Operations Management Past Papers and Solved Assignments

This assignment provides a comprehensive collection of past papers and solved assignments related to operations management studies. It covers topics such as operations research, project management, logistics management, emergency management, airport demand management, and more. The assignment is suitable for students looking to improve their understanding of these subjects and prepare for exams or assessments.

MANAGEMENT AND
OPERATIONS

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
TASK 1............................................................................................................................................1
P1 Define And Compare Roles & Characteristics Of Leaders And Managers......................1
TASK 2............................................................................................................................................3
P2 Examples of how does these roles & functions can apply in different situations.............3
P3 Theories & models of leadership......................................................................................5
TASK 3............................................................................................................................................7
Covered in PPT.......................................................................................................................7
TASK 4............................................................................................................................................7
Covered in Booklet.................................................................................................................7
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................7
REFERENCE...................................................................................................................................8

INTRODUCTION
Operations and management is the process of organisation in which activities like
planning, organising, staffing and controlling take place. It is the activity in which input is
converted into finished goods and services. This practice bring high level of efficiency in the
company and increases the profit. This can be understand better with the help of the company
called UBER. It is an US based transportation company with headquarters in San Francisco and
California. It came into existence in 2009. UBER is providing services like ride service hailing,
food delivery and bicycle-sharing system. Things covered under this report are roles of leaders &
managers and how these functions are applied to different situations, key approaches to
operations & management. Different types of leaderships theories will be elaborated and how it
impact on business operations will also discussed.
TASK 1
P1 Define And Compare Roles & Characteristics Of Leaders And Managers
Role of leaders:-
 Motivating & Inspiring: Role of leaders in Uber is to motivate their workers or
followers which make them satisfied in performing the task and as a result they start
taking voluntarily initiative in activities (Ardestani-Jaafari and Delage, 2016). By doing
this company's performance get better and productivity increases.
 Innovators: Another role that Uber's leaders play is innovators. They try to bring
newness into their work, even they ask workers to share their ideas openly if they have
anything. For example initially Uber started its service with cabs but now because of
their creative & innovative ideas they are providing bike ride services as well as food
delivery services also. This has increased their customer base which maximise
organisation's profit. Supporter & Guide: Leaders of Uber perform the role of supporter & guide to their
worker in every situation. It help employees to perform their task easily in supervision of
their leaders. This role even motivate workers and they feel happy about their work. As a
result turnover rate among employees reduces and productivity increases.
Role of managers:-
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 Problem Solver: Manager's role in Uber is to find the solution for the problems in
organisation. Uber is a big company with large number of employees working in It, this
sometime may create the problem of conflict among them (Cheremisinoff and
Davletshin, 2015). In this type of situations leader try to find out the solutions to resolve
the conflict.
 Planning: Managers also perform role of planner by which they create a framework for
their workers within which they have to work. This reduces confusion among employees
related to their tasks (Cosola and et. al., 2016). In companies like Uber managers are
super skilled and knowledgeable because of which company is completely dependent on
the plans made by managers.
 Delegate Tasks: Uber is a large organisation with massive activities which is not
possible for its manager to perform all of them by their own. This is done so that every
person get the equal opportunity to perform tasks which in return give them satisfaction.
By delegating tasks, manager can focus more on important part of activities which
require their personnel attention.
Characteristics of leaders:-
 Positive Attitude: Leaders need to have positive attitude while working in Uber because
it help them to face difficult situations without any fear. This type of attitude create happy
and tension free environment to work. This even inspires employees working with the
leader to perform with their full interest.
 Decisive Mind: Leaders need to make decisions very quickly in company like Uber ,
they can not take forever to decide something and for that they need to have knowledge
about it so that they can take correct decisions. Decisive mind is important for growth of
the company and it reduces the delay in decision making.
 Communicative Ability: Important characteristic that Uber leader must have is good
communication skills as it help them to interact with their workers properly and it does
not create any confusion among them (Davidson and Olsen III, United Parcel Service of
America Inc, 2016). Every person understand everything properly.
