Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Week 9

1. Define the term operations management:
Looks at background/operational, turns inputs into outputs.
(OM) the management of systems or processes that convert or transform resources into goods or services. 

2. Explain operations management’s role in business:
>forecast, demand, capacity planning, satisfy’s demand, quality control, scheduling
Strategic,
> ie. Lower COGS more profitable firm will be
Operations management is an area of management concerned with overseeing, designing, and redesigning business operations in the production of goods and/or services. It involves the responsibility of ensuring that business operations are efficient in terms of using as little resources as needed, and effective in terms of meeting customer requirements. It is concerned with managing the process that converts inputs (in the forms of materials, labor, and energy) into outputs (in the form of goods and/or services)


3. Describe the correlation between operations management and information technology
:

An integrated system is the only way to have a consistent view of the data and provide up to the minute results—on a company-wide basis. By automating the most important business practices, business will be able to work more efficiently, reduce overhead, increase agility, and improve insight into business processes.

>Visibility; better quality business decisions.


4. Explain supply chain management and its role in a business:
Supply chain: Series of steps/ flow of goods and services go through from upstream to downstream. Good tight nit supply chain, creating a barrier to entry to other firms trying to come in. ie. maintains customers.
Good supply chain = profitable.



5. List and describe the five components of a typical supply chain
:
Supply chain – upstream and downstream!
Plan- this is the strategic portion of the supply chain management. Company must have a plan for managing all the resources that go toward meeting customer demand for products or services. A big piece of planning is developing a set of metrics to monitor the supply chain that is efficient, costs less, and delivers high quality and value to customers.

Source- companies must carefully choose reliable suppliers that will deliver goods and services required for making products.  Companies must also develop a set of prices, delivery, and payment processes with suppliers and create metrics for monitoring and improving relationships
Make- this is the step where companies manufacture their products or services. This can include scheduling and the activities necessary for production, testing, packaging, and preparing for delivery. This is by far the most metrics- intensive portion of the supply chain, measuring quality levels, production output and worker productivity.
Deliver- this step is commonly referred to as logistics. Logistics is the set of processed that plans for and controls the efficient and effective transportation and storage of supplies from suppliers to customers. During this step, companies must be able to receive orders from customers, fulfill the orders via a network of warehouses, pick transportation companies to deliver the products, and implement a billing and invoicing system to facilitate payments.
Return- this is typically the most problematic step in the supply chain. Companies must create a network for receiving defective and excess products and support customers who have problems with delivered products.

6. Define the relationship between information technology and the supply chain.
Visibility.
Information technology is becoming increasingly important to allow the valuable sharing of info o that all stake holders can become aware of those tasks that are allocated to particular share holders to achieve the delivery of the goods or services.
An example of I.T is ERP.  SAP is an example of ERP which allows documentation recording and visualization to stake holders across the value chain.