Production and Operators

Questions: 1. What are the 10 strategic decisions in Operations Management? Briefly explain each? 2. Discuss how Harley Davidson addresses each of these 10 strategic decisions? Answers: Introduction: Production operation within the business organisations refers to the systematic process of the transformation of the basic ingredients to the expected service or product. The contribution of the operations management involves in this process regarding the measurement of the ultimate value of the outcome of the entire efforts within the organisations. 1. 10 strategic decisions in operations management Goods and design of services being the first decision detects the lower as well as upper limit of quality and thus focuses mainly on the service quality (Krajewski et al. 2013). Second decision is concentrated on the quality management. These stages help detecting the requirement of customers and try to find out the specific need of them (Zurich, 2016). The third stage is design of process and capacity. This tells about the stages of producing goods or services. Detecting the entire procedure, it ensures necessary technology, human resources, capital and quality based on the requirement. Location strategy is the subject of fourth stage. This considers government, infrastructures and logistics to measure the availability of customers and know about the suppliers or talents. The fifth stage is about Layout strategy. It attempts to determine the efficiency in the flow of capital resources and human resources (Chatzoudeset al. 2015) Sixth stage is about the human resources and the job design. In measure the way of recruitment and the procedure to keep employees motivated. This attempts to keep up balance with target and skill of its people. The seventh step is about supply-chain management. This analyses and evaluates the way of integrating supply-chain system into the strategy of the inclined company. The eighth strategy is about inventory management. This stage undermines the decision holding manner and endeavours to imply those to satisfaction of customer. The ninth strategy is about scheduling. Without scheduling, transportation of raw materials to the production facility and transportation of produced products to consumers is difficult. The tenth stage is about maintenance. The balances of all the detected stages need a proper maintenance in leading successfully. Thus, it gets concerned about the demand of production, personnel necessity in order to maintain the entire procedure (Akalin et al. 2016). 2. The way Harley Davidson addresses 10 strategic decisions: In the particular case of Harley Davidson, it has been operating as one of the leading two-wheeler business organisations, especially of motorcycles by introducing innovative design and features (Harley-davidson.com, 2017). The basic interest of the operations management in any country involves a developed quality functional features along with the use and application of the advanced technology. The price of the bikes manufactures by this company is high for the middle class people although it bears a very good quality. According to Karlsson (2016), based on the price and target market, the promotions and marketing of the products of this company are performed in urban and city areas. Even as per the decision of the operations management of Harley Davidson, the raw materials for the manufacture of the vehicles are also collected from these urban areas due to their availability. Because of the high price, the members of the operations management instruct the production department to manufacture maintaining limit (Rosemann vom Brocke, 2015). Job design in Harley Davidson is done in flexible manner. Employees are having flexible working hours as well as flexible working environment. Through the selection of the most effective partners such as Dunlop, Craftsman, Weber, Best Western, Sapient Nitro, the company manages the supply chain properly (Hazen et al. 2016). Before the stocks go out, Harley Davidson ensures maintenance of the inventory through automatic record system. Harley Davidson ensures timely delivery of its products by maintaining strict schedules with the help of project management and online scheduling systems. However, the most important function of the operations management of Harley Davidson includes the strategic maintenance of the entire processes tactfully. Conclusion: Finally, it can be concluded that in the production and maintenance of goods and services, the role and responsibility of the operations management cannot be ignored. The members of the operations management of any business organisation are involved in the future improvement of the entire functional processes for the organisational benefit. 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