Research Korner: Operations Management Assignment

Operations Management and Ethics Assignment   Operational activities are central to the provision of services and/or goods. Every organization provides a product and service combination. Operations management has its origins in the study of ‘production’ or ‘manufacturing management.’ These terms still very much apply to manufacturing organizations that will have distinct operational activities that convert say, beans and rich tomato sauce into cans of baked beans to be sold by a retailer. Thus, operations management can be viewed as being part of a distinct function producing a product and service combination. Operations management can be defined in many ways. It is the design, operation and improvement of the systems that create and deliver the firm’s primary product and service combinations. It is also the design, operation and improvement of the internal and external systems, resources and technologies that create and deliver the firm’s primary product and service combinations (Lowson, 2002). Operations management is made up made up of members of the management team whose major task is the immediate supervision of the workers themselves. Most of the time situations call for ethical decisions from operations managers. These situations are concerning products, working practices, resources, impact upon local population and investment issues.             Take for example a situation in an oil company. Accidents at oil companies largely result from poor training. While oil companies worldwide spend millions on training, more is being spent on making employees feel cared for than on being ethically responsible. For example, oil companies usually spend money on construction of a personal training facility; while at the same time conduct an annual employee survey to measure their satisfaction. There are usually no actions on improvements of training for employees or conducting ethical measures in avoiding or minimizing oils spill accidents.             Changes should be made from investments in operational improvements. It is better that oil companies invest money to advance plant operations, which would result in a reduction in recordable injury rates for oil companies. Long-term and ethical operations management strategies can play a significant and major role in a company's future financial performance and the environmental affects worldwide. As for specific programs and practices, a corporate code of conduct is viewed as being most important in any company. Such a code must reflect and reinforce the values and principles of an organization. Rounding out the top five programs are ethics training for all members of the organization, CSR programs, ombudsman services and help lines. In summary, employees need to have a code to set the ethics foundation, training to help people truly understand it, and programs that permit them to inquire about and report ethical violations. But before employees can have a code to follow, operations management has the role of providing it to them and seeing to it that it be followed.

Sample Essay Operations Management and Ethics Assignment

Operations Management and Ethics Assignment Operational activities are central to the provision of services and/or goods. Every o...

Introduction Improving organizational productivity is an issue that has been showing for some time and will continue to be important. All types of organizations need to be as productive as possible to best utilize their precious resources, to meet their customers needs, and to stay competitive with similar organizations. Productivity improvement is also important at a national level. As people continue to improve their national productivity, inflation is moderated, their standard of living improves, and jobs are created or retained. There are two basic approaches to improving productivity within an organization. One can change technology or one can change how people work. The former is the realm of the engineer; the second is the realm of the behavioral scientist. Although improving technology is, of course, important to long-range productivity growth, it is how people use this technology that makes it a worthwhile investment to the organization. Thus, the concern is how to structure work so that people can and will want to behave in a way that will maximize their productivity (1995).   The term productivity means different things to different people. However, most definitions fall into one of three categories. The first is the economist/engineer definition, where productivity is an efficiency measure: the ratio of outputs over inputs, where both usually are expressed in dollar terms. An example of productivity or efficiency under this definition would be the dollar value of refrigerators produced this month divided by the total costs to produce them. The second definition of productivity is a combination of efficiency that can be said as outputs/inputs and effectiveness or outputs/goals. In this definition a company making refrigerators could measure productivity by a combination of the efficiency measure above plus an effectiveness measure, such as number of refrigerators divided by the objective or goal for the number to be produced that month. The third definition of productivity is the broadest and considers productivity as anything that makes the organization function better. In this definition, productivity would include efficiency and effectiveness, but also things like absenteeism, turnover, morale, innovation, etc (1995).   Industrialization puts increasing emphasis on the need for higher productivity of labor.  