International Journal of Lean Six Sigma

Implementation of Operations Management 1
IMPLEMENTATION OF OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT
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Implementation of Operations Management 2
Table of Contents
Executive Summary.........................................................................................................................3
Introduction......................................................................................................................................4
Stage 1 of Project Life Cycle...........................................................................................................5
Stage 2 of Project Life Cycle...........................................................................................................6
Stage 3 of Project Life Cycle...........................................................................................................8
Stage 4 of Project Life Cycle.........................................................................................................10
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................11
Recommendations..........................................................................................................................12
References......................................................................................................................................13

Implementation of Operations Management 3
Executive Summary
The project at hand seeks to address the reduction in efficiency experienced by the company.
Throughout its operation period, the company depicts significant breakdowns that hamper
manufacturing and productivity. The workers seem to experience challenges in the work stations
which reveals the lack of significant pieces of process optimization. The firm seems afflicted by
diverse causes of waste arising from its manufacturing design. Going by the project’s aims, the
most marked inconsistency in its operations relates to its inefficient processes that run from
training to sales. Overall, the company faces a threat of having its reputation decreased unless apt
measures take place to arrest the situation.
Realizing a modification in processes was suggested as the best method of solving the
shortcomings found to affect the company. Enhancing process efficiency offers the promise of
allowing the firm to deliver quality products and eradicate waste during manufacturing and sales
processes. From the project, it was deemed necessary for the company to utilize proven methods
such as lean management, Taylor’s Principles of Scientific Management, total quality
management, and continuous improvement. The project proposed depicts the use of long-
established methods to stimulate efficiency and eradicate waste. Its major outcomes stand to be
appreciated through improved productivity and revenue increase. Ultimately, the
recommendations emphasized the need to ensure proper training and oversight on the proposed
processes to effectively transform and sustain the company’s manufacturing processes.

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Implementation of Operations Management – Report of Project Life Cycle of a Specific Project
Introduction
Optimizing company operations remain fundamental in the modern business
environment. Focusing on planning and implementing a specific project to have the desired
changes to enhance productivity and eliminate waste forms the backbone of the project at hand.
At present, the company’s processes seem quite inefficient as demonstrated by the various
hitches pointed out by the employees and customers in getting their products. Towards realizing
optimization, it is essential to implement operations management, lean management, and total
quality management (Franchetti 2015). It is prudent to guarantee that the factors undermining
optimization in the production process get streamlined. The concordance between the
organization's objectives and the objectives of the human resources contributes to realizing the
company’s goals effectively.
Fully aware of this fact, the organization’s objectives on the human resource and process
optimization ought to create a workplace setting that ensures increased efficiency. Since
operations management takes consideration of different aspects, assessment of the efficiency of
the human resource and process approaches requires evaluation of crucial indicators. In the entire
production process, significant indicators include employee productivity and process bottlenecks
(Anderson, Anderson, and Parker 2013). Consequently, operations management seeks to
implement effective methods of aligning operations to ensure optimum production characterized
by reliability, flexibility, and predictability. As documented in operations management, lean
processes work towards eradicating waste while total quality management engages interacting
methods that exploit and combine standards, processes, and equipment to achieve optimization
goals.

