Operations Management Assignment Examining Different Business Scenarios

Question

Task:
Prepare an operations management assignment addressing the following questions:

1. Write an essay about an organisation management concept you have learned and its application in a manufacturing or service organisation. Your essay should define the concept, its relevance and briefly describe a business context where your idea can be applied and the potential impact of applying the concept on the business.
2. Explain hoe the below external environmental factors affect the operations management strategy of a manufacturing firm in the current industry 4.0 context?
   • Customer demand for highly socially responsible products
   • Legislative requirements in reducing carbon footprints
   • Price competition between the competitors
3. 1. Explain why it is vital for a pharmaceutical manufacturing firm to have a compelling new product development process.
   2. Clarify each product development stage related to an innovative pharmaceutical product that you are hoping to introduce and what tasks you would carry out in each product development stage to accomplish your plan.
4. 1. Explain in your words why quality management is essential in the post-COVID business context
   2. What is the meaning of the notion that the product quality is multidimensional?
   3. What is the interdisciplinary relationship between quality and quality control?
   4. Draw a cause-and-effect diagram for your excellent or mediocre performance in this final take-home exam.
   5. Explain the importance of the Total Quality Management (TQM) for a manufacturing operation in your words.
5. 1. Explain an example of why you would consider JIT in a manufacturing operation. Discuss anticipated benefits and trade-offs.
   2. Describe why the layout decisions are essential in a service environment, such as a bank. What layout decision category would you choose, and why? Explain how you would design an efficient layout using the concepts of the selected layout decision category.

Answer

Question 1: Concepts Related to Operation management
As per the research on operations management assignment it can be stated that the Adidas production will increase with the help of concepts used for managing business operations. The global operations had broadened the firm's operations by transforming the raw materials into finished goods for trading. The brand Adidas mainly uses activities like controlling, organising and planning for creating the service or product in the public and private sectors (Poto?nik and Anderson, 2016). The operation management followed by Adidas had helped them to utilise the resources from technology, equipment, materials and staff to manufacture the shoe, t-shirt and other sports products. The operation manager will need to deliver and develop well to meet the demands of the clients. The brand Adidas needs to monitor the business activities or process according to the given time. The FMEA analysis even uses a statistical approach to control and monitor the operations. The control chart is a line chart that provides measurement concerning time. The control chart is also a type of visual tool to monitor the business process to calculate both the lower and upper control limits.

The business firms understand both global and local business trends by examining their supply chain and demands. The operation of manger using these concepts can able to understand the business processes more clearly (Dadu et al., 2017). All the products had been delivered as per the delivery time. The operation management will ensure the product or service had met the functionality and quality needs. The adidas always follows FMEA analysis where the concept can be used to identify all the source of problems. The analysis is one of the most structured approaches because it identifies all the possibilities for the project to gain success or failure (Canton, 2019). The FMEA will identify all the modes of failure which had been ranked as per the likelihood of risks. The adidas uses FMEA analysis to explore all the possibilities to find out malfunction, regulatory concerns or reduced product life in their shoe products. All of this information is being derived from the material properties, geometry, tolerances, engineering, user profile and interfaces.

• The adidas can able to discover all the failures which could impact the overall quality of the product, dissatisfaction of customers and environmental hazards present while manufacturing shoe products. The FMEA analysis also display the adidas business data in the form of a graph. The FMEA analysis information can be easily plot in the distribution graph. The document or diagram could be used for communication purposes if there is rise of risk or failure while manufacturing shoes (Yang, 2017). The FMEA analysis used by the Adidas firm to identify all the modes of failure which had been ranked as per the likelihood of risks. The adidas will be having multiple choice to mitigate the risks present in the project work. The FMEA analysis promotes collaboration between the design of process and products. The adidas will able to find out solution to lower the manufacturing cost (Bernardon and Garcia, 2018).

Question 2: External environmental factors affecting operation management
Customer demand for socially responsible products
One of the most important parts of the operation management followed by company Volkswagen Group is meeting the demands of the consumers to sustain their own business by manufacturing best car products. All the final service or products are produced to meet the customer needs under any type of scenario. The business process could be developed by meeting all the interest of customers (Graafland, 2017). The company Volkswagen Group establish the long-term community partnership with non-profits and charities that will share the common values. The company n Volkswagen Group support social causes like utilisation of STEM talent, engineering and math education to prepare young students to tackle the company.