Management is the principal factor determining the productivity of labor, if it will be assumed that capital and raw material inputs are the same. Thus, the compulsion for higher productivity in the advanced industrial countries demands high-level manpower resources. The technical problem involved in raising productivity of labor is the most obvious and historically the earliest reason recognized for adding to the managerial group. The increase of dexterity which the division of labor facilitates is applied generally to direction and control of production; and the tasks of management become professional specialties. Thus, management must decide how its increasingly complex tasks can be subdivided and carried out (1959).    The essential function of selecting, training, and developing the work force becomes the special concern of the personnel department, employing a variety of experts to assist management in finding the best workers, and providing advice and assistance in their most efficient utilization. It is well known that marked increases in labor productivity can be achieved in an enterprise simply through better selection and utilization of the work force, combined with improved layout and planning of the production process (1959). The paper will focus on how to improve the operation efficiency in an organization. To determine the ways to improve the operation efficiency of the organization different methods will be used to analyze the operation efficiency. Included in the method is SWOT analysis of the firm. After determining ways to improve efficiency a proper conclusion will then be made.   Operations management concepts Planning Fundamentally, operating plans allocate tasks to specific facilities in each planning period for example week, month, or some other time period in order to achieve particular objectives. In seasonal businesses, operating plans must reflect seasonal variations in capacities, resolve supplies, product demands, quality requirements, prices, and costs. Operational planning deals in aggregated or average values of variables in the system, such as product demands, equipment capacity, standard costs, and inventory levels. An example of operational planning is the specification of an oil refinery's quarterly running plan, comprising flow rates, crude oils, and processing conditions required to make the needed amounts of products and blending components. The quarterly running plan establishes ground rules for short-term production planning, such as determining what components will be available with which to blend products according to different formulas. Short-range planning, like medium-range planning, is an extension of long-range corporate plans (1987).  The end result of all short-range planning activities focuses primarily on financial data that is flexible or variable budgets that are developed for stated levels of possible production. To produce detailed balance sheet and income statement data for the coming year, financial data are fed into the corporate computer. The flexible budgeting computer program takes into account the values set forth for the lowest level of expected plant capacity, and develops corresponding figures for other levels of capacity. Appropriate financial statements are developed and printed for these various levels of capacity. Flexible budgeting data are also written onto the corporate computerized files for comparison with actual figures as they occur month by month (1987).   Generally, problem finding is found at the higher levels of planning, namely, strategic and tactical. However, if one examines operational planning in some depth, it is not too difficult to determine the need for problem finding. For example, reference can be made to the area of scheduling and dispatching. The objective is to assign and sequence units of identifiable resources such as people, machines, raw materials, and so forth to manufacture or deliver given quantities of products, consistent with a longer-interval operating plan such as a quarterly operational plan. At this level, planning deals with specific units and operating rates (1987). Products and facilities must be identified explicitly, and start-up times, sequences of production steps, actual and not average production rates, unit downtimes, and costs must be treated in detail. Nonlinearities in cost or production functions that are properly ignored or approximated in longer range planning are critical in scheduling and dispatching. Based upon these facts surrounding scheduling and dispatching, there are a number of techniques for improving these production control activities. However, the behavioral aspects of how line personnel think and act must be considered. Typically, the approach to manufacturing operations results in do what you are told and don't ask questions. This one-way directive approach turns many employees off. Hence, they do only what they are told (1987).   Organizing Total quality management (TQM) is an approach to improving the effectiveness and flexibility of businesses as a whole. It is essentially a way of organizing and involving the whole organization; every department, every activity, every single person at every level ( 2002). Total Quality Management is both a philosophy and a methodology. It can assist institutions to manage change and to set their own agendas for dealing with the plethora of new external pressures. Considerable claims are made for TQM. There are those in education who believe that TQM properly applied to it can complete a similar transformation. However, TQM does not and will not bring results overnight; neither is it a panacea for all the problems that beset companies. Rather it is an important set of tools that can be employed in the management of institutions (2002).  