Operations Management in Almag Aluminum Extrusions - Case Study Example

Operations Management Research Assignment Firm Background Almag Aluminum Extrusions is a profound manufacturing firm popular for its distinct core values. Almag Aluminum Extrusions recognize that individuals continue creating cultures and hence ALMAG’s integral values remain critical drivers of the workplace environment. The firm also flaunts its utmost levels of respect as well as fairness. This includes treating other people they would want themselves treated. The other key aspect is humility. The operatives are humble as they recognize that they are not excellent. Further, irrespective of how good they may be at various things, they can still do better. Almag Aluminum Extrusions remains open to criticism (constructive). The firm has a great passion for advancement and progress (Slack, Chambers & Johnston, 2007). There is a strong drive and desire towards being better in subsequent days as compared to current performance. The firm is also anxious to engage all efforts towards becoming better and embracing change. The firm cultivates intense aspects of ownership while treating the business as though the employees own it. The firm also has an extensive sense of pride across the organization operation and appearance. The fact that it is a leader in manufacturing custom aluminum extrusions, Almag Aluminum Extrusions avails necessary expertise across all aluminum extrusion areas. Almag Aluminum Extrusionsis involved in idea conception all the way to its completion. The years of experience give the firm ideal problem-solving capabilities. Through working with many diverse industries, there is relevance in learning the important aspects in developing methods that suit each of their specific needs (Boyer, Verma & Boyer, 2009). Almag Aluminum Extrusions believes that aspects of innovation trigger problem-solving aspects coming from team approaches hence making aluminum extrusion experience worthwhile. The firm also understands that due Customer satisfaction accrues from the delivery of superior products with precision customization and technological innovation coupled by an understanding of the customer’s needs to exceed their expectations. SWOT Analysis Almag Aluminum Extrusions has a number of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats. Its strengths include the fact that it has control and direction over the end-user sales. It also avails the right products, reliability, and quality. In turn, its superior product performance goes above its competitors as the products are of better product durability and life. The firm has a comprehensive spare manufacturing capacity whicl allows it handle extensive forms of production and fluctuations in demand (Barnes, 2008). Almag Aluminum Extrusions has some of its staff with due experience of end-user sectors. The firm keeps an updated customer lists that allows for follow up and consistent responsiveness. The firm is renowned for its direct delivery capability with thorough product innovations that are underway. The firm also focuses on serving from the existing sites making its products even more accessible to deep and far markets. The products from this firm bear the necessary accreditations globally. The subsequent processes used are well in line with the IT protocols therein. The top management has a high level of commitment and confidence in its operations. On the other hand, some of the weaknesses seen include the fact that the customer lists are not tested on a frequent basis. There are more gaps across the scope of various sector policies and performance. If it were not for it broad product range, the firm would be a small player (Kaufman & Rooy, 2004). The firm also lacks direct marketing experience and personnel expertise (Slack, Chambers & Johnston, 2007). The firm is yet to establish purchase contracts from supplies and end-users living abroad. Almag Aluminum Extrusions needs experienced sales people. The firm has a limited budget dedicated towards development. The firm does not carry out pilot trials on new products. There is lack of a detailed plan of action yet. There is a training need among the delivery-staff and customer service staff. The firm’s processes and systems are not well beefed up. Further, the opportunities facing Almag Aluminum Extrusions include the possibility of developing new and more products. It is also worth noting that the local competitors develop low quality products. In the span of five years, the profit margins will advance rapidly (Boyer, Verma & Boyer, 2009). Similarly, the end-users keep responding to all new ideas and hence the probability of extending business to overseas. The firm invests on new specialist applications, which can surprise competitors through due support of the core business economies. There is an opportunity of seeking better deals from suppliers. Lastly, the possible threats in this case include the diversity in legislation affecting its performance and current establishments. Environmental influences also favor the larger competitors while the existing major aspects engage in business distribution risks. There is very seasonal market demand, which creates consistency in demand of its items. The firms had managed to retain key staff as critical assets of the organization (Barnes, 2008). There could be elements of distraction from its core business due to possible negative publicity and divergence in investments. Decisions of OM One of the influential decisions at Almag Aluminum Extrusions is reforms in the supply-chain management. For the firm, supply chain management remains to be an essential operational area. The firm perceives it to be one of the significant contributors to competitive advantage for the business (Kaufman & Rooy, 2004). Almag Aluminum Extrusions requires that products as well as services sold within its brand are compliant with all legal conditions including human rights coupled with workplace practices across