Legislative requirements to lower the carbon footprints
Kyoto Protocols will enable the Volkswagen Group business firm to adopt their car engine to produce lower the overall emission of the greenhouse. The Kyoto protocol makes Volkswagen Group to measure the production of the greenhouse gases from their cars. The Volkswagen Group need to utilise the emission trading scheme to combat all the air pollutants released from the car after burning gasoline. The trading schemes will set up a parameter to control the overall greenhouse gases (Duane et al., 2017). The Volkswagen Group had able to purchase all the allowances to trade their cars all around the world. The GHG reduction policy will encourage Volkswagen Group to create products that have fewer carbon footprints. The environmental factors will create a great impact on the business operation because some of the company has no proper control over the external factors.

Price competition
Competitive pricing is one of the crucial strategies used for selling a similar service or products to a similar customer base. The price competition had enabled Volkswagen Group to focus more competitive-driven price instead of the overheads and production costs. For establishing the right price, the Volkswagen Group had to use a detailed market analysis by collecting robust data to keep track of the competitors' prices. Volkswagen Group uses the competitor price tracking software for monitoring all the prancing trends of services and products (Choi et al., 2018). The use of advanced technologies will help the Volkswagen Group to respond more quickly in the market competition.

The Volkswagen Group can able to create optimum price for their cars to increase the number of sales. For example, the Majority of the consumer likes to buy cars at low prices to grab hold of the company's sales and attention of the customers (Besbes and Sauré, 2016). For this reason, Volkswagen Group created cars like Polo, Vento or T-Roc. Some of the customers demand premium pricing to get quality products. In this case, the business firms try their best to increase the quality of products instead of using a pricing strategy to increase the customer's demands. For this reason, Volkswagen Group created cars like Tiguan Allspace to attract these types of customers.

Question 3: Product development stage
Reason pharmaceutical company to have a new product development process
The new product development in the pharmaceutical industry is one of the most complex processes than any other industry sector. The new product development includes R&D capability, development cost, sourcing of raw goods, health ministry and managing the workforce (Johnson et al., 2017). The product development process is critical for all the pharmaceutical industry because it promotes molecule identification, molecule screening, pilot batch manufacturing, test marketing, marketing strategy and commercialisation of the product.

All the pharmaceutical product creates products in the form of the dosage form. New product development process will protect the customers against any side effects by taking measures for manufacturing the products. New product development process will create a marketing opportunity for the pharmaceutical company for launching a new product. new product development process will set up a standard parameter for pharmaceutical company to manufacture the product or service for consumers. New product development process will make pharmaceutical firms to create dissolution time, physical appearance, shelf life and stability for the medicine products (Carmo et al., 2017). new product development process makes the pharmaceutical company to be extra careful when they are buying raw materials. Buying raw materials always helps to create consistency in the quality of the product. The new product development process promotes the use of a pilot batch production tool to create a trial batch for testing. The trial batch will help pharmaceutical firm to maintain the living conditions of all the consumers. Both the packaging and raw materials can be well maintained using the new product development process. The batch that will be produced by the pharmaceutical firms will promote them to keep it under some conditions like high humidity, high temperature, room temperature or sunlight.

Clarification of product development stage related to innovative pharmaceutical product
The pharmaceutical industry needs to demonstrate the purpose of making the medicine or other relative products for the consumers. For manufacturing the Isogest 100mg, the process could be initiated to analyse the development of the product to benefit the main market system. The Isogest 100mg had been customised according to climate and geography. Before creating Isogest 100mg firm had analysed and research the possibilities to find out best solution for restoring menstrual cycle for the consumers. The pharmaceutical firms had developed Isogest 100mg to study both negative and positive effects over the women menstrual cycle (Hu, Y., McNamara and Piaskowska, 2017). The medicine Isogest 100mg manufactured for tackling menstrual cycle among women when the periods had been stopped. If there are negative effects on Isogest 100mg, then the company had to develop a different version of the products for testing over women pateints.

The manufacturer of the Isogest 100mg always receiving some of the regulatory approvals in time. The companies had to customise or alter their Isogest 100mg according to the specifications of the products. Before creating the products for clinical trials, the government will test the product Isogest 100mg (Goodarzi et al., 2017). If product Isogest 100mg had succeeded after testing, then the product will be approved by the government; otherwise, it will not be approved. After the testing and regulatory process, the Isogest 100mg product has to undergo a validation process before launching their main product in the marketplace. The validation is finding the targeted audience and location to market their manufactured products.

