Production, Operations Management and Resource Utilization - Essay Example

Operations management is primarily concerned with designing and managing products and services, processes, and supply chains in a firm (Kumar, 2006, p.110). The underlying objective is to meet client demand with the desired tastes and preferences.

Resource utilization is a critical aspect to monitor in operations management. The operations management purvey herein can take several forms, with the most commonly employed being strategic, tactical, and/or operational. Activities that characterize each of the three depend on the operational decisions reached an individual organizational level. This is done by evaluating and assessing the market, customer base, and industry trends. The aim is to strike a long-lasting relationship between stakeholders so that the operational aspects of the firm are effective and efficient before the firm’s product and/or service line.

The focus of operations management is primarily rooted in fundamental players in the business environment. These players highly influence the functionality and success of firms’ business aspects. Operations management focuses on the customers, suppliers, shareholders, employees, and society (Kumar, 2006, p.153). Customers are the main driving factor in the market. This is because they create market demand, prompting the supply of products and services. In the case of shareholders, organizational welfare consequently influences shareholder wealth. The employee aspect of operations management accounts for working conditions at the workplace. Through corporate social responsibility, operations management integrates society into the firm’s operations. This is done to ensure that business activities by a firm do not affect society negatively.

Based on the interests and the focus of operations management, five specific objectives are pursued. These are quality, speed, dependability, flexibility, and cost (Khanna, 2007, p.382). Quality addresses product and/or service specifications conformity. In other words, the quality of products and/or services offered to the customers should meet specifications associated with good quality. Poor-quality products are cheap, but few customers are willing to buy them. In pricing products, quality and price should be matched, so that customers value the products relative to the price charged. Operations management also seeks to increase the speed of firm response. This is regarding the demand and supply aspects. That is to say that the demand in the market should be quickly and effectively met.

Dependability relates to the firm-customer relationship and interaction. Dependability takes both internal and external aspects. Externally, dependability is defined by the level to which firms are considered reliable by the customers. That is to say, firms are expected to act on customers' deliveries in due time. Operations management accounts for this aspect in a bid to create customer trust. Internal dependability is determined by the strategies employed by the firms to ensure a smooth flow of products and services between the time they are demanded and when they are delivered. In terms of flexibility, operations management is perceived to be a diverse and dynamic process. It is subject to change, influenced by market trends and strategies employed to account for the trends. Finally, the cost objective of operations management is to create maximum benefit at the lowest cost possible. The benefit herein refers to the welfare of all stakeholders in the operations activities of an organization. Read More