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Management
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Answer questions. Operations Management. Management Assignment.

Essay Instructions:

Here are four questions, and complete each one as required.
You will use the theories and materials I have sent you to answer the questions. You may use references from outside sources.


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. [800-word limit]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. [800-word limit] 
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? [800-word limit]
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. [800-word limit]

Essay Sample Content Preview:

Operations Management
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Question 1
The major objective of the cost leadership strategy is to become the lowest-cost producer in the entire industry. Traditionally, businesses achieve cost leadership via producing on a large scale, hence exploiting economies of scale. A better approach is increasing profits by reducing costs, while at the same time charging prices that are industry average. Further, businesses can charge lower prices, while maintaining a reasonable profit on each sale, due to the reduced costs. The concept of process design can be applied in minimizing costs, hence allowing a company to sell at industry-average prices (Kurt and Zehir, 2016). In this case, the business will design the products, services, and processes to ensure that they meet all the expectations in terms of performance and strategic business needs. Process design means the production of capacity to meet the demand. This eliminates any waste, hence reducing costs. A company applying the design process attains low processing, resource, and inventory costs, hence attaining cost leadership.
Differentiation
In a differentiation strategy, a company makes products or services that are more attractive compared to those of the competitors (Tanwar, 2013). One of the ways of doing this is through the production of high-quality products or services. Quality management is critical in making products attractive. Quality implies the extent to which an object or entity meets a set of attributes or requirements. As indicated in the quality management module, businesses have to remain aware of the costs of poor quality. For instance, it can increase warranty costs as clients return faulty products, wherein the process a business loses its reputation. Further, a company will incur more costs in the monitoring of the products and services through inspection and testing. Companies that emphasize high-quality products or services will be attractive in the market since clients want such products and services.
Focus
Businesses that utilize the focus strategy concentrate on certain niche markets. They do this by understanding the dynamics of the markets and the unique needs of the clients in it (Tanwar, 2013). As a result, they develop products and services that are specific to the market, while at the same time being well-specified. Chapter 3 highlights the essence of operations strategy in businesses. A business has to make a deliberate effort to make strategic decisions in operations that are suited to the market niche. In this regard, businesses should make both structural and infrastructural operations strategy decisions depending on the target market. For instance, typical structural and infrastructural decisions will entail identifying the products and services to be developed, the location of the sites, and how operations should be organized among others. A business will make strategic decisions in operations that suit the target market.
Question 2
Company A’s believe that “You don’t inspect quality into a product; you have to build it in” is a shift from inspection to prevention. This approach recognizes that the ability of a product or service to pass inspection does not guar...
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