Question

Select one of the key concepts from below for your Discussion response for this week. Be sure to identify the name of the organization. If organization’s name needs to stay anonymous, please check with the instructor ahead of time regarding how to approach that.

• Discuss different types of operations management and project management activities that occur at the organization of your choice.
• Provide examples of single-factor and multifactor productivity measures.
• Provide two examples of operations management activities at an organization you considered and its inputs and outputs, productivity measures, and classify whether it is a goods or services producing organization.

Be sure to post an initial, about 250-word substantive response

Answer 1

· Discuss different types of operations management and project management activities that occur at the organization of your choice.

Primary activities of operations management include job design, scheduling, materials management, capacity management, facilities management, and quality management. There are three major groups of activities performed by operations management, deriving from its planning or designing, organizing, and supervising functions. All activities involve considering assets, costs, and human resources, and are preceded by a thorough analysis of processes.

Design

Before planning processes or designing products, operations management should be busy analysing the market to test the demands. If it delivers promising results,

Management/Organization

So you have a facility for production, your product design is ready, and so is the way it will be produced: with what material and human resources, at what costs, with what workflow.

This is a solid starting base for maximizing the efficiency of your operations. Still, you will need constant and competent management to correct the accidental mistakes in planning, to adjust production to changing costs or regulations, and keep them efficient on many levels.

The operations manager selects and schedules the processes for an optimal result and does the same with materials for an ideal quality and capacity. Organizing the maintenance of the equipment is also part of the quality management activities.

Performance management includes activities to ensure that goals are consistently being met in an effective and efficient manner. Performance management can focus on performance of the organization, a department, processes to build a product or service, employees, etc. Information in this topic will give you some sense of the overall activities involved in performance management.

· Provide examples of single-factor and multifactor productivity measures.

Productivity can be defined in terms of a single factor input, such as labour productivity, or in terms of many or all factor inputs, which is MFP. It can be estimated at various levels: industry, economic sector, or the economy. Labour productivity is the most widely used measure of single-factor productivity. For this reason, it seemed useful to compare estimates of labour productivity and multifactor productivity for transportation industries

Multifactor productivity refers to the productivity of all the inputs used in the production process. These include: labour, capital, land, and intermediate inputs

e.g., energy inputs and purchased services

· Provide two examples of operations management activities at an organization you considered and its inputs and outputs, productivity measures, and classify whether it is a goods or services producing organization.

The 3M Company is a good example of the strategic importance of transforming inputs into outputs that provide competitive advantage in the marketplace. 3M manufactures a top-quality adhesive tape called “Magic Tape”. Magic Tape is used for everyday taping applications, but it offers attractive features that most other tapes do not, including smooth removal from the tape roll, an adhesive that is sticky enough to hold items in place (but not too sticky that it can not be removed and readjusted if necessary!), and a non-reflective surface. For several decades, 3M has enjoyed a substantial profit margin on its Magic Tape product because 3M engineers make the manufacturing equipment and design the manufacturing processes that produce Magic Tape. In other words, 3M enjoys a commanding competitive advantage by controlling the transformation processes that turn raw material inputs into the high value-added Magic Tape product. Controlling the transformation process makes it extremely difficult for competitors to produce tape of the same quality as Magic Tape, allowing 3M to reap significant profits from this superior product.