Question 4: Quality management
Importance of quality management during post-COVID
Due to the backdrop in promoting sustainable and inclusive industrial development, the company must focus on the quality infrastructure. The quality infrastructure plays a crucial role to fight against the global pandemic. Preparation of the quality infrastructure is important to tackle any contagious viral outbreaks that are mainly being sustained by the Covid-19 (Gupta and Rokade, 2016). The quality infrastructure is crucial to increase the availability of the products for the people by ensuring safety. The development of the quality infrastructure must be more holistic and systematic to strengthen the customer base during post-COVID. The quality policy will serve as a clear identification of the roles of customers and employees during the outbreak of Covid-19.

The reason the product quality is multi-dimensional
Product quality has various dimensions, like performance and conformance. The performance quality will measure the extent of service and product to meet the customer expectations to buy the product or service. The conformance quality will calculate whether the process had carried out the intended service for the customers (Exposito and Sanchis-Llopis, 2018). Apart from performance, another dimension included in the product quality is their features. Reliability is another dimension of quality because it determines the longevity of particular service or products. Serviceability is another dimension of a quality product which deals with the service personnel (Liu and Shuai, 2019). The aesthetics are one of the subjective dimensions to provide the best quality for the consumers.

Relationship between the quality and quality control
The quality service or product are those who work as per the customer needs and does not have any type of side effects. The quality can be judge due to the presence of any unexpected events or side effects present in the product or service. The quality control is the validation of the product (Lavoie and Campeau, 2016). The quality control will help business firms to find out whether the products or service will meet the demands of the consumers in the market or not. The quality control will also check whether the product had been manufactured in the right way, or the service has met the requirements of the customers.

Cause and Effect diagram to check performance in-home exam

The characters that are present in the cause and effect diagram are the students, teachers, school, examination, government and parents. The student had to prepare as per the study methods provided using the video chat. Attendance of the students will be done with the help of attendance (Hossen et al., 2017). The teacher had to choose which type of exam is suitable for the teacher to take for the students who all are giving examination from home. The ambience and condition of the exam have set up in a way that students will not able to cheat by giving the exam from home. Invigilator had been set up for four students as a group. All the resources are being provided through online communication (Chowdhury and Deb, 2017).

Importance of TQM in manufacturing operations
The TQM system had been designed to provide a more cohesive vision to the manufacturing firm to implement necessary changes to improve the manufacturing process. The TQM analysis will ensure all the employees are devoted to their tasks for achieving the desired goals of the company (Khalili et al., 2017). The quality of organisation output like for products or services increases. The TQM approach could help manufacturing operations to meet business standards and internal priorities.

Question 5: Layout decision and JIT process
JIT in the manufacturing process
The brand Dell had established JIT relationship with all the contractors to make costs of goods cheaper (Bond et al., 2020). The JIT had reduced total auditing time for Dell On-demand publishing is another prime example of using JIT inventory method. Dell had able to improve their productivity and supplier relationship using the JIT process. The total manufacturing time had been reduced using JIT process which had promoted Dell to promote cost efficient production.

Even the brand like Dell had created innovative products using the JIT methods. The firm dell had maintained an adequate level of inventories instead of storing lots of supplies. Dell had negotiated with their suppliers to maintain the inventory level that could be delivered or ordered in a short notice period (Phogat and Gupta, 2017). The method had helped Dell to make a strong relationship with the suppliers. The suppliers are dependent on only reliable orders done by Dell. Dell does not have to maintain a huge inventory which consists of various parts for the desktops, laptops or other devices.

Importance of layout design
Layout design importance in service environment
In the service environment like bank, the layout design can facilitate the flow of customers more efficiently. The layout design provides a significant effect on the costs and increases the efficiency of bank operations like controlling the customer queues. The layout design will help the banks to entail substantial investment in money and time to manage huge amount consumers entering the bank premises. (Silver, 2019).

Layout decision chosen by research
There is a total of four types of layout design they are product, cell, process and fixed-position layout. The researcher will choose the process layout design where all the group resources are based on similar functions or processes. The layout is being used by the companies who have intermittent processing system (Yang and Hung, 2017). The resource can be arranged under minimal waste and maximum work efficiency using the design. All the products are being moved from one raw material to another based on their unique requirements.

Designing an efficient layout design
A good layout design will help the business firms to coordinate all the operations. The layout had been designed to manage the inter-relationship between the personnel, departments and equipment. The layout design needs to provide a complete picture of the organisation. The new layout design will reduce the total manufacturing cost using the reduced materials, equipment requirements and personnel. The new design will utilise all the available space in a more effective way. All the wastes present needs to be avoided for reducing the total cost of manufacturing.

Reference
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