational strategy from time to time, stimulating the production of new products
Globalization
Innovate or die." (October 6, 2003) Business Week.
This article suggests that the traditional strategy of pleasing one's most valuable customers is wrong-headed in a global market -- innovation must be key, and expansion.
History of operations management
Jerry Useem, with Julie Schlosser and Helen Kim (March 3, 2003) "One Nation under Wall Mart." Fortune.
Wal-Mart is the largest company in the world. It is well run because it has made the best deals with its suppliers through creating partnerships by which both operatives openly exchange information to streamline the flow of goods from raw materials to checkout counter. Thus its supply chain of stocking and selling goods, and its inventory process is extremely streamlined, one of the keys of operations management.
