MANAGING OPERATIONS

Managing Operations

Operations Management

Introduction

This report focuses on the case studies of the Levi Jeans workers and the California Auto Club reengineering customer service. It looks at operations management as a source for gaining a competitive advantage and overcoming potential problems experienced within and organisation or workplace.

Main Issue

In Levi's environment, reputation has become one of its most valuable assets, and CSR has become one of the key components of corporate reputation. (Krajewski & Ritzman 2004:98)Positive CSR experiences build confidence and goodwill with stakeholders. Levi's have developed clear CSR efforts as strategic branding and management approach in achieving a win-win outcome.

Theory of Operation

The operation of the resistance strain gauge is based on the principle that the electrical resistance of a conductor changes when it is subjected to a mechanical deformation, since the resistivity changes with a change in length and area.

The resistance of a conductor can be expressed as:

(1)

where:

R is the resistance,

is the material resistivity,

L is the length of the conductor, and

A is the cross-sectional area of the conductor.

It can be shown that the change in resistance of a conductor is linearly related to the strain by:

(2)

where:

[[epsilon]]axial is the axial strain (m/m),

F is the sensitivity of the strain gauge (gauge factor), and

R is the change in resistance.

In most cases, the values of F and R are provided by the manufacturer, and the user measures [[Delta]]R to determine the strain.

Since the typical change in resistance of a strain gauge is extremely small (~0.00024 ), sensitive instrumentation is required to measure the strain.

Comparison of the theories

The Theory of Constraints (TOC) is a management philosophy developed by Dr. Eliyahu Moshe Goldratt. According to Goldratt the strength of any chain, process, or system is dependent upon its weakest link. TOC is systemic and strives to identify constraints to system success and to effect the changes necessary to remove them. Dr. Goldratt and the TOC became widely known with the 1984 publication of Goldratt's novel The Goal.

Increasing throughput and/or decreasing inventory or operating expense should lead to the accomplishment of the firm's goal: to make money now as well as in the future. Anything that prevents a firm from reaching this goal is labeled as a constraint. Constraints may appear in the form of capacity, material, logistics, the market (demand), behavior, or even management policy. TOC thinking regards all progress toward the goal of making money as relating directly to management attention toward the constraint(s). The marginal value of time at a constraint resource is said to be equal to the throughput rate of the product processed at the constraint, while the marginal value of time at a nonconstraint resource is said to be negligible.

Goldratt introduced a staged logical thinking process to be used in conjunction with the five focusing steps. The thinking process assists with working through the change process by identifying the following: what to change, what to change to, and how to effect the change. The thinking processes consist of logic tools used to ...