Principles of Managing Operations Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Principles of Managing Operations - Essay Example Galloway defines 'Operations Management' as 'all activities concerned with the deliberate transformation of materials, information or customers' Elaborating his definition he states that 'Operations Management' is "concerned with both the effective and efficient management of any operation." (1998 1-2) Johnston et al define 'Operations Management' as "concerned with the design, planning, control and improvement of an organization's resources and processes to produce goods or services for customers." Thus key management tasks in operations management are designing, planning, controlling, improvement of activities; transforming input resources into goods or services (input-transformation-output); understanding the organisation's strategic intentions and translating them into operations and performance objectives which in turn guide operations decisions about design, planning, control and improvement of operations resources and processes. (1997 15-25) Supermarkets are self-service food stores stocking and selling a variety of goods including groceries, foods, medicines, clothes, alcohol (where permitted) and other household goods. Supermarkets may offer some goods produced by them but more generally they retail products of many manufacturers. They are often chains of stores supplied by the distribution centres of large businesses. Today they offer home deliveries, online transactions, extend their services to credit cards and other financial products (e.g. Tesco in the UK). They operate on the principles of 'economies of scale' because of which they are able to offer products cheap and convenience because they offer a variety of goods and services in one location. While these features are common to all supermarkets, the creativity with which a supermarket market markets its products (or services), establishes its brand equity and ultimately the quality of services it offers lend it the winning edge. 1. Product Design: As we have seen earlier the brand differentiator in the case of supermarkets is their quality of service to customers. In the case of manufactured goods the customer is not involved in the transformation process and the finished product is stocked prior to supply. On the other hand, American Marketing Association defines a "service" as "Activities, benefits or satisfactions, which are offered for sale or provided in connection with sale of goods." (Galloway 1998 1-2) Customer satisfaction in the context of supermarkets is obtained by locating them in their vicinity or offering free home delivery, offering large varieties to suit customer tastes and delight, the ease with which a customer can find or is helped to find his/her requirements, the efficiency with which the customer is serviced, pricing vis--vis competitors and of course underwriting quality of the products sold. It is difficult to define which of these issues appeals to individual customers but to be in business a supermarket has to strike a balance among them. A customer who is not able to find (for e.g.) sugar in a supermarket, a customer who can not find his favourite brand of coffee because the supermarket does not stock it, a customer who does not find a ready attendant to