Operations Management Planning Assignment Sample

Introduction : Operations Management Planning

Get Free Samples Written by our Top-Notch Subject Expert Writers known for providing the Best Assignment Help Services in Australia

Operations management planning is the expansion of strategies and planning which allows business to efficiently take hold of opportunities and encounter challenges. Operations management planning comprises of some important steps which further helps in achieving business goals and objectives. Operational planning is outcome of management team draws from a company’s strategic planning for a particular project. (Kumar, 2022).

The report develops discuses about operations and quality management’s strategy which helps the case company Nike’s for its new product launch. The report discusses about various theories and approaches like supply chain management, role of sustainable operations for the company. The report involves theoretical and practical issues which company faces during the launching and designing of the product. The main focus of report is developing an understanding about the good operational management plan for the company.

Overview of Nike

Nike is an American multinational association which is involved in development, designing, manufacturing company which produce footwear, equipment’s, accessories, and services. The company’s headquarters are located in USA, company is major producer of sports equipment and also the largest supplier of apparel and shoes. The mission of Nike. Inc is to produce innovative product for athletes all over the world (Brohiet. al. 2016).

Nike’s objectives and the operations management plan

Creating and implementing a high-quality operational plan is best method to make sure that the company starts new project with perfect planning. For making a perfect operational plan the operational manager uses various theories and tools which further help to execute a perfect operational plan (Jayand Barry, 2016).

The company has tested various ideas in pursuing performance, enhancing perception injury risk reduction, and providing innovative products for athletes. Nike’s primary objective is to earn profit and making sure its long-term viability. However, there are some objectives which outline results and outcomes of the company which attempts to meet growth and success. 

Company’s operational objectives are also dictated by company’s strengths, opportunities, weakness and threats. The company’s basic objectives are as follows:

• Creating ground breaking sports innovations – company’s major objectives is always to be innovative for which company is spending huge amount of time communicating with various professional sports athletes and customers for collecting information and feedbacks.
• Making product more sustainable – Nike’s sustainabilityobjectives are grounded from more than 30 years of research of reducing the company’s environmental impacts. Product sustainability is always part of company’s operational management plan.
• Building a creative and diverse global team –the company always believes that creativity and diversity at the workplace interconnected to each other and fast-trackinnovation. Company focuses on sports, always look out for planning new product and creativity(Reid and Sanders, 2019).
• Making positive impact on the communities – Nike serves local communities across the world through the customer supports. The company also have fund name Nike community Impact Fund (NCIF), which is a local program encourage kids in communities where the company’s employee’s work, live, and play.

The strategy used for an operation management plan

Nike is involved in producing sports related products like clothes, shoes, and sports equipment. The company is looking forward to enter into electronic market by planning on launching digital band. The digital band will be Nike’s first electronic product, the product will have various features like measuring heartbeat, oxygen level, steps, BMI, workout history and many more features also shown in figure 1. The operational management strategy which company basically used for product launch is as follows:

• Designing and positioning the production system – this step in the operation management plan includes selecting the type of processing system, design and inventory plan. In this step there are two main product design, custom product design and stbn andard product design (Anandand Gray, 2017). And also there are two kind of production system which is system focused on product and system focused on process.
• Manufacturing and service facilities–this is one of the important strategy of the operational management plan which is to plan different production facilities to achieve objective of the company. This strategy of OM allows the production facility to improve command over achieving particular objective.
• Development of product–this strategy of OM plan includes various steps for launching new product which are as follows related to the figure1:
  • Idea generation
  • Preparing feasibility report
  • Making prototype design
  • Preparing production model
  • Evaluating production related economies of scale
  • Testing product in market
  • Collecting feedback
  • Creating final design and starting production of the product.
• 
  Selecting appropriate technology–determining the methods of producing the product is considered which very essential part of OM plan is. This strategy includes making plans and taking decision on every specific detail of procedure and facilities in the production process. This strategy includes making decision regarding selection of technologies which are suitable for the production of product.
• Resource allocation –company resource is limited to the production of the specific product and this is reason which creates problems in allocation of resource like capital, cash, workforce, machines, material, services, etc. allocating resources on right time and place of production demonstrates the competence level of production managers (Walker al. 2015).
  Planning facility, capacity and layout of the product - The main decision part for an operations manager is to create layout, deciding on location for the production, and facilities as these are considered serious areas to achieve competitive advantage for the company.