their value chain. The supply-demand network efficiency helps the firm meet the increasing demand for various product offerings. The cooperation existing between suppliers and customers endures core principles in development. The second is on human resources with particular focus on job design. Recently, Almag Aluminum Extrusions’ personnel hit its all-time high in terms of employee numbers. The overall staff numbers includes employees on fulltime, contract, and part time basis. While the firm recognizes their different life styles and needs, it avails them with conditions of flexible working that include working at remote or teleworking (Slack, Chambers & Johnston, 2007). Part of the firm’s strength includes the employees. This is why it seeks to create them the most appropriate growth opportunities and working environments. The conducts of the same narrows down to various programs towards encouraging them submit their respective ideas while contributing to the growth of the company. This includes prompts of openly publishing response for the queries. Employees in the firm are highly encouraged to take up responsibility for their respective developments while taking advantage of various opportunities for development available including submission of their venture proposals. In turn, the firm offers each of them company-wide bonus and incentive systems as a way of triggering innovativeness and helping shape their job purposes. The other includes the promotion of diversity the supply chain that also includes departments led by minorities and women. There is a general strife towards including the suppliers across the world. The firm’s supply chain involves direct sourcing in terms of material supply for aluminum products coupled with components, software development, parts, contract manufacturing, packaging, as well as research and development (Boyer, Verma & Boyer, 2009). Indirect sourcing is a new component in Almag Aluminum Extrusions focusing on office equipment and services. The other aspect is that of process which narrows down on capacity design. With reference to the properties inherent to the aluminum market, the firm is charged with the need to be flexible. All the quarter new solutions, innovative products, and technologies are in the market. That is why there is a need to be in a position of ably and quickly adapting to the vast changes. In such a case, there is incorporation of new technologies across all processes for an invaluable process of helping achieve flexibility (Barnes, 2008). Even though aluminum products have shaky lives, the firm has designs of massive capacity, ensuring that they meet the demand and capabilities in view of supporting the product credibility. Lastly, there is the layout design within Almag Aluminum Extrusion. The firm as a global company that makes use of global manufacturing networks to quickly respond to the changes across demand and technology. The firm has suppliers across different parts of the globe as a way of easily introducing changes to its processes as well as the optimization of resource utilization. Item(s) Needing Improvement The initial organizational change aspects in Almag Aluminum Extrusions include the focus on growth rate and finance as a way of phasing in organizational strategy. This will help in deciding and understanding the kinds of technologies necessary as well as the markets to shift focus to areas that are more profitable. This way, the organizational strategy keeps in focus the business units. Such gain for on business units allows decision making in product and market for the business operations while concentrating the productivity areas to the prime resources (Slack, Chambers & Johnston, 2007). For instance, the firm desperately carries out operations in the outsourcing division, distribution, and warehousing facilities. The other improvement is on the organizational culture in helping the firm focus towards the amount of the functional units. Such a phase of production strategy focuses towards specific activities across various business units. For instance, the Almag Aluminum Extrusions’ business units are clear on the kinds of products and markets to focus on. This will help in the selection of the functional areas like the specific operations to address including ICT, supply chain management, logistics, and marketing. The interdependency of limited resources’ competition and objectives often translate into conflicts. Conflicts take up the definition of disagreements between various parties on certain issues. This enables them establish annual objectives leading to diverse conflicts resulting from individuals having different perceptions and expectations. The divergence in schedules creates more pressure on personalities being incompatible while the misunderstandings across line managers (line Almag Aluminum Extrusions’ production supervisors) and the staff managers (human resource specialists) increasing (Boyer, Verma & Boyer, 2009). The establishment of objectives leads to increased conflicts as strategists and managers need to attend to trade-offs including whether or not to make emphasis on the long-term growth or short-term profits, market share or profit margin, market penetration or development, high or low risk, stability or growth, and profit maximization or social responsiveness. Conflicts within this industry are however unavoidable, hence, there is need to have that conflicts managed and resolved prior dysfunctional consequences impact organizational performance. Almag Aluminum Extrusions accepts conflict as partially negative. The absence of conflict in the aluminum industry signals indifference as well as apathy. Conflicts serve as energizers to opposing groups to take action while helping managers attach identity to problems. Improving the Situation Almag Aluminum Extrusions could use ABC analysis as a way of analyzing inventory because of Pareto distribution. The posits is that while revenue across inventory items are power