Operation management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words - 1

Operation management - Essay Example decrease and Lewis (2008) place three basic verticals for companies such as finance, marketing and operations while finance and marketing activities have close gene linkage to operation management Slack & Lewis (2008, p. 4) defined operation management as it is the management of systems or processes that create goods and/or provide services. Consideration of research works of Slack, Chambers & Johnston (2007) and Hsu & Tang (2010) reveals the fact that operation management has close linkage with supply chain activities. Slack, Chambers & Johnston (2007) defined supply chain management as the sequence of activities in order to supply resources throughout every phases of treasure chain. As part of synchronization of supply chain activities and operation management activities facilities, functions and activities argon being used. Facilities- warehouses, processing centres, offices, factories, distribution centres and retail outlets are the place wh ere operations are took place (Slack, 2004). Functions and activities- operation management is collective act and not only operation manager but also supply chain partners and workers tender vital role in performing activities like delivery of the resources or final output to facilities, inventory management, customer service, scheduling of operational activities, information management, presage of future demand, purchasing of material, designing new ingathering, quality assurance testing etc (Slack, 2004). While describing nature of operation management in context to manufacturing sector, Slack (2004) and Slack & Lewis (2008) used the following model. Figure 1 Operation Model (Source Slack & Lewis, 2008) According to the above model, operation management is backed by three strategic verticals such as resources, capabilities of the firm and process that will be deployed in manufacturing new product or processing a service. As part of resources equipments, pecuniary capital, staf f, sourcing from suppliers and technologies is being used in operation management. As part of capabilities of the firm application of state of art technology, quantitative formulation of process and process diagrams are being used by operation managers and respective staff members. As part of process job design, movement of goods in the facilities, process design, new product concept design, new product development etc are being used as part of operation management. So, what is the role or types of activities that operations managers are regard in operation management? Answering the question is not simple because types of activities of operation manager differ significantly with the change in nature of line of merchandise for organizations. For example, operational activities of operations managers in manufacturing plan cannot be same operational activities in bank. However, some basic activities of operations manager for manufacturing facilities can be identified as, 1- managing the resources that are being used in different phases of manufacturing, 2- developing and adjusting production schedule, 3- monitoring and controlling quality in