STRATEGIC OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT

Strategic Operations Management

Strategic Operations Management

Introduction

Operations management (OM) is the managerial role (sometimes functional label) and academic discipline concerned with the way that for profit and not for profit organisations produce goods and services. As Slack, Chambers, and Johnston (2004) argue, “everything you wear, eat, sit on, read every book you borrow from the library, every lecture you attend at university - all have been produced. While the people who supervised their 'production' may not always be called operations managers that is what they really are.” For example, they might be called fleet managers in a distribution company, administrative managers in a hospital, or store managers in a retail operation. The term “operations management” has emerged to suggest distinctions from the narrower but more established subject of “production management.”

Strategy is usually regarded as the antithesis of those day-to-day routines and activities which are the responsibility of operations managers. But the way in which a firm's operations resources are managed is increasingly seen as being central to its long term strategic success. Operations do have a strategic role. (Slack, Lewis 2002) This paper discusses how 'operations' which is generally concerned with the day-to-day creation and delivery of goods and services can be strategic.

Critical Evaluation of Operations Management

Many of the issues, methods, and techniques that apply to the core operations function also have meaning for each unit, section, group, or individual within the organisation. For example, a marketing function can be viewed as an operations system with inputs of market information, staff, and computers, and outputs of marketing plans, advertising campaigns, and sales force organisations.

Across the globe, consumers are now insisting that companies address these issues and make ethics and social responsibility mainstream. That means that all employees from the Board to the shop floor must recognize the part that they must play in achieving the changes such concepts demand. Ethical manufacturing is a new, broad umbrella term coined to bring together a wide range of concepts and to consider their application to operations management. This term includes consideration of sustainability, pollution issues, quality management, the search for renewables, responses to climate change, development of new materials, labor issues, as well as all of the traditional aspects of production management.

There is always change in operations management: pressure from rising customer expectations, the need to adapt to new technologies, constant innovation, and new legislation concerning treatment of workers have been key issues. In addition to these drivers, anxiety about the environment, sustainability, and resource management have all become

serious concerns. The problems are not new. The difference is that the “greening” of manufacturing has become mainstream. Discussion of ethics, social responsibility, and sustainability is no mere management fashion.

If you look at the indexes of standard operations Management textbooks, you will see that the number of pages devoted to ethical or socially responsible issues is very small indeed. In fact, rather than including them in the main text, the issues may just be relegated to a final ...