Total quality management incorporates quality assurance, and extends and develops it. TQM is about creating a quality culture where the aim of every member of staff is to delight their customers, and where the structure of their organization allows them to do so. In TQM the customer is sovereign. TQM is about providing the customer with what they want, when they want it and how they want it. It involves moving with changing customer expectations and fashions to design products and services that meet and exceed their expectations. Only by delighting customers will they return and tell their friends about it although this is sometimes called the sell-on definition of quality. The perceptions and expectations of customers are recognized as being short term and fickle, and so organizations have to find ways of keeping close to their customers to be able to respond to their changing tastes, needs and wants (2002).   Organizing often has been looked upon as purely a technical matter. There is no need to assemble the evidence. The point should be plain even to the casual reader of the literatures of business administration or public administration. In its most unadulterated form, this technical concept encourages a view of organization as simply a drawing-board task, a matter of assigning responsibilities, of allocating jobs or functions and mechanically coordinating them (1967). Organizing is essentially a planning process. It is inter-relating the subdivisions of work by allotting them to men who are placed in a structure of authority, so that the work may be coordinated by orders of superiors to subordinates, reaching from the top to the bottom of the entire enterprise. In this view, organization has order and form, but no life. More exuberant exponents of this view often lapse into mechanistic metaphor. Thus organizing becomes a meshing of gears and wheels in a smoothly running machine. Such metaphors are merely explicit evidence of a technicist bias. The act of organizing must be guided by a design that helps achieve a working consensus among members while it meets technical requirements. The traditional theory of organization does a rather poor job with regard to the latter feature of the double-barreled task of organizing. Fortunately, research to be reviewed in due course suggests that people need not sacrifice consensus for technical efficiency. The word fortunately is used advisedly. Neither consensus nor technical performance can be sacrificed over the longer run, and particularly at advanced technological levels. Thus the stakes are high in the game which the analysis proposes to play (1967).   Scheduling Scheduling is often recognized as the major function in project management. The main purpose of scheduling is to allocate resources so that the overall project objectives are achieved within a reasonable time span. In general, scheduling involves the assignment of time periods to specific tasks within the work schedule. Resource availability, time limitations, urgency level, required performance level, precedence requirements, work priorities, technical constraints, and other factors complicate the scheduling process. Thus, the assignment of a time slot to a task does not necessarily ensure that the task will be performed satisfactorily in accordance with the schedule. Consequently, careful control must be developed and maintained throughout the project scheduling process. Project scheduling is a major function in project management. The project schedule shows the timing of the efforts and resources committed to the project. A master schedule for the overall project is often developed for general overview of a project. In addition, detailed work schedules are developed for specific segments or phases of the project. The detailed schedules serve as operating guides for the project personnel. Project scheduling should be distinguished from sequencing and scheduling in production management even though the same principles and procedures are applicable to both. Production sequencing involves ordering of operations on each machine so as to satisfy the sequence of operations required by a job (1993).   A sequence of operations on a job may require that the same type of operation be performed on the same job or product at different times while the job is in production. This may necessitate repeated routing of the job to the same machine at different times. Production scheduling provides a basis for determining when a job is routed from machine to machine for specific operations. This establishes the starting and finishing times of each operation. Production sequencing and scheduling involve developing relative priorities of operations at each machine in order to meet scheduled due dates of individual jobs. The method of prioritizing jobs is often referred to as the dispatching rule for sending jobs to resource centers. In production management, sequencing and scheduling are performed as complementary functions. By contrast, project scheduling deals strictly with the timing of tasks that must be performed in a project. This does not require a machine sequencing process. Even when a task requires multiple performance of the same action, each occurrence of the action is viewed as an activity that must be scheduled separately. Thus, project scheduling is a simplified form of the production scheduling problem. Project scheduling can be carried out as the specific means through which the tasks involved in production management are scheduled and accomplished ( 1993).   Project scheduling involves the following functions. First time and resource estimation wherein estimates are made of the time and resources required to perform each of the network activities. Second is basic scheduling where the basic scheduling computations are performed on a project network by using forward pass and backward pass computational procedures. These computations give the earliest and latest start and finish times for each activity. Schedule management often involves performing time-cost trade-off analysis. The scheduling procedure makes use of tools such as CPM (Critical Path Method), PERT (Program Evaluation and Review Technique), and Gantt charts. Third time-cost trade offs. In this function, the time-cost trade-off analysis of activity performance times is conducted to determine the cost of reducing the project duration (1993). Fourth is resource allocation where constrained resource allocation refers to the process of allocating limited resources to competing activities in a project. Scheduling heuristics or mathematical allocation models are used in allocating the limited resources during the scheduling phase. A data base of resource availability should be developed for each project prior to starting the scheduling process.  