Global Operations Management Report: General Motors Analysis

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of General Motors' global operations management. It begins with an overview of the global business environment and barriers to trade, followed by an examination of GM's organizational culture, structure, and strategic approaches. The report delves into GM's decision-making methods, capacity planning, and operational management techniques, including quality control and supply chain management. Furthermore, it explores the company's enterprise resource management practices. The analysis highlights GM's strategies for maintaining a competitive edge, addressing operational challenges, and adapting to market demands. The report references key academic sources to support its findings and provides a detailed understanding of GM's operational strengths and challenges in the global automotive industry.

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GLOBAL OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT.
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Introduction.
This paper will examine the planning, improving, and controlling methods used by general
motors, which is an automotive company that operates internationally. This paper deeply
explores the topics in various subtopics which include: its global environment, barriers it's
encountering to trade, its culture, structure, strategies, decision-making method, capacity
planning, management of operations, quality control, supply chain management, and enterprise
resource management.
SECTION ONE: Planning.
Global business environment.
The global environment is referred to as different external factors that affect decision making and
operations of an organization. General Motors is an international automotive company with a
significant market share across the world. However, it faces intense competition from other
companies such as ford motors among other companies who are also producing quality
automotive. General Motors had to come up with competitive strategies to remain competitive,
and the plans include: reducing its prices as compared to those of competitors, it also produces
quality products and provides cheap spare parts as a method of attracting and maintaining
customers. They also work on innovation each day to create an automotive with unique
characteristics that serve the customers' needs best (Drucker, 2017).
Barriers to trade.
Taxing of imported steel and aluminum was significantly affecting the automotive industry as it
affected the cost of production that reflects the ability to compete globally and profitability.
Imports of other brands to the US is a high risk to the General Motors in terms of

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competitiveness to other automotive companies as it reduces the home market share, heavy
import taxes for automotive in other countries have also affected trading for general motors.
General motors culture.
An organization's culture is one of its success determinants. Therefore, they should develop an
influential organization culture that supports the development and growth of the company.
General Motors has an organizational culture that supports the improvement of automotive
production toward the success of the company. The company has a culture that promotes
nimbleness in human-resources. That skill is for supporting efforts made by the company to
improve the performance of the business in general, mostly in the increased competition and
internal issues. It helps the company be more innovative that gives a higher competitive edge
(Maiorescu, 2016).
Organizational structure for general motors.
Every organization should have an organization structure that streamlines the business and
supports sound decision-making. The organizational structure must be in line with the goals of
the organization and must be flexible enough to adopt new technology and maximize on the
strengthening of the business. Organizational structure for general motors is focused on regional
markets that are it is grouped according to business operations of different geographical locations
— the company's structure purposes of implementing strategies depending on conditions of a
specific market. GM is an international automotive company; its organizational structure has to
be in line with the relative market environments (Goolsbee & Krueger, 2015).
General motors strategies.

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It uses a generic strategy which gives it a competitive advantage globally. General motors focus
on maximizing its strengths to overcome its weaknesses and exploiting opportunities to minimize
their threats. They Generic strategies have also helped the company deal with competitive
rivalry; it also matches the requirements of the company and considers its external environment.
General motors strategies are focused on better product development, market penetration,
developing new markets, and diversifying, they employ the economies-of-scale to produce at a
low cost that also helps them reduce their market prices. This strategies gives the company a
competitive advantage and enhances the growth of the business as well.
SECTION TWO: Controlling.
Operations management.
General motors use strategies that implement all new technologies to deal with operation
management. General motors used operations in the company's offices to determine its
productivity, decision areas in operation management are those that identify problems associated
with business performance and productivity. In operation management, general motors focus on
ten areas of decisions which are: product design, managing quality, identifying the location,
processes and production capacity, human resources and job design, the supply chain, inventory
optimization and management, scheduling and company maintenance (Goolsbee & Krueger,
2015).
Decision-making methods.
Decisions made by managers of any organization determines its improvement and success. In the
auto business, accurate or inaccurate forecast of the demand of a particular brand of a vehicle
gives a ground of making proper decisions. The cost-leadership strategy guides general motors in

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making decisions without putting into consideration an appropriate plan of differentiation
(Ivanov Tsipoulanidis & Schönberger, 2017).
Capacity planning.
Capacity planning involves choosing the production volume required by the company to satisfy
the customers’ demands, general motors do its capacity planning to respond appropriately to the
changing requests of different products, they estimate the inventory and materials needed for a
particular period. General motors use technology to increase their capacity by developing new
producing methods, tools, increasing the number of production facilities, machines, and workers.
SECTION THREE: Improving.
Quality control.
General motors address quality in its mission and vision statement through emphasizing using
technology in its processes. They are determined to give quality products depending on
customers’ expectations by implementing quality standards. The company also achieve quality
by training its workforce to minimize errors during the production process.
Supply-chain management (Mitra, 2016).
The management has to come up with strategies to maintain supply required to meet the demand.
General Motors has an objective of improving supply chain efficiency through dealing with
operational problems. The supply-chain is efficient when materials are procured in time to avoid
delays in production to supply quality products to satisfy the demands.
Enterprise resource management.

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Enterprise-resource-planning is the process in which a company identifies the essential parts of
the production process. General Motors uses software that combines planning, managing
inventories, sales, human resources, and sales. This software enables a smooth transfer of
information from different departments.
Conclusion.
In summary, general motors have a significant market share all over the world but have a number
competitors, import taxes and imports of other brands of vehicles in the US are some of the
trading problems the encounter as it increases competition. GM has a culture that focuses on
improving its productivity, its organizational structure is based on regional markets, uses generic
strategies to remain competitive, and its decision is based on the cost-leadership approach. The
planning capacity changes with change in demand where supply-chain management is required
to meet the demand in time. GM is determined to give quality based on the customer's needs, and
they use software for enterprise-resource-management, which make it easier to transfer
information.

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References
Drucker, P., (2017). Concept of the Corporation. Routledge.
Goolsbee, A. D., & Krueger, A. B. (2015). A retrospective look at rescuing and restructuring
General Motors and Chrysler. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 29(2), 3-24.
Goolsbee, A. D., & Krueger, A. B. (2015). A retrospective look at rescuing and restructuring
General Motors and Chrysler. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 29(2), 3-24.
Ivanov, D., Tsipoulanidis, A., & Schönberger, J., (2017). Global supply chain and operations
management. A Decision-Oriented Introduction to the Creation of Value.
Maiorescu, R. D., (2016). Crisis management at General Motors and Toyota: An analysis of
gender-specific communication and media coverage. Public Relations Review, 42(4),
556-563.
Mitra, A., (2016). Fundamentals of quality control and improvement. John Wiley & Sons.