OPERATIONS

Operations Management - Questions 1 and 2

Operations Management - Questions 1 and 2

Question 1

Select an organization of your choice. You have just been employed as a management consultant to evaluate the most important factors it should consider during the location of its new site

For this essay, we consider the key difference between a 'market requirements' and 'resource-based view' of operations strategy. When an operations manager considers the next steps of the company, there are certain considerations to make. One is the scenario of the market in which the company operates and the other is the resources of the company. The market that the company operates in is bound to have its limitations and considerations. The operations manager has to consider such factors before planning the working of the company. For example, it is possible that the roads in the area are not properly made and raw materials take longer than usual to arrive. Hence, in such a case, the company would have to plan alternate transportation methods. However, the company would also have to see its internal resources. It is possible that the company might not be able to spend extra costs on air transportation and would have to consider other options like excess holding and warehousing (Coles, Naveen & Lalitha, 2006, 201).

When we talk about the decision making process of any company, there are a lot of things to consider. The first and foremost is the problems that arise when trying to make a decision on a corporate level. Corporate decisions are different from the decisions we make in our personal lives. Corporate decisions affect not only the decision maker but the future and balance of the entire organization and hence, extra care and consideration has to be taken. Before making any sort of corporate decision, the right people need to be consulted, all possibilities need to weighed against the expected outcomes and the best decision with the least chance of backfire should be chosen. The speed and timeliness of making decisions are critical in operations manegement. Researchers question whether organizations along with individuals attempt to process too much information. Outside stimuli also interfere with decision making thus slowing the process even more. These factors contribute to degrading any competitive advantage or innovation gained by an organization that is unable to yield accurate and speedy crisis decision making. Time, as a scarce resource, is a valuable commodity in decision making greatly impacting innovational ability and creativity. Crisis managers argue that unless critical decisions invoke dire consequences, many decisions constitute mere problem solving rather than actual crisis management. Many case studies and examples available in literature do not present actual crises involving dire results (Peter, 2002, 74).

The most important thing to consider when taking a decision on corporate level is the risk associated with that decision. Once again, the risk could either be internal or pertain to the market in which the organization is operating. If an organization is uncertain about the risk associated with the decision then it is possible ...