What is Operations Management?

Operation Management is concerned with any productive activity, whether manufacturing or service, in public sector or private sector, profit making or not profit making. It is concerned with ensuring that operations are carried out both efficiently and effectively. All mangers are operations managers since all functions within an organization are, presumably, productive activates it goes without saying that all function should be carried out efficiently and effectively. However the operation function is the hear t of all manufacturing and service enterprises, and unless this core operation is carried out effectively there is little hope that organization as a whole will be effective. An understanding of Operation Management principals can help any manger to manage more effectively , whatever function they are concerned with but it also leads to a greater understanding of the function of the organization as a whole and a greater appreciation for the issues which affect organizational performances. Definition of Operations Management. Operations Management is concerned with managing the resources that directly produce the organization’s service or product after going through a number of transforming Inputs Processes. The resources will usually consist of people, materials, technology and information but may go wider than this. These resources are brought together by a series of processes; so that they are utilized to deliver the primary service or product of the organization. Thus, operation management is concerned with managing inputs (resources) through transformation processes to deliver output (service or product). The following diagram explains the concept of Operation Management more clearly. (Appendix -1 –Pictorial representation of Operation Management) Example of Operation Management: Let us consider an example from our daily life to understand the concept of Operation Management more clearly. Consider an education institute, here, the student are a primary inputs. The transformation process is the learning that takes place. The main output is the educated students. For this operation to take place there has to be a proper timetabling, lecture and management of the whole activity. Scope of Operation Management: Expressed in this way it can be seen that the term ‘operations’ covers a wide range of organization. Manufacturing, commercial service, public service and other not-for-profit sector are all included within its scope. One way of defining operation function of the organization is to define what the end service or product actually is once this is clear, the people who directly contribute to the delivery of the end service or product, and the people who closely support them in this task, can be said to operational personnel of the organization. Read also Exam Operations Management Unfortunately, people who actually perform operational roles under this definition are not always called operational Mangers. This makes identifying the operation more difficult than, say, identifying the financial marketing or personnel functions. Job title such as hospital manger, technical director and store manger do not have the word operation in them, yet they are all Operations Management roles. Operations Management and its significance; Operations management concepts exactly help us to gain a better know ledge of things how they and perform around us. These concepts and theories have been developed by experts from different fields and published to share the knowledge to the publics. Operations management focuses on how the subtle routines and activities in your life can be systematically improved and makes our easy little by little. Operations management concepts use logic and practicalities to carry mare efficiency into everyone’s live and inspire other to bring out more ways to improve this world. Applying concepts to real situations: When the concepts and theories are produced by the great minds of the world, there are no real tangible benefits until it is actually used and applied in the real world. It is one thing to theorize that you can invent something that will take current way of living to the next level and another thing to actually do it and make everybody see that your theory is for real. The same rule applies to operations management concepts. They may be available to you and make you aware of how things around you work but if they are not used to improve the current status then they become useless. They become ere writings on paper and nothing more than that. If these concepts are to become relevant to society, people and government it should be used in such a way that their presence is felt in operations they are used. Once this is happen, then you can expect a wave of improvement every day from everyone which led to a greater improvement in the future. A relevant issue wherein operations management can be applied is in addressing flood damage problem. Today’s technology obviously does not have control over nature’s forces and the disaster that it may bring. The best way to deal with it then is through preparation and some sort of damage. It is in this aspect that operations management concepts can shine and really help in providing a boost to the current living conditions. Government applying operations management tools: An important part in addressing flood damage is the clean up that follows. This procedure is usually the most difficult and the most expensive of them all. After a major flood, everything is misplaced, infrastructure is ruined and slowly decaying and the area is usually in a state of disorder. If the flood damage cleanup programs are not well designed, it can take a very long time to get the area back on its feet. This means that people will not be able to get paid and it will hurt their way of living. As you can see, the most important things to be considered is how quickly flood damages can be cleaned up and in order to figure out the best possible way to do this, government turn up to use operations management concepts to settle things as soon as possible and which they were successful. The concepts will break down each process that is needed to cleanup flood damage and improve the little details to make everything better, faster and more efficient fullest extent for a better and quick result. Concepts and its applications †¢The first concept in operations management is project planning: the scope of flood damage cleanups usually covers a big area with varying terrains. To be able to work quickly, a very good plan must be set before everybody can get to work. In project planning, there is an emphasis on scheduling and process layout. If there is a set schedule for when cleanup crew are supposed to move in and their job, there will not be any wasted time or effort. It will also give supervisors control over inactive crew so they can be given work and be more productive. An example in terms cleaning up after flood damage is the different jobs that are involved. First, the area has to be cleaned up of debris so a specific cleanup crew will have to handle that. Only after they finish will the road repair crew be able to do their job. Basically, project planning process layout creates a sequence for the different jobs that need to be done and, again, lessens confusion as to what should be done first or not. The next important concept is TQM which stands total quality management: this idea states that there should always be constant improvement within each and every process no matter how miniscule the improvement may be. The logic behind this is that each small incremental improvement will eventually add up to something significant if it is done regularly. Obviously in term of flood damage cleanups, anything that can be done a little bit quickly wil l be beneficial in the long run. This is why each process, cleaning repairing, debris- removing and all other activities should always be done at the fastest pace possible without sacrificing quality and safety. More and more, faster times and more efficient procedures should be set out and eventually, there should be marked improvement over the original performance. †¢Another relevant concept that can b applied is capacity analysis: this takes a logical step in measuring how much capacity a given machine or worker can take. It allows foe downtime, mistake and other unpredictable events then chums out the data to make it relevant. This is important because it help the project planner to be attended to. Capacity analysis also give a good idea of how well equipped a flood damage teams are in regards to dealing with worst case scenarios. †¢The last concept that will be discussed is that of facility location planning: flood damage cleanup supervisors should be able to pin point possible trouble spot during bad weather and be able to situate headquarters nearby. Using this concept may help in determining the most favorable location for setting up of headquarters which will result in save of time and energy. Advantages from Operation Management Application: Although many of the operations management concepts have been discussed, you can see it is beneficial to apply these ideas. It may cost money but the advantages they give are limitless. More efficiency and faster routines are a win- win situation for flood damage crew, government and the residents of the area. Simply put through, operations management concepts real aim is to put organization in continually improvement and to make working condition easy and time saving. Basically, applying different operations management concepts can greatly help in different line of work.