Paper Example on 10 Strategic Operational Management Decisions

Design of goods and services

This decision defines what is expected of the operations in each of the other operation management decisions i.e. product design which determines the lower limits of costs and the upper limits of quality. It incorporates looking for means to implement consistency in production costs, quality, and resources that cut across all the business divisions.

Quality management

This checks the customers quality expectations and aims to establish policies and procedures that are geared towards the achievement of that quality. It ensures that the customers demands are met and the organization settles down to meet them. It involves market research to identify the customer needs and ensure quality assurance in the products and services made.

Process and capacity design.

This decision determines how a good or service is produced. It encourages the use of specific technology, human resources, and capital investment all of which are essential in determining the firms basic capital structure. It designs strategies that support all production goals by use of a value stream map to determine the processes that are vital to keeping them running efficiently.

Location and strategy

This strategy establishes judgements such as the companys nearness to customers and suppliers while considering the required costs, logistics, infrastructure, and governance. It also looks at the role of marketing and application of public relations in the choice of a business location.

Layout strategy

This involves integrating personnel levels, technology, capacity needs and inventory requirements to establish an efficient flow of people, materials, and information within the organization. It also checks on the placement of employee workstations, desks and delivery processes of materials in the organization.

Human resources and job design.

This strategy highlights the procedures for recruiting, motivating and retaining personnel with the required skills and talent. The human resources form an integral and vital part of the total system design. It involves continuous training for employees and applies employee satisfaction programs to achieve success.

Supply-chain management

This involves the integration of the supply chain into the firms strategy while including decisions that determine what is to be purchased, under what conditions and from whom. It highlights the best strategies to streamline and develop trusted partners for organizational growth.

Inventory management

This strategy looks at inventory ordering and holding decisions and methods of optimizing them to enhance customer satisfaction and supplier capability. Various factors such as weather, supply shortages and labor have an impact on how an organization maintains its inventory.

Scheduling

This decision identifies and implements short term schedules that efficiently utilize personnel and facilities to meet the customer demands.

Maintenance

The decision considers facility capacity, production requirements, and the personnel needed to maintain a reliable and stable process. It includes maintaining the people, machines, and resources needed for quality, stable and reliable production.

Application of the information learnt.

The topic on operations and productivity will enable me to understand my organizational operations and apply the knowledge in improving them to enhance productivity. As a human resource manager, I will reduce recruitment operations and improve productivity by providing training platforms to enhance their skills.

The knowledge learnt in process design and analysis will be applied when designing various organizational improvement processes and analysis can be done to ascertain their viability for my organization.

The project management skills learnt will be applied when running various development projects in the organization to ensure success from their onset to the end, while using the resources set aside effectively.

The knowledge on forecasting will be applied when estimating the future performance of the company in various aspects such as sales and market coverage which are directly proportional to the human resource required. This can be done by analyzing the past/historical performance and use the information to estimate the future performance.

The knowledge learnt on the design of goods and services will be applied when designing the products to fit the customer specifications and improving the services to attract more customers. This will enhance more sales as the products and services will be designed in line with the customers specifications.

Topics experienced.

As a member of the companys management board, I have experienced the application of the location and layout strategies. Being a warehouse company, we ensured that the warehouses are located close to the major airports and harbors. This makes it easy for the customers to store their imported products in our warehouses. We also provide logistics options for our customers as part of the organizational layout while incorporating the latest technology to ensure the security of their products.

Issues of concern

We could have covered more on the topic of forecasting. This is an essential part of organizational management that involves predicting the future of the company and should therefore not be taken for granted. We should be more trained in the most appropriate and basic statistical knowledge required to make more accurate forecasts, to make sure the necessary measures are put in place.

Opinion regarding the course topics.

These are the best course topics. The reason being, they provide knowledge in a wide scope of organizational activities. However, additional courses can also be added to ensure cohesion and employee encouragement in the organization as well as ways of assessing customer satisfaction to promote customer loyalty.

References

Shumate, B. (2014). The 10 strategic operational management decisions. Chicago: Shumateblog.