During the lecture on the Operations Management, I was able to comprehend significant factors that a firm should consider in order to be competitive and hence successful. According to the discussion, I understand that the operation management involves organization, control and coordination of firm’s scarce resources in the production process of the products. In addition, the operation manager assists in the transformation of the production inputs such as information and raw materials into final products.
During the discussion, I learnt that, for the multinational corporations, they should apply diverse logical operation strategies to develop their competitive strategies that enable them to remain competitive in the industry. The competitive strategies that are exercised by such companies include maintaining stock for only two days to accomplish the direct model, higher services especially through the internet, faster delivery of the merchandise, and robust complete worth in the marketplace (Bhadur, 2008). The company also gains competitive advantage through its capacity to operate in different regions in the world and be able to change as quickly as possible simultaneously. The company has other competitive approaches such as producing high quality products and services and superior customer support
I learnt that the process innovation of the company plays a significant role in accomplishing efficient differentiation. This is also accompanied by the company’s capacity to successfully engage in the leveraging and connecting the value of its partners’ and suppliers’ technology innovation. This strategy helps the company to minimize cost incurred in R & M and hence cut the overall cost.
In order to attract more customers, the company has to ensure that products are acquired by the consumer at a lower price. The products must also enable different consumers to reduce the cost such as the supply chain waste since the networking technology is able to escalate events more critically and quickly. In telecommunication sector for example, the products has to improve efficiency through incorporation of unified communications with ERP and MES systems among other systems. In general, the products must be affordable and results to reduction of the overall cost of production and operation in a particular company.
For a company to be flexible, it has to deal with a different diversity of products. Therefore, a company has to be flexible in terms of services or product delivery, and ability to produce new types of products that match with changing consumer preferences (Bhadur, 2008). A company has to rely on this flexibility in order to improve speed and hence facilitate dependability within the organization. Other flexibility strategies include providing employees protected and reliable access to information, effective business processes with partners, convenient delivery of products and services, and easier to work together as one organization.
For accompany to successively penetrate in the market its products must have qualities that are more favorable to consumers, than its competitors. These qualities include low price products, technical performance that enhances quality, fast delivery of products, and support and maintenance services. There are various aspects of competitiveness in the company that makes the operations’ performance more considerable by the consumers and hence more attractive to consumers (Bhadur, 2008).
I understand that the operations management must be considered as one of the major functions of the business, and also correlate with other major functions such as marketing, human resources management and financing. Therefore, the operation management is significant in the business world because it helps us to determine various business trends that are arising in the contemporary world.
References
Bhadur, R. (2008). Production and operation management. Jaipur, India: Book Enclave.
