Weekly Questions Week 9

Week 9 Questions

Define the term operations management

Operations management is the management of systems or processes that convert or transform resources into goods and services

Explain operations management’s role in business
Operations management's role in business is to:

• Forecasting
• Capacity planning
• Scheduling
• Managing inventory
• Assuring quality
• Motivating and training employees
• Locating facilities

Describe the correlation between operations management and information technology

Management can use IT to heavily influence OM decisions including productivity, costs, flexibility, quality and customer satisfaction. One of the benefits of IT on OM is making operation decisions because OM exerts considerable influence over the defree to which the goals and objectives of the organisation are realised.

Explain supply chain management and its role in a business
Supply chain management involves the management of information flows between and among stages in a supply chain to maximise total supply chain effectiveness and profitability.

List and describe the five components of a typical supply chain

Five components of a typical supply chain are:

• Plan: the strategic portion of supply chain management. A company must have a plan for managing al the resources that go toward meeting customer demand for products or services
• Source: companies must carefully choose reliable suppliers that will deliver goods and services required for making products
• Make: The step where compnaies manufacture thier products or services
• Deliver: THe step is commonly referred to as logistics. This is the set of processes that plans for and controls the efficient and effective transportation and storage of suppliees from suppliers to customers
• Return: The most problematic step. Companies must create a network for receiving defective and excess products and support customers who have problems with delivered products

Define the relationship between information technology and the supply chain.

Information technology and the supply chain are related because enable and organistation to:

• decrease the power of its buyers
• increase its own supplier power
• increase switching costs to reduce the threat of subsitute products or services
• create entry barriers thereby reducing the threat of new entrants
• increase efficiencies while seeking a competitive advantage through cost leadership

All answers came from Business Driven Information Systems (Baltzan, Phillips, Lynch, Blakey)