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Harvard
Subject:
Management
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Case Study
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English (U.S.)
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Assignment Questions. Management Case Study Assignment.

Case Study Instructions:

3 questions, please distribute the words evenly. Make sure that the number of words in each answer is around 400 words.
All questions answered must be related to operations management. I will send you the relevant ppt.

 

QUESTION 1
Michael Porter has argued persuasively that three generic strategies that companies can attain competitive advantages are cost leadership, differentiation, and focus.
Required:
For each of the THREE (3) strategies, identify how the operations management concepts that you have learned in this course can be used to support it. Justify your answer. 
QUESTION 2
Companies A and B are the manufacturers for popular gadgets X and Y, respectively. Each company, however, holds a different quality management philosophy for its own manufacturing process. Company A believes that “You don’t inspect quality into a product; you have to build it in.” While Company B stresses that “Before you build quality into a product, you must inspect the quality.”
Required:
Compare and contrast the merits of the quality management approaches from both Companies A and B. Discuss what product characteristics may be suited for each approach. 
 QUESTION 3
ABC is local manufacturer of food products, whose operations are based on a 4-day standard week on a 2 × 10-hour shift arrangement. Operators run each machine individually. The factory’s turnover is low, with most of the employees averaging 10 years’ service. Recently ABC was acquired by a multinational whose operations involve line manufacturing of food products. The multinational is planning to convert ABC’s current operations into a 24-hour, 7-days per week operations with significant emphasis on output. The work centres will be based on cell configurations. The proposed new changes are not well received by the current employees of ABC.
Required:
You are the operations manager of ABC. What steps would you take in planning for a successful transition? 
QUESTION 4
Many believe that the world is embracing a low-carbon future. In many countries, emissions are being restricted by government regulations during the entire logistical process. Carbon footprint is also tracked during manufacturing processes for each product. Consider a company that uses a periodic review policy (P, T) to manage its inventory, where P is the interval between reorders and T is the order-up-to level.
Required:
Use examples and discuss how, in your view, the green considerations would affect the way a company manages its inventory, including the setting of the values for P and T for the periodic review policy. 

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Assignment Questions
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Assignment Questions
Q#1 Michael Porter’s strategies: cost leadership, differentiation, and focus
Operation management gains from the application of Michael Porter’s strategies of cost leadership, differentiation, and focus. The three approaches are applicable in both product and service industries and organizations with varying sizes. Porter’s generic strategies are aimed at gaining a competitive advantage over rivals.
As one of these approaches, cost leadership seeks to increase profit and reducing the cost of running a business while maintaining industry-average prices (Slack, Brandon-Jones, & Johnston, 2010). It also ensures that the market share is increased through reducing prices, but at the same time, making a profit per sale due to a reduced cost of business operation. In operation management, leadership is important in terms of cost in the market or industry. To achieve cost leadership, operation managers should ensure efficient logistics, invest in technology to drive down the costs, and maintain a low-cost base such as workforce, facilities, and materials. Since cost leadership strategy is not unique to one organization, the Kaizen philosophy of ensuring continuous improvement in products and services is a great tool of differentiation. Slack, Brandon-Jones, and Johnston (2010) assert that differentiation by providing high-quality products and services is achievable at no extra expense.
Strategic cost leadership will be achieved through differentiation as Porter conceptualizes. Differentiation is when a firm produces goods and services that are different and attractive than those of their rivals. As noted earlier, improving quality does not necessarily involve an increase in the cost of production (Slack, Brandon-Jones, & Johnston, 2010). Operation management requires the use of Kaizen philosophy to continuously improve quality by conducting effective research and development (R&D) and innovation and deliver exceptional quality goods and services. An operation manager should adopt lean production where continuous inspection of processes is done to improve quality. According to Tseng (2016) lean principle aims to reduce waste and develop faster, dependable, and quality processes at reduced costs.
The last generic approach is a focus where companies concentrate on a specific market niche, and by doing so, they master the dynamics of a given market and serve unique customer needs. Since these firms can offer unique products at low cost, they ultimately build a robust brand making their market segment less competitive (Slack, Brandon-Jones, & Johnston, 2010). Through the focus strategy, firms can control the costs of quality such as failure to customers, internal failure, prevention, and monitoring costs which make their clients more attracted to their products and services.
Q#2 Merits of the quality management approaches and product characteristicsCompanies A and B have differing quality management philosophies with company A specializing in the production of gadgets X believing that quality should not be inspected into a product but rather built into it. Contrary, company B that produces gadgets Y maintains that be...
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