Fifth resource loading and leveling: Resource loading develops the profile of the resource units allocated over time. Resource leveling refers to the process of shifting activities to reduce the period-to-period fluctuations in resource requirements. Lastly schedule control this is used when the network plan and schedule have been satisfactorily developed, they are disseminated in final form for operational use. The schedule is tracked and controlled by comparing actual status to expected status at selected review times. Schedule tracking facilitates frequent review and revision of the project plan (1993).   Monitoring Monitoring and evaluation generate an ongoing, ever changing form of knowledge. It is the product of reflection and the relating of hard facts to theory and a collective vision that produces useful information for the subject leader. Such an approach is particularly relevant when a subject leader attempts to explain how assessment data relate to teaching methodologies employed; it a necessary part of realistic target-setting. Monitoring and evaluation are more than mere measurement; they include a knowledge of how to improve performance given institutional considerations and constraints. That is not to say that the use of comparative data, inspection evidence and local and national standards of achievement do not serve a purpose in providing useful benchmarks. Leaders should be continuously striving for improvement and development. Survival and the maintenance of standards through a climate of stability is stifling. In the face of imposed change, a climate of certainty and predictability can lead to a siege-victim mentality, when leaders feel de-skilled, long-held beliefs and practices are challenged and morale suffers (2000).   Monitoring is about the collection of information about an action or activity. The information to be collected has usually been pre-determined and its collection will enable the leader to check out whether or not the action or activity has been successful. Evaluation is the consideration of evidence against criteria, in order to make an overall judgment of the success or otherwise of a series of actions and activities. The evidence that is considered will be the aggregation of the assumptions made as a result of monitoring activity, however informal. Review is the making of decisions about what action, if any, to take as a consequence of the decision reached through evaluation. Monitoring involves a range of activities to collect data about specific aspects of performance. What gets monitored is usually informed by pre-determined targets and performance indicators. Data can then be analyzed to check if targets and indicators are being met .Decisions can be made to improve those actions which do not meet performance criteria (2000). Monitoring activities usually take place continually, although different aspects of performance will be examined according to a schedule outlined in an improvement plan. Evaluation involves making judgments about the overall performance of the aspect in question. These judgments are made based on looking across the analysis of monitoring data in relation to the goals or objectives set out in a plan or policy. Judgments are made about whether the goals or objectives are being or will be met and decisions are made about what action might be taken to change a previously arranged activity. Evaluation usually takes place when there is enough data to make judgments about goal achievement. Annual improvement plans will usually have points identified when evaluation of progress is necessary. Review involves taking a broader view of performance in relation to the summative achievement of the longer-term strategic vision and goals. It takes the outcomes of evaluation, seeks to identify trends and patterns, and estimates the longer-term effects that these may have on desirable achievement. Strategic decisions can then taken about the allocation of staff and resources or the adjustment of future goals and targets for the subject (2000).   Controlling Classic management components are helpful models for public relations practitioners. Functional views of contemporary managerial roles prove more enlightening. They apply to all organizations and fall into six categories that include one organizing resources for optimum productivity, two producing services and products, three managing human resources, four marketing services and products, five financing operations, and lastly controlling operations. Today, a seventh category must be added: environmental assessment. A decade ago, management functions safely could be viewed strictly from organizational perspectives. Managers could concentrate on meeting internal needs. There existed little risk of unpleasant surprises from external sources. These conditions have changed radically. Managers now must be concerned with organizational environments. Social and political trends demand organizations be viewed as components of community, nation, and world rather than self-contained entities. Within seven categories, then, falls every management component applicable to public relations practice. Few differences exist between corporate/institutional departments and consulting firms. They arise primarily where new organizations are contemplated. Public relations counselors then must deal with organizational questions inapplicable to corporate or institutional practice (1987).    