The operation function of an organization is the part that produces the organization’s products. The product may be physical goods or services. This function performs several activities to ‘transform’ a set of inputs into a useful output using a conversion process. The conversion process is the process of changing inputs of labor, materials, capital and management into outputs of goods and services.
The production process consists of number of activities and operations. These operations and activities can be applied in different combinations and order to achieve the desired objective. The operations can be purchase of raw materials, maintenance of inventories, transportation of goods etc. The combination of two or more constitutes a system. In any production process two or more systems can be combined in series or parallel e.g. number of factories producing produce similar products to supply several markets areas then they constitute a parallel system. According to Webster “System is a regularly interacting or interdependent group of items forming a unified whole.” Any systems may have many components and variation in one component is likely to effect the other components of a system e.g. change in rate of production will affect inventory, overtime hours etc.
Broadly speaking an ‘operation function’ or operations management is a systematic approach to address all the issues pertaining to the transformation process that converts some inputs into outputs that are useful and could fetch revenue to the organization. Four aspects of this definition merit closer attention.
A systematic approach involves understanding, nature of issues and problems to be studied, establishing measures of performance, collecting relevant data, using scientific tools and techniques to analyze and effective and efficient solutions to the problem. Therefore, for successful operation management, the focus should be on developing a set of tools and techniques to analyze problems within operation systems.
The second aspect of operation management pertains to addressing several issues that an organization faces. These issues vary markedly in terms of the time horizon, the nature of the problem to be solved and commitment of the required resources, the problems may include deciding how to re-route jobs when a machine breaks down on a shop floor or how to handle a surge in demand in a service systems. On the other hand, decisions such as where to locate the plant, what capacity to build in the system and what type of products and services need to be offered to the customers is to be done? Operation management provides alternative methodologies to address such wide-ranging issues to an organization.
Transformation processes are central to operation systems. The transformation process ensures that inputs are converted into useful outputs. Therefore, the focus of the operation management is to address the various aspects of design in the transformation process as well as planning and operational control.
Finally, the goal of operation management is to ensure that through careful planning and control of operations the organization is able to keep the costs. In order to ensure this an appropriate performance evaluation system is required. Therefore the operation management discipline also involves the development of such a system of performance evaluation and methods by which the operating system could make improvements to meet targeted performance measures.
The production process consists of number of activities and operations. These operations and activities can be applied in different combinations and order to achieve the desired objective. The operations can be purchase of raw materials, maintenance of inventories, transportation of goods etc. The combination of two or more constitutes a system. In any production process two or more systems can be combined in series or parallel e.g. number of factories producing produce similar products to supply several markets areas then they constitute a parallel system. According to Webster “System is a regularly interacting or interdependent group of items forming a unified whole.” Any systems may have many components and variation in one component is likely to effect the other components of a system e.g. change in rate of production will affect inventory, overtime hours etc.
Broadly speaking an ‘operation function’ or operations management is a systematic approach to address all the issues pertaining to the transformation process that converts some inputs into outputs that are useful and could fetch revenue to the organization. Four aspects of this definition merit closer attention.
A systematic approach involves understanding, nature of issues and problems to be studied, establishing measures of performance, collecting relevant data, using scientific tools and techniques to analyze and effective and efficient solutions to the problem. Therefore, for successful operation management, the focus should be on developing a set of tools and techniques to analyze problems within operation systems.
The second aspect of operation management pertains to addressing several issues that an organization faces. These issues vary markedly in terms of the time horizon, the nature of the problem to be solved and commitment of the required resources, the problems may include deciding how to re-route jobs when a machine breaks down on a shop floor or how to handle a surge in demand in a service systems. On the other hand, decisions such as where to locate the plant, what capacity to build in the system and what type of products and services need to be offered to the customers is to be done? Operation management provides alternative methodologies to address such wide-ranging issues to an organization.
Transformation processes are central to operation systems. The transformation process ensures that inputs are converted into useful outputs. Therefore, the focus of the operation management is to address the various aspects of design in the transformation process as well as planning and operational control.
Finally, the goal of operation management is to ensure that through careful planning and control of operations the organization is able to keep the costs. In order to ensure this an appropriate performance evaluation system is required. Therefore the operation management discipline also involves the development of such a system of performance evaluation and methods by which the operating system could make improvements to meet targeted performance measures.