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Stage 1 of Project Life Cycle
As the initiation phase, the project’s objective remains to achieve quality improvement
while eliminating waste. The company needs to reduce waste in its processes per the stipulations
of operations management. Through operations management, the company stands to eradicate
overproduction its associated costs. It as well seeks to boost operations flexibility by keeping the
production process extremely improved (Alhuraish, Robledo, and Kobi 2017). Towards realizing
the objective, the preliminary step involves process quality assurance followed by lean
management. With the six-sigma approach, the firm will manage ultimate solutions to the non-
conformance issues in the quality of its products as witnessed in the consumers’ complaints. The
project requires six design engineers to roll-out the six sigma appraisal of whether or not the
process components as designed to meet the needed tolerances (Jaeger and Adair 2016). With its
implementation, six sigma ensures consistency across the components’ tolerances across the
process comprising of six parts of process standard variation (Cherrafi et al. 2016). It seeks to
enable the business to sustain a near-perfect product throughout the adjusted process’s
components through conformance to standards.
The second objective involves coming up with a systematic waste reduction process.
Through the feasibility study, it will be possible to establish the issues facing the company’s
operations management. Projected issues comprise of communications breakdown that affects
production procedures, poor location of work centers, and absence of multifunctional teams. In
addition, the firm’s process design seems fundamentally lacking in optimization through multiple
product handling that inflicts damage to products (Soltan and Mostafa 2015). The lack of
optimization means that the company grapples with flexibility issues in processes and in coping
with the dynamics of being in an extremely competitive industry. Being a manufacturing firm,

Implementation of Operations Management 6
the expectation of having a systematic waste reduction approach seems largely lacking. It results
in redundant worker movement due to the absence of process integration. Ultimately, such
problems result in the products failing to conform to customers' quality expectations.
Stage 2 of Project Life Cycle
Being the second phase, the first approach is the establishment of the various steps, their
costs, and timelines. In evaluating the company’s existing structure, the aim is to ascertain the
process inefficiencies throughout its operations. Establishing the inefficiencies serves to point
out the areas that need streamlining to ensure conformance to principles of operations
management (Spasojevic and Tomic 2016). In this case, the project seeks to involve two teams
of five experts working for five days. Being part of the company, the additional costs implicated
in remuneration only extend to $100 per person per day for the five days. Overall, the additional
cost adds up to $5000 for the complete undertaking.
Subsequently, a performance appraisal must take place to point out the process
components and employees performing below par. The process will require a team of five
experts drawn from various departments deployed for five days. Again, the payments apply as in
the first step, adding up to $2500. From the established list of redundant workers, the company
will draft termination letters followed by the dismissal of the given employees. Since the
corporation has legal authority to dismiss employees, no additional costs accrue from the action
except for the dues payable to the dismissed workers. This step will need the engagement of the
company’s legal team and three finance staff engaged for two days at an overall cost of three
thousand dollars.

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Regarding the processes and principles of operation management, the fundamental step
involves pin-pointing the specific areas found as performing less optimally. Towards optimizing
production in the different processes, widespread changes in the process must take place. The
changes will involve abiding by the different steps established in achieving the processes with
the least to zero waste (AlManei, Salonitis, and Tsinopoulos 2018). Per the project at hand, it
will encompass process and employee characteristics. The process changes will require a team of
five professionals focusing on the existing production processes and making effective
modifications. The process aspect focuses on shifting the firm’s procedures to conform to lean
manufacturing.
On the other hand, the employee aspect focuses on workforce development and their
adaptability to changes. In this regard, the focus remains on implementing a widespread revision
of the training program for the workers (Kadarova and Demecko 2016). Its application will
consist of departmental teachings that will be steered under the fresh approach where each
worker or team of workers will be trained and oriented anew. For optimal results, the training
will take place in two stages. The first stage will focus on top management and team leaders. It
will use an intensive approach running for thirty days and costing a total of three thousand
dollars. The second stage will involve subordinate personnel and team members. The program
will henceforth be integrated into all forthcoming training for fifteen days where the IT staff
store and transfer the training files.
Building a database for the new program will be completed to prevent a return to the
former program. The procedure will necessitate the issuance of all electronic training documents
as well as designating the approaches of training engagements which will consist of real-time
utilization of the procedures and practices learned in training. Per the projections, the process

