Optimizing Operations: Maximizing Output, Minimizing Waste

Operations management is the development, execution, and maintenance of effective processes related to activities done over and over, or to one-time major projects, to achieve specific goals of the organization. (Parker, 2013)

Operations is a set of approaches that produce and deliver products and services following specific goals, those are the heartbeat of all kind of organizations. The operations managers must keep in mind that the operation must be well designed, so it will amplify profitability. A poor operation, at the best-case scenario, equivalent unproductive processes and wasted resources. At worst, poor operations can drive a company out of the business. That’s why the operations managers must be prepared and managing with ability to meeting strategic goals and survive financially. Eventually, operations decide the cost, quality, and timing of every interaction an organization has with the people it serves. (Parker, 2013)

Operations management cover much more than manufacturing parts and products, it also compasses services and all sorts of projects and initiatives that a group of people undertakes together. From restaurants and fast-food joints to medical services, art galleries, and law firms, operations management ensures that organizations minimize waste and optimizer output and resource use for the benefit of customers as well as everyone else with skin in the game, or stakeholders. (Parker, 2013)

The operations managers have to keep in mind that if the company is doing something a little inefficiently one time is no big deal, but when its do something inefficiently over and over, hundreds or even millions of times per year, even little mistakes can add up to the very expensive amount of waste. Mistakes in an operation that result in defective products, even if they represent only one percent of the total output, can drive apart millions of customers. Equivalently, if poorly designed operations result in habitually serving customers late, a company will eventually lose customers to better-functional competitors. (Parker, 2013)

All operations processes have one typical denominator, all take their inputs such as raw material, capital, equipment, knowledge, and time and turn it into outputs (goods and services). This is achieved in a different way but the main four are familiar as the Four V’s, (volume, variety, veracity, and value)

• Volume- it’s about to how much of a specific product is necessary to satisfy the company’s demand. Low-volume operations tend to be less repetitive with staff performing more than one function (multitasking) on the other hands, high volume is a repeatable process, which in turn can be standardized or automated. A high volume will easy please a higher level of demand since the production process is faster due to automated activities. For example, large shoes companies will produce with considerable large capacity than the smallest ones.
• Variety- it’s all about the variety of good or services that the company produced and sold to costumers. The more diversity the company produce goods or services the more chance it has to meet the costumer’s requirements. For example, if the clothing company produce all kind of cloths its operations will differ from the one that produce only trousers.
• Variation- it’s all about cost and production managing, if the company offer a standard product, it will have much more control of its cost than if the company offers a customized product. For example, in a motorcycle manufacture it offers a standard product, the costumer buys a motorcycle, pay for it and go home. On the other hand, in the customized manufacture the costumer can customize the product, can choses the parts of it like they want to. Company number one (standard product) it will have much control of their production and their cost, they will produce in a large scale and so they will have better price, on the other hand, the company number two (customized product) will not produce so much products like the company number one, and the product’s cost will be much higher.
• Viability- it is about to how much the costumer can see of the company’s process. For example, amazon has higher visibility of their process, the costumer can buy a product and through a software it can track anytime, where the purchase is. On the other hands the manufacturing industry has little or no visibility to its customer of their process. There are some companies that have a mixed of both.

The roles of operations manager could vary by the industry, but some responsibility of the position remains permanent, the operations managers must keep the process running smoothly and profitable. The operations manager is in charge of directing the company’s daily activities for the benefit of employees, management, investors and customers, it means that the operations managers will be responsible of organizing and synchronizing the activities of all department managers within a company and it must ensure that the schedules, meetings, goals of each department work in harmony. (Damewood, n.d.)

To help the operations managers understand how the business have been running, they can use the business model, it is a conceptual structure that supports the viability of the product or company and explains how the company operates, make money and how it intends to achieve its goals, a business model covers all processes and policies that the company adopts and follows. (Parsons, n.d.)