Operations Management Sstrategy (Term Paper Sample)

OPERATIONS MANAGENT STRATEGY by Course Professor School Location Date Operations Management Strategy Table of Contents TOC \o "1-3" \h \z \u 1.Introduction PAGEREF _Toc533693508 \h 32.Evolution of Lean and Six Sigma Quality Management Tools PAGEREF _Toc533693509 \h 32.1.Lean System PAGEREF _Toc533693510 \h 42.2.Six Sigma System PAGEREF _Toc533693511 \h 43.Relevance of Lean and Six Sigma Approaches to Strategic Improvement Delivery PAGEREF _Toc533693512 \h 54.Changing Relevance of the Strategic Tools in the Manufacturing Sector PAGEREF _Toc533693513 \h 75.Conclusion PAGEREF _Toc533693514 \h 96.References. PAGEREF _Toc533693515 \h 10 1 Introduction Technology has played great roles in ensuring that operations are efficient in any organization. Technology has contributed to shortened product life cycles, good chain management, lean production, and even green manufacturing. (Albliwi et al. 2014: pp.1012-1030) Operational management can be defined as a systematic approach for an organization in designing, planning and controlling the processes that lead to transformation of inputs into outputs that can generate revenue for the organization. Good operational management strategy leads to the attainment of the required efficiency of the productivity levels of the organization and ensures that the value is delivered to the organization customers and as well the organization achieves its competitiveness. The aim of this paper is to briefly explain the evolution of lean and six sigma strategic tool, evaluate the relevance on the approaches on the strategic improvement deliverance and analyze the changing relevance of the strategic tools in the manufacturing sector. Evolution of Lean and Six Sigma Quality Management Tools Quality management has changed over time from just a mere inspection of total quality management and to the modern six sigma. The process has led to the development of very essential processes, theories, and even tools that are key to organizational development, change management, and even organization performance improvement. (Abu Bakar, Subari, and Mohd Daril, 2015. pp.339-348) Total quality management can be traced back to the early 1920s with notable concept development in Japan between 1940s and 1950s pioneered by Feigenbum, Juram, and Deming. Lean System Lean can be defined as the systematic approach to eliminate or reduce process that does not add value to the organization activities. This management tool emphasizes on eliminating the wasteful steps and taking only the steps that add value to the organization. Lean system has many benefits such as helping in the reduction of the process cycle time, improvement on the productivity or the service delivery time, elimination of the chances of defect generation, reducing inventory levels and optimizing on the organization resource usage. This process has led to evolution of organization process management as it promotes a continuous chain of process improvement. (de Freitas, Costa, and Ferraz, 2017. pp.262-275) Lean originated from TPS -Toyota production system. Lean can help manufacturing organization to remove wastes-DOWNTIME- and leads to improvement in their processes. The waste includes defects, overproduction, and waiting, non-utilization of talent, transportation time, and inventory through unwanted stocking, unnecessary movement, and extra processing. This wastages leads to losses and therefore the need for total quality management through lean and six sigma on the organization processes. Through lean organization can manage the processes to eliminate waste through identification of key customers, mapping the stream, creation of goods flow to the customers, establishing pull based demand for the customer, and continuous improvement on the processes. Six Sigma System Six Sigma is a data-driven tool for solving organizational problems. It focuses on the process variations and also emphasizes on the customer satisfaction. This method aim is to ensure that there are continuous improvement on the processes with low defects on the goods produced or service delivered. The framework includes problem definition, measurement, analysis, improvement, and control of the processes. (Rodgers, Antony, and Gupta, 2018)Lean six sigma, therefore, can be defined as the fact-based, data-driven improvement methodology with aim of defect prevention. The aim of this tool is to increase customer satisfaction with a reduction on the variation, waste and cycle time, while at the same time promote work standardization and work flow in the organization. Lean and six sigma are gaining management confidence because of today's dynamic environment. The management uses the tool as a quality management tool because lean first removes the wastes in the processes while six sigma tool improves the variation leading to standardization. (Trzeciak et al. 2018:pp.36-43) These tools have enabled the management team to achieve their objective on improving the processes through reduced process variation and elimination of wastes. These tools along with other tools have been very helpful for the management because they are able to identify, measure, prioritize and even improve the processes that are critical to the product quality. These tools are also great as they contribute towards human resource development and also improves the general work environment leading to efficiency and improved customer satisfaction. Relevance of Lean and Six Sigma Approaches to Strategic Improvement Delivery Six Sigma tool uses data in measuring performance with the main goal is on the variation reduction. Which ultimately results on quality output for the customers. There are many benefits of the tool to the service sector and as well as on the supply chain management. The tool leads to increased profitability of the organization through cost reduction. (Trzeciak et al. 2018:pp.36-43) Service sectors employing the tool have attributed cost reduction as a result of improvement on the product quality and reduced number of errors and cost of redoing the reprocess. This tool focuses on the prevention or elimination of process errors which in turn leads to a reduction in the cost of poor quality, waste reduction and among others. This tool will enable the management to focus their energy on meeting customer demands rather than focusing on meeting individual targets thus more revenues, customer satisfaction and retention for the organization. The tool drives customer focus because the organization management will be able to come up with ways of ensuring that they reach their customer to buy their products, retain them and as well increase the product uptake per customer. The tool will enable the organization to identify the customer needs, align their products into customer specification and focus on fulfilling the customer needs. The organization that uses the tools have acknowledged a generation of sustained improvement, especially in the service industry. (Viagi, Panizzolo, and Biazzo, 2017:pp.64-86) According to a recent survey, 9 of 10 startups fail every year because they ignore the other side of the business. They fail also because they cannot attract venture capitalist to fund their projects for sustainable growth. However, six sigma management approach helps these organization build a robust and sustainable business process that can grow and come up with new product designs and services to the customers. The tool enables management to set the organization direction and goals by getting together their teams to work together as a uniform team. The tools will define the organization goal to every staff so that all the teams can deliver quality services to the customers. This tool also fosters the organization continuous learning and knowledge sharing thus accelerating the information flow within the organization. The continuous staff development makes the staff flexible and also be multi-skilled thus good for the organization on change management and product positioning in the market. For example, a lean approach has worked well for the giant automaker, Toyota, they have been able to shorten their lead time, meet customer’s expectation and also able to make sustainable revenue growth over a period of time. Toyota Company is also known globally as the epitome for lean as they have created a learning culture that has led to improved quality on their products, company growth and also successful business strategy. Changing Relevance of the Strategic Tools in the Manufacturing Sector Strategic tools such as lean and six sigma are becoming relevant to the manufacturing sector with a good example being the Toyota Company. Lean and six sigma philosophy have been used by the company to improve product quality and as well encourage continuous learning culture in the organization. The approach focuses on removing waste and concentrates on the value addition of a process to the customer. (Brateanu et al. 2017:pp.750-755) The benefits of the approach have made it be adopted by many of the management team as a key business strategy for their organization. Toyota as a company, for example, has created a learning culture in which all the organization's employees ‘focus on improvement in all they do. This strategy has seen them have good financial performance over the years and were also able to edge out general motors as the largest automaker in the US market share. Even though many organization has tried to replicate the success of the giant automaker on lean success, many have failed significantly. Deployment of lean into organization chances are very small even if it gets support from the management. For example, the Swiss food manufacturers found that the bottom-up approach to the lean approach had a cascading effect and failed because there was no support from the executive commitment, autonomy, lack of communication and even interest among the team to learn the lean approach. It ...