Free Custom «Production and Operations Management» Essay Paper

Production and operations management (POM) is concerning with the transformation of operational and production inputs into outputs, in which when delivered to customers meet their expectations. This process of transforming inputs into outputs is known as conversion process, and there are various ways of handling this process, this includes group, job, flow, and batch.  Production and operations management includes several chores that are mutually-dependent which can be categorized into five titles (Collins, 2009).

Product

In the companies, all marketers should make sure that their companies sell products that meet customer expectations. The role played by the production and operations is to make sure that the company actually produces the needed services and products in accordance with the plan. These are the areas of concerns of product in production and operations management; delivery dates, reliability, performance, quantity, production costs and aesthetics (Collins, 2009.

Plant

To produce the products, there are various types of plant which are required, and this will consists of the mass of the fixed assets of the company. In deciding which plant to be used, the management has to consider factors such as environmental issues, productivity and reliability of equipment, healthy, safety and future demand in order to produce the desired products.

Processes

There are various different methods of making products, therefore, management have to select the best process and consider the following; safety, availability of skills, production costs, layout of plant, equipment and availability capability and maintenance requirements (Dyson and Robert, 2009).

Programmes

The production programmes deal with the dates and times of the services and products, which are to be made and distributed to clientele, and the decision made concerning programme will be influenced by aspects such as pattern of purchasing, transportation, cash flow and requirement of storage.

Individuals

Production process depends on individuals whose ability, knowledge and stimulus vary. Main individuals connected to decisions will deem the following parts; communication, working condition, motivation and leadership, salaries and wages, unionisation and safety and training.

Production

Production referred to as applications of procedures such as technology to the raw materials to add more uses and economic values in order to obtain desired goods. This is achieved by the use of most excellent method without surrendering the desired quality. There are three ways of production;

Production by Disintegration

By dividing the contents of crude oil, the desired goods are produced, for instance, the crude oil is disintegrated into several fuel oils. Likewise, production of salt is another example for the goods produced by disintegrated, still we can use chemical or mechanical or both technologies to produce goods with high quality and desired.

Production by Integration

In this kind of production, several constituents of the products are assembled to get the desired product. In this progress, the physical and chemical properties of the materials used may change, for examples, assembly of two or four wheels and others.

Production by Service

In this case, the Chemical and Mechanical Properties of materials are advanced with no any physical changes, examples of this is heat treatment of metal. In the real world, a combination of the above mentioned procedure is used, in general production, it is the use of any procedure designed to change inputs into outputs, which have use value and economic value (Dyson and Robert 2009).

Planning the Production Process

Making the decision on the planning level, have long range implications and is critical to a company’s success. Before making the decision concerning the operations process, managers have to deem the corporate goals that are set by marketing managers in order to set the right processes to produce the right goods. Therefore, the managers have to consider the followings;  does the company intending to adopt a low cost leader strategic and to compete on the basis of low prices or does it intends to concentrate on quality of goods and services and aim to attain the high end of the market? Also, they have to consider whether the company will be offering goods in an extensive range or to create a good reputation for reliability, all these decisions engage trade-off.  Maintaining a reputation for reliability is not necessarily compatible with providing a wide range of the goods, while on the other hand, low cost leader does not usually go hand in hand with superior quality (Dyson and Robert, 2009).

Scope of Production and Operation

The main focus of production and operations management is to transform inputs into outputs through the use of physical resources in order to offer the desired goods to the clientele, while meeting the other corporate goals of efficiency, competence and adoptability (Collins, 2009). It differentiates itself from other operations, for example, finance by its primary concern for transformation through the use of “physical resources.” These are the functions of production and operations management in an organization:  Product design, Process design, Production and planning, control quality control and material management. All these functions help the operations managers to make the right decisions concerning the products the company aims to produce.

Operations management in manufacturing

All the manufacturers make decisions to carry out the similar functions to transform resources into finished goods. To carry out these functions in the present day’s business environment, the producers have to frequently strive towards advance operational competence. They have to modify their production processes to concentrate on quality, to maintain costs of material and labour down, also to remove all irrelevant costs, which adds no value to final products. Making the decisions engaged in an attempt to achieve these goals is the task of the operations manager (Dyson and Robert, 2009). The operations manager’s responsibilities include the following;

Production Planning

In production planning, managers have to decide how products and services will be made, how manufacturing facility will be arranged and where for production will take place (Dyson and Robert, 2009).

Production Control

Once the conversion process is in the progress, managers should constantly schedule and supervise the activities that form that procedure. They have to solicit and respond to feedback and make adjustment where necessary.

Quality Control

Finally, the operations managers are directly engaged in efforts to make sure that the products and services are produced in the right specifications and good quality is maintained.

Management

Management is defined as an art of obtaining activities done by the individuals through the use of planning, coordinating, leading, and organizing these activities to achieve specific corporate goals within a specified period of time of agreed rules. Today’s manager requires scientific and personal tactics to control the individuals under him to attain the desired corporate goals and objectives (Ruffini, Frans, Harry and Maarten, 2010).

Global Strategic Management

In the last decades of the 20^th Century, several barriers to global trade fell plus a wave of organizations started practicing international strategies to achieve a competitive advantage. Nevertheless, some companies gain more from globalization than others, and some countries have a comparative gain over other countries in certain industries. To have a successful international strategy, first of all managers have to understand the nature of international industries and dynamic of international competition (Collins, 2009).

The furniture manufacturing company is an illustration of an industry, which did not offer itself to globalization prior to the year 1960s, since furniture has a huge mass compared to its value. This is because furniture is easily destroyed in shipping and transport costs were usually high, the government trade barriers were also unfavourable. The furniture company from Swedish by the name IKEA established a move to globalization in the furniture industries. The IKEA’s furniture was not assembled and so could be transported more economically. IKEA better still, lowered costs by engaging clientele in the value chain and therefore, clientele could transport the furniture to their homes and assembled them. IKEA also adopted an economical culture that offered it cost gains and this led the company’s expansion to various countries such as the Europe and this is because the clientele in various countries were ready to buy same designs (Collins 2009).

Conclusion

In the present day’s business environments, the main constituent of operational flexibility in various companies is technological information. The improvement in technology has made it easier for companies to produces desired products and with superior quality, which will meet customer expectation by use of fewer resources. The development in the high-tech company applications has made new competitors, as well as making it important for the companies attempting to list gains in any and all areas of operations management.

Over time, operations management has developed advanced ways of producing the products and services with superior quality and this relies on behavioural and engineering concepts, and it utilizes management research tools and techniques for systemic decision making and problem solving. As operations management goes on to build up, it will ever more interrelate with other functional parts in the business to build up integrated answers to multifaceted interdisciplinary problems. Indeed, such communication is extensively observed as an essential to long term company success or a small company establishments and Multi-national Corporations alike.