Operations Management Processes and Strategy Development Tips
In operations management a good process strategy will help your processes to flow better and this will have an impact on your overall operations management. When you are creating a product or a service a good process strategy can hand you a lot of benefits. These would include cutting cost.
As a result of that you will start to notice processes that run at a low costs rate. It will also help your processes to operate more efficiently than before. Taking a microscopic view on them you will again help you noticing areas of inefficiencies that need to be fixed.
Another important benefit is that this allows you to have a cheaper product. Normally when you’re processes gets cheaper your margins will improve and you can create products with more quality at a cheaper rate and this can help you to gain market share. As an operations manager there are four basic strategies you can implement in your operations management to help it perform better.
These strategies can help you to improve your operations. As an operations manager they can make your life a lot easier than it usually is on a daily basis. You can see each in more detail below.
Product focus
To implement this strategy your company’s operations must be consistent plus your quality must be managed at a highest stage at all times. It’s a low variety and high volume process. For this strategy to work effectively departments should be organized by product. The fixed cost for this strategy is typically high and variable costs are low.
Process focus
This is when you are going to organize your production processes in such a way that the processes are going to run in a low volume and high variety basis. Additionally this strategy is going to allow it to be more flexible. Because of that the products can be allowed to move in different periods between the processes. While for example the repetitive focus processes are more systematic and are done in a sequenced format.
Repetitive focus
These facilities are normally organized in an assembly format. As stated before it is less flexible than the process focused strategy however this strategy can be quite more efficient approach.
Mass customization
This is identified as one of the most complex of the other processes. You produce goods at a rapid pace at low cost to satisfy unique customer desires. It is also usually seen as a flexible strategy and can help your operations to maintain efficiency.
In summary by looking at all the strategies shown above, you can see that there are quite a few important options you can choose from when thinking about operations management. For operation managers it’s important to choose the right strategy for your business. Continuous tracking of the processes to maintain quality is a must.
There are companies who have even used 3 of the strategies in an entire business year, because they want to know which one works best for their organization.