Uniformity otherwise prevails. Every organization and subunit ultimately must evaluate performance and draw up future plans based on the evaluation. The procedure is a control process. It involves two components: decision making and control. Both apply to all public relations operations. Decision making includes analysis, defining alternatives, selecting courses of action, and implementing decisions. Certainty, risk, and both objective and subjective probabilities must be considered. Control requires developing standards, measuring results, and taking corrective action. Both processes require information. Much of it is generated as accounting and data. The balance is created through production reporting (1987).   Controlling is the management function of adjusting plans to predetermined objectives as they are executed. The controlling process involves distinct activities to measure actual performance, compare performance with standards, and take action to correct deviations when required. Planning points the way to goals, organizing relates goals and structures, coordinating links personnel and resources, and controlling attempts to keep the operation on target. Controlling involves active intervention into ongoing organizational processes to maintain and direct activities in achieving planned objectives. Stated in another way, controlling is a process of monitoring functions or activities to ensure that they achieve stated plans and correct unacceptable deviations. Controlling is a function of all managers, and they know when they are performing well only when actual performance is compared with predetermined or desired standards (1998).    The success of any control system is determined by the degree of congruence between planned and achieved objectives, also known as the control accountability gap.  Control is critically important. It is the final link in the management process, making sure that activities are achieved as planned. Control provides the continuing link between planning and delegating responsibilities. The operating assumption is that there will not necessarily be automatic execution of assigned activities (1998).   SWOT analysis To improve the operation efficiency in the organization, different methods can be used. One method is strategic planning. Through this method the company can be given better analysis. The way it operates can also be analyzed. By determining how it operates ways to improve operation efficiency can be given. Strategic Planning is an element of a manager’s job and of the organizations function that deals with the contrivance of change rather than the simple reaction to it. It is a process for setting future direction, a means to reduce risk, and a way to train managers. Lastly it is the process by which the guiding members of the organization envisions its future and develop the necessary procedures and operations to achieve that future (1991). Effective strategic planning includes an environmental scan; a mission statement; a set of strategies; Objectives for each strategy; tactics; and controls, measures and evaluation steps. Environmental scan includes situation analysis, and swot analysis including examination of internal and external factors. A mission statement defines the fundamental function of the organization and its purpose. A tactic is a short term operation plan to meet the objectives. A principal part of strategic planning is SWOT analysis whereby the organization accesses its principal strengths, weakness in comparison to opportunities and threats in the external environment ( 1998).  The goal of the SWOT analysis is to identify critical strategic factors and then to build on core strengths; eliminate undermining weaknesses; take quick advantage of significant opportunities; and circumnavigate or mitigate threats.  There's no point to a half-hearted or cosmetic SWOT analysis; that only reinforces the status quo. SWOT is a tool for questioning assumptions and thinking outside the box (2003). SWOT analysis gives the company information on the strength and weakness it has and matches it with the competitive environment it engages in. It also helps a company create strategic plans that can counter any problem or threat from competitors. SWOT analysis tends to help companies determine what aspects they excel in and what aspects they have problems in. It also helps companies determine its status against rivals.    Strength Strengths are the strong points of the business. To know the strengths of the things that should be known includes the sources of the company’s revenue, the market share of the company in various product lines, the availability of strong brands of a company, the effectiveness of the advertisement of the brand or product, the availability of pool of skilled workers, the morale of the employees, the innovativeness of the company and the ability of the company to withstood international competition.  One of the strength of Shell with regards to its operations management is procedures that are well planned and organized.  The procedures that shell used are well arranged and are made so that lesser problems will arise. Another strength of shell with regards to its operations management is well trained employees. Having well trained employees who makes sure that the production process works is a good thing for the company. These employees doesn’t need too much supervision and monitoring. Through these employees the operations of the company will go through without much hassle. Moreover a strength of shell with regards to its operations management is it having the best source of raw materials that it uses to produce the best products. The raw materials came from the best places and through it the best products are made. Lastly a strength of shell with regards to its operations management is its competitiveness with the operations management of other companies particularly its competitors. Through having such operations management the company can gain advantage against its rivals and the company can produce products superior than their rivals.   