Operations Management

Operations Management

This assignment discusses the importance of operations to achieve the firm’s objectives with respect to sales, profitability and quality. This paper starts with a definition of operations management.

Operations Management (OM) is the set of activities that creates value in the form of goods and services by transforming inputs into outputs.

To be able to let the production of goods and services run efficiently, the company requires operations management. To create goods and services, all organizations perform marketing activities, production/operations activities and finance/accounting activities.

Operations management is of a significant importance to the department of sales because without the created products/services, sales cannot be established. If sales are not being made, there is no use of producing products/services. Therefore operations management needs sales and vice versa. Operations management makes decisions related to what goods or services the company will offer and how to design them. Operations management is in charge of managing quality in terms of defining the quality and appointing who is responsible for the quality.

Operations management is of high importance to any company in terms of profitability. It is a common fact that operations management represents a high cost in an organization.

Operations management also makes decisions about capacity and the required technology in the production process. The company also needs to decide on a location, which is also one of the many tasks for operations management. Human resources and job design also have to be performed by operations management.

Inventory, material requirements planning and just-in-time are also cost components. Having an inventory always brings along costs. Therefore Just-in-time management can be applied, consequently avoiding a large inventory. Maintenance has to be added to the list of tasks to be overseen by operations management. Maintenance is of...