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will require six months to complete. Its implementation will involve resources in the company
such as equipment and the entire organization’s human resource. The procedure will profoundly
depend on the production of the teaching materials which the organization can handle in-house to
diminish expenses. However, substantial expenses will accrue in steering the learning sessions
and remuneration of the experts leading the actual training.
GANTT CHART
Activity Start Date End Date Resources
Staff Layoff
Establishing legality 01-02-2020 5-02-2020 Legal team
Establishing employment terms 6-02-2020 10-02-2020 Legal team
Establishing redundancies 11-02-2020 15-02-2020 Process experts
Performance Assessment 16-02-2020 1-03-2020 Department managers
Drafting termination letters 2-03-2020 5-03-201 Human Resource/ Legal team
Process modifications 06-03-2020 10-04-2020 Process experts /Senior
management
Training Program Revision
Revision of training program 11-04-2020 11-05-2020 Process experts/Department
heads
Training data transfer 12-06-2020 30-06-2020 IT
Stage one training 1-07-2020 10-07-2020 Senior Management/
Department heads
Stage two training 11-07-2020 20-12-2020 Subordinate staff
Stage 3 of Project Life Cycle
In this stage, the focus remains on overcoming the major production hurdles through lean
management. The approaches of lean management allow the company to improve efficiency and
production and form a significant part of the process (Cortes et al. 2016). Implementing the
significant parts of lean facilitates the firm in eliminating all redundant undertakings, effectively
enhancing the process (Jiménez-Jiménez et al. 2015). Another important aspect involves
implementing Taylor’s Principles of Scientific Management as seen in the new program of

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training for employees. The combination of the two approaches ensures the realization of zero
defects to completely achieve just-in-time delivery standards.
Being extremely reliant on multifunctional teams, the corporation needs to increase the
percentage of workers engaged in teams and accordingly increase the range of tasks achieved by
every team (Yadav and Desai 2016). Similarly, the project will decrease the firm’s quantity of
job categories while enhancing the regularity of task alternation. Employee alternations will
change from the existing once per year schedule to a two-hour interval. The facilitation of
employee rotation will be enhanced by the augmented training that takes into account the
specific types of diverse processes. Through the training program, every employee will realize an
increased set of competencies to allow their participation in different processes. The ability to
develop operational and persistent enhancements through multifunctional teams significantly
contributes to reducing waste and enhancing productivity.
In keeping up with the improvements, lean management requires safeguarding that each
department delivers excellence while adhering to timelines and product deliveries. From the
training program, the company will decrease the lot sizes to ensure hourly production of units per
the demands. It will also need to avail a continuous update of work progress to ensure the
reduction of the time spent in sales processing. Since the employees remain crucial to the
process, the engagement of multifunctional teams applies centrally throughout the process. Over
time, the company may need to hire new employees upon determining the needed skill set in the
entire production chain. The hiring will go hand in hand with laying off the redundant employees
to eliminate waste. With competent and capable teams, decentralization will take place to allow
increased duties to the production teams. Eventually, it will ensure the attainment and sustenance
of the effective measures of process improvements.

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Stage 4 of Project Life Cycle
In the final stage of the project, the strategies used in realizing the objectives come into
light. The project’s impact on the company underlines its attainment of organizational objectives
arising from the application of the planned approaches. The company needs to reduce waste in its
manufacturing process and ensure optimization. This aim is attained through the execution of the
suggested strategies such as lean management, Taylor’s scientific approach, and continuous
improvement. However, the success of the structural goal accomplishments will be assessed
under specific crucial performance indicators such as increased productivity, quality
improvement, and cost reduction (Henao, Sarache, and Gómez 2019). Utilizing six sigma and
Business Process Reengineering will make it possible to streamline processes towards a more
customer-focused approach. At the same time, continuous improvement effectively guarantees
that quality and improvement remain the bottom-line of the totality of every process in the
company.
The first effect on the company is the improvement of the production processes. One of
the most fundamental factors which influence the quality of products is the processes used in
manufacturing. In addressing the need for process improvement, the company stands to realize
an increase in productivity and customer loyalty extending in the long run. The improvement
accrues from the processes reducing non-conformance and from eliminating waste. Increased
efficiency will directly be shown by a growth in productivity levels. Since the firm previously
used a non-just in time system, the implementation of lean management ensures that the
fundamental flaws occurring due to process inefficiency get eliminated. Lean management will
ensure that the propensity to keep work-in-progress as a way of safeguarding against shortages

