Industrial Engineering and Productivity: Roles of an Operation Manager and Challenges Faced

Running Head: INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING AND PRODUCTIVITY
Industrial engineering and Productivity
Essay-Answer
Student name

INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING AND PRODUCTIVITY 1
Task -1
a) As an operation manager, I need to perform four main roles that are planning, managing,
researching new technologies and improving.
Planning
As an operation manager, my first role will be conducting a market survey before
developing any processes or products so that a clear idea of the market regarding the process
or product can be keeping in mind whether the market is ready for our process/product or not
(Renwick, Redman & Maguire, 2013). In case the result of this market survey seems to be on
our process/product side, the planning can started. Commonly, planning includes designing a
new product in numerous stages with trying phases, considering both practical and business
necessities. In some cases, the methods need to be updated e.g. if a fresh product is service,
necessities and customer contact stages should be swotted and updated. Planning should
support business mission, which means that cost and selecting the best quality standards
along with human labour and measured inventory (Berkes, 2009). Properly measured
indicators should be set in the planning stage in the mandate to know if the real performance
meets the calculated ones or there is a need for changes.
Managing
After planning stage is over, as an operation manager my new role will be to have a
clear image how and where material, human workforce, price and flow in the product will be
design and produced. This will act as a base forgets the maximum out of the efficiency of the
operations. This is only possible when the management of the organization is competent and
continuous (Anantatmula, 2008). It is also my role to select and plan the processes for the
best result and does the same with the device for accurate quality and output. It is also part of
my duty to analyze the particular employee whether a particular work suits that person or not
and in case not then what necessary training can be given to such person to make that person
as a value for money (Ageron, Gunasekaran & Spalanzani, 2012).
Research new technology
As we know that business environment has not remained same as it was during old
time. Today business environment is in dynamic mode and globalization of the business has
also contributed to this change. Hence, if an organization has to survive, it has to go with

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technology advancement. It is part of my duty to meet the external business requirement with
the help of technology update. As we know, update in technology means the good amount of
money invested so the proper use of available money should be done by avoiding overheads
of the organization (Fitzsimmons, Fitzsimmons & Bordoloi, 2008).
Improving
There is continuously search to progress when it approaches the procedure used, the
excellence and productivity accomplished or when the range of human resources is
considered. Hence, as an operation manager, it is my role to do demand forecast smartly
which will help in improving process which has a direct impact on cost and delivery times. It
is also my duty to have a clear picture of the investment happing on 4m's that is the man,
material, method and machine (Yuan, Zeng, Skibniewski & Li, 2009).
b) An, empirical study was conducted by Donovan A. McFarlane on challenges of
productivity and operation management. Accordingly, to the study operation management is
one of administration that provides the utmost tools and chances for companies to understand
and add worth to their active production process/ services. But at the same time, there is the
number of challenges that operation management has to run the productivity at its best so that
the organization can prosper(McFarlane, 2014). One of the big challenges for productivity
and operation management is globalization. As per the study, the world is facing such a
market, which is unpredicted regarding the change, innovations on a regular base with high
technology advancement. The world is moving towards high-quality standards which are
upgrading time to time which is a challenging thing for productivity and operation
management because they do not have to only go for high quality but they also have to
reduce the cost and maintain it with their competitors (Akkerman, Farahani & Grunow,
2010). Another challenge is ethical conduct, as the world is moving towards going green so it
has become a challenge to produce those things, which have no bad effect on the
surroundings including animals, civilization, and human being. It is being noticed that
unethical behavioural of the organization has contributed towards the demise of the
organization progress. Changing trend of the business it has also changed the way of
communication (Baines, Lightfoot & Swink, 2009). It has been seen that many programs fail
not because of their plan but because of ineffective communication.
Effectively communicating is another challenge for the organization because if an
organization is not able to communicate about their vision to the shareholders as well as

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stakeholders then it will be very difficult to convert this vision into reality. In old time, the
human beings were treated as machines work and only work. However, today human being or
employees are recognized as the most important asset of the organization because
management is aware that machine, methods, and material alone are not able to transform
input into output. It is the human capital, which plays the important role of this
transformation so the safety of this human capital has become one of the top priorities of the
organization (Martinez, Bastl, Kingston & Evans, 2010). It has now become the part of the
role of operation head to face this challenge with their full experience as all the governments
of the world take this safety aspect very seriously. As per study operation management is
mostly impacted by the value-chain system/ activity. Value –chain system consists of two
groups one is action group and other is the support group. The active group involves finance,
technology, production and quality differentiation. Some organization only focus on active
group and face problems related to the unfocused support group, which is also very important
and serves as the bloodline of the organization (Baines, Lightfoot, Benedettini & Kay, 2009).
Many organizations suffered and had a major demise in their success because of lack of
attention on this support group, which involves all the activities, which are related to the
office work of the organization. Hence, progress is very dependent on this value-chain
system.