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Operations strategy concerns the pattern of strategic decisions and actions which set the role,
objectives and activities of the operation. The term operations strategy sounds at first like a
contradiction.
How can operations, a subject that is generally concerned with the day-to-day creation
and delivery of goods and services, be strategic? Strategy is usually regarded as the opposite
of those day-to-day routine activities. But operations is not the same as operational .
Operations
are the resources that create products and services. Operational is the opposite of strategic,
meaning day-to-day and detailed. So, one can examine both the operational and the strategic
aspects of operations. It is also conventional to distinguish between the
content and the process of operations strategy. The content of operations
strategy is the specific decisions and actions which set the operations
role, objectives and activities. The process of operations strategy is
the method that is used to make the specific content decisions.
What is TQM?
TQM is an effective system for integrating the quality development, quality maintenance and
quality improvement efforts of the various groups in an organization so as to enable production
and service at the most economical levels which allow for full customer satisfaction. 9 However,
it was the Japanese who first made the concept work on a wide scale and subsequently
popularized
the approach and the term TQM. It was then developed further by several so-called
quality gurus. Each guru stressed a different set of issues, from which emerged the TQM
approach. It is best thought of as a philosophy of how to approach quality improvement. This
philosophy, above everything, stresses the total of TQM. It is an approach that puts quality at
the heart of everything that is done by an operation including all activities within an operation.
This totality can be summarized by the way TQM lays particular stress on the following:
_ meeting the needs and expectations of customers;
_ covering all parts of the organization;
including every person in the organization;
_ examining all costs which are related to quality, especially failure costs and getting things
right first time;
_ developing the systems and procedures which support quality and improvement;
_ developing a continuous process of improvement (this will be treated in the broader context
of improvement, in Chapter 18).
WHAT IS LAYOUT?
The layout of an operation or process means how its transforming resources are positioned
relative to each other and how its various tasks are allocated to these transforming resources.
Together these two decisions will dictate the pattern of flow for transformed resources as they
progress through the operation or process (see Fig. 7.2). It is an important decision because, if
the layout proves wrong, it can lead to over-long or confused flow patterns, customer queues,
long process times, inflexible operations, unpredictable flow and high cost. Also, re-laying out
an existing operation can cause disruption, leading to customer dissatisfaction or lost operating
time. So, because the layout decision can be difficult and expensive, operations managers
are reluctant to do it too often. Therefore layout must start with a full appreciation of the
objectives that the layout should be trying to achieve. However, this is only the starting point
of what is a multi-stage process, which leads to the final physical layout of the operation.
JOB DESIGN
In the remainder of this chapter we deal with three interrelated topics; the design of individuals
and groups jobs, the allocation of work times to peoples activities, and the design of the
working environment. We look at them together because they are influenced by and use a
more or less common set of concepts and frameworks.