Theories of the operation management plan

There are numerous operations management theories which will be helpful for company in launching new product. The theories are as follows:

• Business Process Management (BPM):This refers to continuously reviewing, optimising, mechanizing, analysing and improving procedures. The theory involves steps which are designing a process, displaying a process in an easy way that everyone can understand, analysing productivity, monitoring successes orany errors and offering ideas for upgrading automation to maximumeffectiveness. 
• Six Sigma:It is a methodology which helps in reducing the fault in the manufacturing process. It includes the responsibilities to define, analyse, and measure improvement and control over process. 
• Reconfigurable Manufacturing System:In this theory of OM plan, due to certain market changes or system changes. A reconfigurable manufacturing system is designed to adapt to change in supply and demand speedily. Both software and hardware are applied in the early plan to control adjustment when required. 
• Supply Chain Management:Supply chain management concerns over the movement of goods and services, this includes supply of raw materials for storage, inventory and outputs. It is usually preferred by business procedureswhich prefer moving from the one point of origin to the point of end consumption. The goal of this is to minimise expenses and maximise productivities and profits (Heizer al. 2017). 

Meaning of managing manufacturing and service transformation capacity planning explaining which capacity strategy is important

The manufacturing transformation refers to the physical creation of any product in case company which is of the digital band shown above in figure 1 (Rasiah, 2022). And on the other hand service transformation refers to the treatment of customers or stored material, like providing service for the digital band by the company at service centres (Adrodegari and Saccani, 2017).

There are various types of capacity planning involve in operations management which informs overall strategies of company. capacity planning types include:

1. Resource capacity planning – Nike is focusing making a team which can match the task and meet the demand of the customers.
2. Project capacity planning – the step two talks about estimating the amount of time in which a team can work on the project to check on balance between the workloads and the milestones.
3. Team capacity planning – this is about the capacity of team, how much work team can take on current goal
4. HR capacity planning – determining the capacity of the company by concerning HR’s role like need of hiring new workforce, development of existing team.

Decisions involved in managing manufacturing and service transformation including Inventory management strategy

Inventory management of a company helps to identify how much and which stock be order at what time period. The inventory management helps the company to look after the need of stock when and how much to order, it tracks inventory from purchase to sale. In every company inventory management plays an important role in company’s health because it helps to ensure that the stock is too much or too little. In managing manufacturing and service transformation inventory management plays a very important role like:

• Collect accurate details – with help of inventory management the manager is able to gather accurate detail regarding the needs of material for manufacturing and requirement of services (Page al. 2016).
• Improving cash flow –proper inventory Management Company is able to control the cash flow as the raw material for manufacturing is brought only when it is needed. And also in case of service transformation company can control the inflow and outflow of cash (Ardolino al. 2018).

Theories used to manage manufacturing and service transformation

Practitioner Models theory

This model focuses on senior management in an organization, these models generally relies on opinion and illustrative anecdote which further offers recommendations and solutions to the managers. This model usually provides suggestive model or plan of action further initiating the change in the company successfully.

Theoretical Models theory

This model is used to develop on the foundation of an extensive review of the research conducted to analyze the important areas of transformational change in manufacturing and service transformation. These models are more general and widespread in nature as compare to practitioner models.

Analyze issues in contemporary management operations

Contemporary management is a modern approach of overseeing a business and its activities like decision-making, planning, and operational planning. Contemporary management is useful for the operational management plan as it helps in planning, monitoring, and making-decision regarding launch of new products. Some important points to be considered of contemporary management are:

• Contemporary management follows a hierarchal structure which shows that employees have authority over other but are more decentralized than traditional management models.
• The availability of wide information and advanced software ensures that employees are able to understand the planning of the company. It encourages proper use of technology which is its main characteristics; it focuses on innovating software which is capable of completing tasks like tracking the key software used in digital band.
• As it is an electronic product which requires latest technology which provides full satisfaction to its customers.
• In this there are various categories of components which help the management teams to classify the various sectors in which company is functioning, and which further helps in work diversification in the company.

Issues in quality management practice

Quality management is the act of looking after activities and tasks which are fulfilled to maintain desired level of excellence in the company’s working. This management practices includes the determination of crafting and implementing quality planning, quality control and quality policy.

The quality management practices requires that all the stakeholders and investors of the company comes together to enhance and improve products, process, services and also the culture of the company (Charantimath, 2017). This further leads to success and profits. Quality management practices plays an important role as it helps company to attracts investors to invest in the new product idea of company, because it is very innovative idea of offering digital band investors will be attracted towards these ideas of the company.

Supply chain management meaning and appropriate approaches

Supply chain management is the course of goods and services which further include all the process that used in transforming raw material into finished goods. This supply chain management includes the active streamlining of the company’s supplies activities to maximize values of customers and to gain competitive advantages in the market. It is a centralized management of the stream of goods and services (Hugos, 2018). The SCM represents an effort done by suppliers to develop and enhance the supply chain that is well-organized and economically possible for the company to manage. It is based on the idea that each product of company should come to market results from efforts of numerous organization which are part of supply chain.

