OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT
Operations management is a main function in each and every organization. Operations management is found in all organizations be it in the service or production, or in the public, private or voluntary sectors (Render and Heizer 2011, p. 36). Operations management is associated with production, creation and distribution of goods or services. Operations management plays an important role in every organization simply because it manages all the actual performance of the organization. Operations management operates and designs systems for production. These systems are the systems required to get work done. The movies people watch, the food they eat, the shops they go shopping and even the books the people read are all results of operations management (Russell and Taylor III 2003, p 4). Operation management is practically found in every part of any organization. The operation managers ensure quality, design systems, and do the production of goods and delivering of services. They solve problems, innovate and reengineer process. It is more of planning than controlling. This is usually because the operations management controls and plans all the activities that are conducted in the organization.
Operations management is usually considered as the process of transformation. Inputs such as materials, capital, management, machines and labor are changed into outputs which are services and goods. Operations management tries to ensure that transformation is efficiently performed to produce more outputs than the inputs have been used. This is to show that the transformation process creates value. The chain starting from the inputs to the transformation to the output process is the main characteristics of the operations management. The main activities of the operations management include the organization of work, selection of process, arranging of layouts designing of jobs, measuring of performance, scheduling of work, managing inventory and planning of the production. Managers of the operations management need good conceptual, technical and behavioral ability so as to deal with people, deadlines and the technology they are using.
The work of the operations management is closely related to other sectors of the organization. These sectors of the organization that are closely related to the operations management are like the marketing where the operations management deals with selling of the goods that the operations sectors have produced. The operations management is provided with the sales, forecasts of the sales, customer feedback and information on product development (Slack, Chambers and Johnston 2010, p. 6). The operations management also works hand in hand with the human resource management where by it deals with communication of the needs of the human resource and also helps in recruiting of the staff. It deals with the production sector where it communicates the constraints and capabilities of the operations processes for instance it communicates the new products and new ideas. It also works hand ion hand with the accounting and finance sectors in the provision of relevant information and data. It provides this data to that sector so as to know what the organization would like to buy or purchase and the relevance of the product to be bought. Operation management is an essential part of the organization and without it an organization can not run on its own. This is because it is intertwined with each and every sector of the organization since each sector of the organization is related to the operations management.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Render, B. and Heizer, J. (2011). Principles of Operation Management. 8th Ed. New Jersey: Prentice Hall
Russell, R. and Taylor III, B. (2003). Operations Management. 4th Ed. New Jersey: Pearson Education
Slack, N., Chambers, S. and Johnston, R. (2010). Operations Management. 6th Ed. London: Prentice Hall.