law distributed, it is sensible to manage the products differently on basis of their position on revenue-inventory matrices (Barnes, 2008). Here, there are three classes generated (A, B and C) towards cumulative revenues. This way, the matrix of each item takes a letter (A, B, or C), attached in terms of revenue against inventory. The approach posits that products further from diagonal need different management skills than those in the upper part. This is because they are subject obsolescence risks while items in lower regions face the possibility of risking being stockout. Secondly, Almag Aluminum Extrusions can use the throughput principle. Throughput remains to be variable quantifying various parts of production in substantial unit times. On the other hand, there are estimations of throughput into single processes of fair simplicity, which influences the entire production system (Kaufman & Rooy, 2004). This involves additional difficulties resulting from the presence of queues for which the causes include maintenance time, machine breakdowns, scraps, lack of materials, processing time variability, strikes, setups, mix variability, lack of orders, bad resource coordination. All the stated inefficiencies compound with respect to the production system nature. An important illustration of how the system throughput ties to the system design include the sustained bottlenecks across job shops bottlenecks with typical dynamism and dependency on production scheduling. It comes as a surprise that often, during the firm’s strategy formulation, facets of individual skills, values, as well as abilities are necessary in successful strategy implementation are overlooked. Rare does the firm selects new strategies and significantly alter the existing strategies to possess the appropriate line of staff personnel within the set positions for successful implementation of operations management strategy. The essence of matching respective aptitudes to strategy-implementation tasks is in the firm’s strategy choice. Further, inadequate levels of support from the implementation strategists and their activities often shortchange the organizational success. Executive officers, and government heads need to personally commit towards strategy implementation through expression of such commitment in ways that are visible (Slack, Chambers & Johnston, 2007). Formal statements from strategists for the significance of strategic management need remain consistent with respective levels of support as well as rewarding the given activities completed as well as objectives reached. If this is not the case, stress comes up because of inconsistencies causing uncertainty across managers and employees across all levels. The best approach to prevent and overcome human resource issues within the strategic management is actively involving many employees and managers in the decision making process. Even though it is time-consuming, the technique builds a high level of understanding, commitment, trust, and ownership through the reduction of resentment as well as hostility. Almag Aluminum Extrusion acknowledges that the absolute potential for strategy implementation and formulation is with its people. Implementation strategy The improvement on layout designing will help in forecasting the demands across the functional area in terms of business operations. These derivation advantages will help in the achievement of strong customer relationships managed using appropriate service delivery for the right customers within appropriate times and right costs using extreme service security and quality. The firm’s operations will consist total of various phases and units including procurement, clients/suppliers, distribution, production/manufacturing, management, value add, logistics/distribution, warehouse inventory management, customer service and customer delivery. In subsequent areas, the supplier of the business operations also falls in as the customer thereby into the business cycle customers while playing an end-to-end responsibility in the performance of business operations across globally dynamic and competitive environments (Boyer, Verma & Boyer, 2009). This way, the general the corporate values of the organization will be formulated and derived through prioritization of customers. This puts the clients and customers first followed by the building of strong relationships to customers while performing extensive business operations under integrity leading to the achievement of quality results for the business operations. A change in organizational strategy will help the firm strengthen its foundations that majorly consists of aspects like talent, perseverance, and resource. In such a case, the main recommendation is the effective strategy application of the organizational approach towards designing and framing performance with due vision. This is achievable through executing and implementing the missions in the short term (Barnes, 2008). Change development avails structure the best ways through which the business operates towards the achievement of greater results while continuous learning keeps changing the business environment. The best aspect is that of analyzing various organizational concepts that trend within business markets while helping generate new ideas, which bridge the gap in the current concepts of Almag Aluminum Extrusions’ operations. This will facilitate the achievement of success in the business operations illustrated in global environments with competitive customer focused realms. References Barnes, D., 2008. Operations Management: An International Perspective. New York: Cengage Learning EMEA. Boyer, K., Verma, R., & Boyer, K., 2009 Operations & Supply Chain Management for the 21st Century. New York: Cengage Learning. Kaufman, J. G., Rooy, E. L. (2004) Aluminum Alloy Castings: Properties, Processes, and Applications. New York: ASM International Slack, N., Chambers, S., & Johnston, R. 2007. Operations Management. New York: Prentice Hall. Read More