The supply chain management have various approaches which a company can apply for launching its new products in the market. The supply chain approaches are as follows:

• Predicting launch and early-stage demand – the company can consider in using data analytics of sales performance of similar products in the market to point out the demand at initial stage of launch and analysesthe information to decide the level production required (Copacino, 2019).
• Multi-strand manufacturing – the company can consider on estimating its base supply and keeping-up production quantities required. The company need to focus on placing a corresponding order for the required components with the suppliers all across the world. If the product will be a success in the market than the company might need to get with large number of alternative supplier for the raw-material.
• Holding back and optimizing the positioning in the market – the company should monitor the pattern at initial stage of production.
• Prioritize allocation – In order to priotorize the decision making is important to commit a percentage like around 80 or 60 of the initial produced for trust worthy outlets where the relationship is quite collaborative(Blanchard, 2021). The data related to the sales pattern is more likely to be shifted back to the company on real-time basis which will provide company with information on planning further.

The sustainable operation used for OM

The sustainable operations concern the process, practices, and systems through which the firm and individual initiate, deliver, and create outputs which are profitable for the company. Measuring performance and permanent development are the important mechanisms which are needed to exchange sustainable corporate strategy into sustainable operations by using various integrated environmental, excellence, and safety management system in the company. Sustainable operations include sustainability environment, total quality management, and safety process.

In case Nike, the recent changes in the market conditions, production management, and operation management are required to be more innovative to stand in front of competitors who are already market leaders. The new launch of the product effects the internal as well as the external environment in the company which are quite conscious about the change occurring in the organizational environment. In this situation sustainable operation is used for measuring performance of the production team. The manager of the company is looking forward to find a suitable method of improvement to convert the corporate strategy into sustainable development for the company.

Conclusion

The report concluded that, it very important for every company to have a proper operation management plan, as the OM is expansion of strategies and plan of the company which allows holding an opportunities and challenges faced by company. The report considered Nike as the case company which is looking forward to launch a new product which is totally different from product range in which Nike deals. For the success of the product the report recommends various approaches of supply chain management, inventory management, role of sustainability in OM, which the company need to consider during the product launch.

Reference

Adrodegari, F. and Saccani, N., 2017. Business models for the service transformation of industrial firms. The Service Industries Journal, 37(1), pp.57-83.

Anand, G. and Gray, J.V., 2017. Strategy and organization research in operations management. Journal of Operations Management, 53, pp.1-8.

Ardolino, M., Rapaccini, M., Saccani, N., Gaiardelli, P., Crespi, G. and Ruggeri, C., 2018. The role of digital technologies for the service transformation of industrial companies. International Journal of Production Research, 56(6), pp.2116-2132.

Blanchard, D., 2021. Supply chain management best practices. John Wiley & Sons.

Brohi, H., Prithiani, J., Abbas, Z., Bhutto, A. and Chawla, S., 2016. Strategic Marketing Plan of Nike.

Charantimath, P.M., 2017. Total quality management. Pearson Education India.

Copacino, W.C., 2019. Supply chain management: The basics and beyond. Routledge.

Daft, R.L. and Marcic, D., 2016. Understanding management. Cengage Learning.

Heizer, J., Render, B., Munson, C. and Sachan, A., 2017. Operations management: sustainability and supply chain management, 12/e.

Hugos, M.H., 2018. Essentials of supply chain management. John Wiley & Sons.

Jay, H. and Barry, R., 2016. Operations Management. Pearson India.

Kumar, R., 2022. Operations management. Jyothis Publishers.

 LaurenR,2022. Getting Started With Capacity Planning in Operations Management (Online). <https://www.projectorpsa.com/blog/capacity-planning-in-operations-management/> accessed on 07.11.2022

Page, J., Tarp, F., Rand, J., Shimeles, A., Newman, C. and Söderbom, M., 2016. Manufacturing transformation: comparative studies of industrial development in Africa and emerging Asia (p. 336). Oxford University Press.

Rasiah, R., 2022. Manufacturing transformation. In Malaysia’s Leap Into the Future (pp. 141-164). Springer, Singapore.

Reid, R.D. and Sanders, N.R., 2019. Operations management: an integrated approach. John Wiley & Sons.

Walker, H., Chicksand, D., Radnor, Z. and Watson, G., 2015. Theoretical perspectives in operations management: an analysis of the literature. International Journal of Operations & Production Management.