Weakness Weaknesses are the current problems of the company. To determine the weakness of the company the things that should be known includes the products that are least profitable, areas of the company that is not able to recover cost, the weak brands, the ability of the company to raise money when it needs to, the ability of the company to stand price pressures against competitors, the ability of the company to create new ideas, the faith of employees in management and the ability to compete with other companies in the technology front. Shell’s weakness with regards to its operations management is its lacking safety policies. The policies in the operations management are of good quality but it lacks safety policies. Problems may arise out of it. The safety policies prevent the company to have problems due to accidents while the business is operating. Another weakness of Shell’s operations management is it having no backup plans. The company must have secondary measures to use when its operations management is not working. This prevents any problem to enlarge. Moreover a weakness of shell’s operations management is it not being able to adjust to trends.  As the world changes the operations management should adjust to it so that the company can offer the best product to the clients. Lastly a weakness of shell’s operations management is it still using traditional techniques. Using traditional techniques is not entirely bad but it hampers the improvement and the changes that can still be done.   Opportunities             Opportunities are those events or situations that may arise in the future. To determine the opportunities of the company the things that should be known includes competitive position of the company, new technologies that the company can innovate for low costs, the capacity and opportunity to extend brands, the capacity to implement incentive plans to boost employee effectiveness, the ability of the company to move up the value chain, the ability of employees to be multi-skilled to reduce levels of redundancy, opportunities to cooperate with companies that are not competitors for both companies to be beneficial. An opportunity for shell’s operations management is modernization of its techniques. Through modernization of the company’s techniques it can create high quality products and give outmost satisfaction to its clients.  Another opportunity for shell’s operations management is to update its processes to world standards. By doing such they can gain advantage over their competitors and attract more clients. Moreover an opportunity for shell’s operations management is introduce safety measures to make sure that the personnel acquiring raw materials and producing the products will not be encountering problems or accidents. Lastly an opportunity for shell’s operations management is improvement in the training process of the employees. By making the employees the company will reap its future benefits and be more competitive than ever.   Threats Threats are problems that may arise and should be avoided. To determine the threats of the company the things that should be known includes the capacity of employees to be adequately trained, the capacity of the company to withstand sudden changes in the environment, the ability of the brands to withstand price competition, the financial being on the verge of liquidity, is the company considered a good employer, and the ability of the company to cope up with technological changes. A threat for shell’s operations management is possible loss of raw materials. The company’s raw materials may not be available forever and if not given proper attention and focus the company may not have any materials that it can use to create its products. Another threat for shell’s operations management is other alternative raw materials competitors may find out. These raw materials may last longer than the company’s raw materials.  Moreover a threat to shells’ operations management is changes in trends. In the future the company’s product may not be anymore useful. The company should formulate plans to ensure that the company will continue to exist when such event happens. Lastly a threat for shell’s operations management is the laws in the country they are operating in. Laws are a vital part of a country. These laws are the ones that initiate order and discipline in the country. There may be laws that can cause some delay in selling and producing the products. These laws can hamper business operations to be completed. These laws are enacted to protect the welfare of local sellers in that specific country.  Since there are different laws in different countries it can also cause problems for the company. Laws in Taiwan are different from the laws in Switzerland therefore the laws in one country may cause problems for the company while in another country it may not be a problem.     Deming Wheel Aside from the SWOT analysis one method that can be used to determine how to improve a company’s efficiency is the Deming wheel. The Deming wheel has four division namely act, plan, check and do. The said wheel is used to determine sources of variations that cause products to deviate from consumers. Through the wheel problems with regards to clients and customers can be determined. Through the wheel possible means to alleviate efficiency concerning products and clients can be made. (Taken from ) In the wheel the first thing that is done on operations management is planning. Planning includes determining rules, procedures, budget, personnel, and other things that will make sure that no problems will be encountered and operations will run smoothly. Planning involves what how much budget will be used in making shell’s products, it involves determining certain rules and practices that must be followed in creating shell’s products.  