Operations Management is defined as the design, operation, and improvement of the system that creates and delivers the firm’s primary products and services. Like marketing and finance, OM is a functional field of business with clear management responsibility. Operations Management is the administration of business practice to create the highest efficiency level possible within an organization. However, the following definitions will clarify the term more broadly.
What is Operations Management
“Operations management involves planning, organizing and supervising processes and make necessary improvements for higher profitability.”
“In Business, Operations management is an area of management concerned with the designing and controlling the processes of production and redesigning business operations in the production of goods and services.”
So, from the above definition, we found some features of OM are,
- It’s a managing technology in the operations functions.
- It’s concerned with the entire system that produces a good or delivers a product.
- It involves planning, organizing, coordinating, and controlling all the resources needed to produce a company’s goods and services.
According to INVESTOPEDIA, Specific Responsibilities of Operations Management:
Operations management handles various strategic issues, including determining the size of manufacturing plants and project management methods and implementing information technology networks. Other operational issues include managing inventory levels, including work-in-process levels and raw materials acquisition; quality control; materials handling; and maintenance policies. Operations management entails studying the use of raw materials and ensuring minimal waste occurs. Managers utilize numerous formulas such as the economic order quantity formula to determine when and how large an inventory order is to process and how much inventory to hold on hand.
Importance of operations management
- Operations management uses resources to create products/services that fulfill defined market requirements.
- Operations management deals with the product and service development function to maintain speed, cost, quality, and flexibility of the product or service.
- The responsibilities of operations management are to keep a strong supplier relationship process so that the raw material is supplied promptly.
- By Operations Management, customer relationship management provides the best quality service to the customers to satisfy their demand.
- Planning, organizing, staffing, monitoring, controlling, directing, and motivating are its significant elements.
- With its help, an organization can use its resources like labor, raw material, money, and other resources.
- Operation Management gives a measure of the efficiency of the manager as well as the employees.
- Operations management is the heart of an organization as it controls the entire operation. If the products are made catering to the customers’ needs, they’ll be sold at a rapid rate.
- Under operations management, there is the optimum utilization of resources leading to enormous profits of the organization. The employees’ efforts and the various raw materials are efficiently utilized and converted into the services and goods required by the organization.
- Operations management plays a crucial role in an organization as it handles issues like design, operations, and maintenance of the system used to produce goods.
The challenges facing Operations Managers today
Earlier everyone believed that operations management was not that important for the organization, but later on, they found that it is actually important for the smooth functioning of the organization. Otherwise, the manufacturing of raw materials to make the goods and selling them along with management of sales is necessary, and this is done efficiently by managing the operations.
Here are the major challenges in the field of Operations Management will be as follows:
- labor pool -The labor pool is smaller than in previous years, especially for skilled knowledge workers. We have to try harder to hire good people.
- Warehouse space -There is less available warehouse space than in previous years. Rents are higher, which affects our choice of geographic markets we are willing to lease space in.
- Hyper-growth- Hyper-growth requires the ability to grow strong instead of fat.
- Potential changes in product regulations and surcharges on import products will require a re-evaluation of our purchasing strategies as many of the products we purchase from domestic suppliers are also made overseas.
- The servitization of manufacturing – investigating how adding services in manufacturing organizations can add to their competitiveness.
- E-operations – investigating the use of new developments in enterprise resource planning systems.
- Outsourcing – looking at the bases for outsourcing and or insourcing of resources and capabilities.
- Leanness and agility – looking at ways of reducing waste and increasing value created by operations.
- Performance measurement and quality control – investigating how measuring operations can change operations behavior.
- Coordinating the relationships between mutually supportive but separate organizations.
- Optimizing global supplier, production, and distribution networks.
- Increased co-production of goods and services.
- Managing customer touchpoints.
- Raising senior management awareness of operations as a significant competitive weapon.
Contributor: Atkia Rezwana Ila.
From Mawlana Bhashani Science & Technology University
