MANAGING OPERATIONS

Managing Operations

Managing Operations

Introduction

Effective management is accomplished through the four functions of management; planning, organizing, leading and controlling. Managers should apply the four functions pertaining to staffing, physical resources and information technology. These four functions of management impact the operations management theory which deals with the entire operations within an organization. Effective management is accomplished through the four functions of management: planning, organizing, leading and controlling. The four functions are highly integrated when carried out day-today of running a successful organization.

Planning, organizing, leading and controlling all must be carried out to meet the goals and objectives of the organization and are subject to change depending on the situation the organization is facing. Managers need to fulfill the skills to carry out the functions, make decisions about the goals and pursue the future. Operations management is based around the decision-making associated with the use of resources that enable an organisation to provide products that satisfy customers and enable the organisation to compete with others in the same market on cost, quality, speed, dependability and flexibility.

Superior performance within an organisation can be achieved by gaining a competitive advantage.The essence of competitive advantage can be interpreted as the asymmetry or differential among firms along any comparable dimension that allows one firm to compete better than its rivals.It is argued that quality is the most important of all competitive weapons, attention to quality within an organisation means improved performance in reliability, deliver and price. (Waldner, 1992 p. 46)

Quality can be defined as "the fitness for purpose or use and it has been stated that "quality should be aimed at the needs of the consumer, past and present. Operations managers deal with processes within these areas, processes are the fundamental activities of an organisation. They manage processes as to add the most value possible to the customer. Operations managers do this by using suitable techniques and strategies. (Spearman 2003 Pp. 44)

Managers can design and operate processes to give the organisation a competitive advantage. Effective change management is essential for many reasons. It can greatly benefit an organisation in a variety of aspects in relation to growth and competitive advantages. It is vital for businesses to introduce new principles and management smoothly.Though change seems good, there are a lot of factors which have impact on effective change management, including contextual, complexity and the vagueness of change. This paper will discuss issues involved in the change implementation in organisations. It will also discuss topics of the forces of change upon an organisation, what causes the resistances of change for both individually and from an organisational outlook, and how it should be dealt with upon to succeed in effective change management.

Effective change management is what all organisations want, which is, being able to change without much doubt, without it being too difficult, and without it being too ambiguous. Though this is what all organisations strive for, it is not always so simple to plan change without these feelings of ...