Operations Management

Considering the material covered since the first exam (Chapters 8-16), where would you recommend American organizations (service and manufacturing, profit or not-for-profit) focus efforts to improve operations to stay competitive in a world economy? Why? Give a specific example using either your current organization or one of our “Tours” to illustrate your point? What would you recommend as the next critical steps this organization and other organizations take to further develop your recommended focus for improved operations?

American organizations must focus on running their companies well, in order to stay competitive in the world economy. For an organization to run well, they must have good operations management. In my organization, I consider our operations our major functional area. Operations determine the growth and profits of an organization. Within operations, I feel the following functions must be done to stay competitive: quality, lean, supply chain and planning.

Quality – Management of quality should be the top priority of any company. If you don’t have a quality product, it will definitely affect your bottom line. In the organization I work for, our products are planned, designed and delivered to meet our customer’s requirements. We review our products, work on problem, solutions, and provide feedback. We also have quality reviews called Project Quality Review Process (PQRP) which helps us learn from our mistakes, find problems and resolve them. Our quality reviews occur in stages and at lessons learned are discussed and hopefully passed on to new and upcoming projects. Quality is an ongoing process in organizations that should check at different points throughout the production of the product.

Lean Manufacturing & Six Sigma - A huge part of quality control has to deal with Six Sigma and Lean. The main reasons for these types of programs is to improve efficiency within the organizations and improve the work processes that are in...