Pretend To Be an Internal Quality Consultant of British Airways (BA)



Pretend To Be an Internal Quality Consultant of British Airways (BA)

Task No 1

1.1 Explain the importance of effective operations management in achieving organisational objectives?

An organization's operations function is concerned with getting things done; producing goods and/or services for customers. All business organizations are concerned with how they will survive and prosper in the future. [1]A business strategy is often thought of as a plan or set of intentions that will set the long-term direction of the actions that are needed to ensure future organizational success. However, no matter how grand the plan, or how noble the intention, an organization's strategy can only become a meaningful reality, in practice, if it is operationally enacted. An organization's operations are strategically important precisely because most organizational activity comprises the day-to-day activities within the operations function. It is the myriad of daily actions of operations, when considered in their totality that constitute the organization's long-term strategic direction. The relationship between an organization's strategy and its operations is a key determinant of its ability to achieve long-term success or even survival. Organizational success is only likely to result if short-term operations activities are consistent with long-term strategic intentions and make a contribution to competitive advantage.[2]

Systems theory seeks to treat human organizations as systems of interrelated components, similar in many ways to more physical systems such as the solar system or the human body. The idea is to take a broad view of the system and its relationships with other systems in the environment. That is, a system is considered open when there are interactions between the system and its environment. A system is studied, then, by observing the flows into, out of, and within the system. The operations system can be seen as a system which converts inputs from outside the system, such as raw materials, money, people, and information, into outputs, such as goods and services. The operations system, though, is but a subsystem of the overall organization, along with other subsystems such as marketing, finance, personnel, and accounting. The area of operations management is receiving more attention as a way to compete in the world arena, where recently such areas as marketing and finance were considered more important. Similarly, the types of managers who rise to the top positions of a company seem to run in cycles. When those managers from the ranks of marketing, for example, reach the top, they naturally give that area a greater weight in decision-making. [3]

The current trend is toward the awareness that operations management is increasingly where the action is. While only a few of the traditional strategic weapons mentioned above fell under the area of operations management, recent developments in the field have provided several more competitive options for a company in the general area of operations management. Some writers have called these strategies collectively the new operations management, or world-class manufacturing or service. In reality these strategic tools represent not revolutionary new ideas, but rather ...