In planning, potential problems regarding the personnel are addressed and preparations are made so that its effects will not be too big. Personnel can have problems regarding safety methods, insurances, and other concerns they have in producing the company’s product.  The success of the whole operations depends on how well a plan has been formulated.   The next thing that transpires is doing. In this part the plan is put into action, operations is underway, production is being implemented. In doing, the plan should be followed and the plan should be the main focus. Without a proper plan doing in a business operation would be worthless. The next part is checking. In this part problems are known and what causes these problems is discovered. In checking, the events after implementing the plan are analyzed. After the plan has been executed there are different situations and problems that can arise out of it and checking takes a look at each.  After which actions regarding the problems are made. In acting, problems seen in checking are given solution. Acting should be the stage in operations management that less to no problems will come out. In the case of shell the Deming wheel lets planning be done then the plan is used in running the operation. Afterwards the effects of the implementation of the actions are done then the next thing done is to solve the problems seen and observed.   Improving the operation efficiency in the organization Suggestions to improve the organizations operations efficiency includes giving additional seminars and trainings to the personnel, creating safety measures, strengthening processes, learning new techniques, keeping the plants safe, solving problems among personnel and finding means to counter financial problems. To improve the operations efficiency of the organization one thing that can be done is to give trainings and seminars to the personnel by doing so the operations will not encounter any problems and it the products created will be of good quality. The personnel are the ones that have a main function in the business operations and giving them added knowledge can be beneficial for the company in the long term. To improve the operations efficiency of the company safety measures should be created so that the personnel will have no worries in performing business operations. One thing that hampers efficiency is when employees fear that something might happen to them while in the process of making their product, having safety measures help in lessening such fear. To improve the operations efficiency of the company one thing that can be done is to strengthen the operations processes. By doing so lesser mistakes can be committed. By strengthening the operations processes the company can minimize redoing a project or a product.   To improve the operations efficiency of the company the company can learn new techniques. By learning new techniques the company can make the product in a faster way and with lesser errors. The new techniques can help in increasing the speed of production and through it problems that are encountered when using old techniques will be avoided. New techniques can be achieved by having a company representative attend seminars and symposium by doing so this representative can learn more and he/she can share this learning with the company. Another thing that the company should do to improve its operations efficiency is to make plants safe. When threats on the lives of the personnel are present they might not do well and they might be uninterested to work and produce products. By making sure that the plants are safe the employees will have lesser worries and fears.  Moreover to improve operations efficiency solving problems among personnel should be done. Dissension among the employees makes efficiency more difficult to achieve. Lastly to improve operations efficiency one thing that can be done is finding means to counter financial problems. Through having more finances the operations will be done with better equipments and techniques thus efficiency can be acquired. These ways to improve the efficiency of the company’s operation will be beneficial to the company if used well and no other problems will come out.   Conclusion All types of organizations need to be as productive as possible to best utilize their precious resources, to meet their customers needs, and to stay competitive with similar organizations. To improve the operation efficiency in the organization, different methods can be used. One method is strategic planning. Through this method the company can be given better analysis. The way it operates can also be analyzed. A principal part of strategic planning is SWOT analysis whereby the organization accesses its principal strengths, weakness in comparison to opportunities and threats in the external environment. Aside from the SWOT analysis one method that can be used to determine how to improve a company’s efficiency is the Deming wheel. The Deming wheel has four division namely act, plan, check and do.  Suggestions to improve the organizations operations efficiency includes giving additional seminars and trainings to the personnel, creating safety measures, strengthening processes, learning new techniques, keeping the plants safe, solving problems among personnel and finding means to counter financial problems. These ways to improve the efficiency of the company’s operation will be beneficial to the company if used well and no other problems will come out.

Operation management

Introduction Improving organizational productivity is an issue that has been showing for some time and will continue to be important. Al...