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comes to an end. Process improvement and total quality management plan will eliminate the
need for high stock levels by ensuring access to production materials on demand.
The company as well stands to gain from lean management by having streamlined
processes that distinguish the different tasks that remain crucial to the process from the
unnecessary, wasteful tasks. For instance, instead of manufacturing and storing products, the
process of storing is eliminated and replaced by loading products onto delivery trucks. Its ability
to eradicate redundant tasks contributes to the elimination of waste (Al-Shourah, Al-Tarawneh,
and Alzu'bi 2018). Through total quality management, the firm will manage to set things to
eliminate waste in employees walking for a distance to access critical inputs at every stage of
manufacture (Roriz, Nunes, and Sousa 2017). The combination of the different strategies would
see the company realize improved productivity which will be translated to increased revenue.
Productivity improves due to important elements such as multifunctional teams and the training
program that allows employees to possess multiple skills.
Conclusion
The project essentially seeks to address vital aspects of process optimization. One of the
foremost parts of the project focused on appraising the lacking aspects of the company’s
manufacturing processes and ways of integrating them. The main outcome of the improved
processes and manufacturing optimization is the improvement in quality and productivity. In the
course of the project, it was established that each step of lean management, as well as the
concepts and principles of its execution in manufacturing processes, significantly advance
efficiency. As a crucial concept of lean management, eradicating waste requires a deliberate
review of the process to improve efficiency. Despite its apparent simplistic processes of effecting
needed changes, it may not demonstrate easy applicability across all firms. In the case at hand,

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specific obstacles in the effort to implement lean management revolves around employee
readiness for change and material ordering processes. Nevertheless, having a just-in-time system
ensures the simplification of the company’s manufacturing processes due to different reasons.
Firstly, it provides a comprehensive outline of process optimization and its indispensability.
Operations management holds the key to resolving problems of inordinate productivity and
incompetence across the company’s manufacturing processes. While lean management concepts
remain widely applicable, the company must deliberately work to achieve the needed changes.
Recommendations
It is advisable for the company to use the four phases of the project lifecycle to implement
changes in its processes. The company needs to maintain lean management, total quality
management, Taylor’s Principles of Scientific Management, and continual improvement in its
manufacturing processes. This means that each concept applies in the sector where it achieves
maximum productivity and elimination of waste. Similarly, the company needs to ensure clarity
on the type of training that is mandated for employees and suggested in the second phase of the
project cycle. With clear information, translating knowledge into practice becomes a whole lot
easier. Having the processes running optimally means that the company needs to have a person
conducting regular monitoring and evaluation of the processes to ensure continual
improvements. This means that the company will be able to ensure compliance from its
employees while promoting skill transfer. Regular process evaluations should be executed to
ensure that the condition of the manufacturing setting remains in good shape to avoid reverting
to an inefficient process. The plan should allow employees to make enquires about the state of
their work stations and they should also have access to the training manuals regularly or when
they require them.

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References
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and six sigma in terms of their critical success factors. Journal of cleaner production, 164,
pp.325-337.
AlManei, M., Salonitis, K. and Tsinopoulos, C., 2018. A conceptual lean implementation
framework based on change management theory. Procedia CIRP, 72, pp.1160-1165.
Al-Shourah, A.A., Al-Tarawneh, R.T. and Alzu'bi, F.A., 2018. The Integration of Lean
Management and Six Sigma Strategies to Improve the Performance of Production in Industrial
Pharmaceutical. International Journal of Business and Management, 13(8).
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John Wiley & Sons.
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lean manufacturing, Six Sigma, and sustainability: A literature review and future research
directions for developing a specific model. Journal of Cleaner Production, 139, pp.828-846.
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Implementation of Operations Management 14
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