Operations Management

Operations Management
Author’s Name
University Affiliation
Operations Management
Introduction
The production strategies focus on transforming resources, which include the raw materials, labor, energy and machines into products and services. There are four renowned production strategies such as process focus, repetitive focus, product focus and mass customization. In process focus, an organization organizes its production process in an approach to realize low-volume and high-variety production. Repetitive focus entails the organization of a production facility around modules, and the modules comprise parts of the product, which an organization had initially prepared. On the other hand, when using the product focus strategy, an organization aligns its production processes around products in an effort to facilitate high-variety and low-variety production. In the same context, organizations use the mass-customization strategy to meet the dynamic nature of customer needs. Through the strategy, companies often utilize build-to-order systems, which work well in producing actual customer orders (Vallabhaneni, 2009).
American Organizations
Starbucks
Product Focus
As part of their business activities, Starbucks Corporation has focused on ways of improving its product portfolio. While coffee is the core product of the company, there has been the introduction of new products, for example, Tazo Tea. The strategy is also evident in the adoption of promotional strategies, which focused on the product, for example, the active participation on Web 2.0 applications (Cooke, 2010).
Process Focus
The strategy is evident, mainly in the supply chain of the company. Before the reorganization of the company’s supply chain activities, the company often incurred operational costs. After focusing on the supply-chain activities, the company managed to simplify the activities, and later realized cuts on the cost. For example, the manufacturing department developed an efficient approach, which was cost-effective to deliver coffee beans to the processing plants.
Repetitive Focus
Although Starbucks is not a fast food company, the company has consistently produced similar products over time. Therefore, the strategy has been useful as it has helped in identifying ways of reducing costs, reducing inefficiencies and improving quality. Nonetheless, the company is slowly doing away with the strategy due to the development of new products (Green, 2012).
Mass Customization
It is arguable, whether Starbuck’s products are modified to serve particular customers; however, it is important to note that, Starbucks holds a significant US market share. As such, and considering the price of the company’s products the company targets men and women aged 25-40 who have high income and are in professional careers (Cooke, 2010).
Microsoft
Product Focus
Microsoft Corporation recognizes the importance of research and product development, and this is why the company has a variety of products. As such, the company has been successful in developing new products through promotion, or integrating them into their existing products, and an example is the Windows Operating System. In addition, the company has not o...