Characteristic of managers:-
 Experience: Managers of Uber need to have experience of their work so that they can
perform as the company wants. Their experience matter a lot to the company because of
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it managers can use its expertise to deal with situations and can bring new ideas in the
company.
 Confidence: Manager is the representative of the Uber company so they need to be
confident because they face the world frequently and interact with the clients regularly.
This confidence make their client sure about the company and it improves the image of
the organisation.
MANAGERS-
 Manager is a person who focuses on
organising & controlling the group of
people.
 Managers of Uber focuses is on how
the organisation work. They are process
oriented.
 Managers of Uber try to control risk by
taking corrective actions so that their
company does not face problems (Dias,
2017).
LEADERS-
 Leader is a person to whom group of
people follow. They act as a guide to
them and motive people.
 Leaders of Uber focuses on future.
They are vision oriented. Every person
working with them follow this vision to
achieve the goal of the company.
 Leaders of Uber are the risk taker, they
take risk for maximising the profit of
the company.
In order to achieve success, it is very essential for every business organisation to have both,
a good leader and manager. Leadership is related with make other individuals believe in your
mission and encourage them to work well to achieve the same while management is related with
managing day to day operations and ensuring that everything is implementing in an appropriate
manner. In order words, leadership is the art of influencing behaviour of individuals so that
company can achieve its set goals and objectives. On the opposite of this, management is a
discipline of managing routine activities in best possible manner. It is an art of getting things
done by others.
TASK 2
P2 Examples of how does these roles & functions can apply in different situations
UBER wants to increase its unit in different countries -:
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1. Planning- Manager of UBER perform the planning function in which their work is to
decide the most important step at that time to achieve the goal of the company. In this
they first plan to buy a land in particular country in which they can open their office.
After that they do a proper R&D to know how much workforce they require and from
where they can get them easily without spending more money. After this they plan about
required number of cars & bikes and what customer's demands are. After planning part of
manager is done, leader's role starts in which they have to listen to managers requirement
so that they can work accordingly (Fagel, 2016).
2. Organising- After planning, role of Uber manager changes to organising the team, task
& material for achieving their goal. With the urge to increase its unit their work load also
increases. In this step company's manager start buying man & machinery for further
process and they also start delegating responsibilities to people at different levels. In this
stage role of leader is to take their responsibility & authority and find a way to
accomplish the goal of the organisation (Gillen, Jacquillat and Odoni, 2016).
3. Staffing- Now manager's function is to recruit candidates as per their need &
requirement. Manager of Uber assign this responsibility to HR team of their company to
select some good candidates for the required positions who can manage that unit as good
as other units of Uber. HR can even transfer some of their old employees to new units.
Leader's role in this stage is to make teams then train them and guide them, they provide
a direction to new employees in which they can work under the guidance of leaders.
4. Leading- Next function of Uber manager in achieving goal of the company is to give
lead to employees using performance management and development process. role of
leader is to motivate and guide the team members, by this new joiners can adjust
themselves very quickly and start working in favour of the company which lead them to
achieve goals of organisation quality and productivity.
5. Controlling: Managers keep a regular check on employees performance, they prepare a
performance report which they review and evaluate regularly to know if work is going on
as per the plan or not (Harrison and Lock, 2017). They keep a track on the actions of
workers to take a corrective actions.
UBER wants to eliminate conflict from their company-:
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1. Right Timing: Uber is a very big and successful organisation with more than 16000
employees and some of them may create unnecessary conflict sometimes. In this type of
situations managers& leaders should wait for the right time to enter between them. First
participant of conflict should be given time to solve it by themselves and if it does not
resolved in given time then only leaders or managers take actions.
2. Analyse Team: Another function of Uber leaders in this situation is to analyse the team
they are leading, it help them to understand the reason behind conflict and the person who
is creating it. It help them to judge the workers on the basis of what result they are
making on the company.
3. Active Listening- Leaders and managers of the Uber need to be a good listener,so that
they can listen the problems and reasons of employees without any response and can
understand the cause of problem behind it. It help them in concentrating different
perspective of employees which differ from managers & leaders.
P3 Theories & models of leadership
1. Situational leadership theory : Uber opt this leadership theory because it is situation
based theory. Situation of company like Uber keeps on changing with time rather than
following the same environment. In this situations requirement of leadership style is also
different dependent on the requirement of solutions. This style of leadership consist of
two variables like directive behaviour and supportive behaviour. For example if Uber's
leader have good knowledge about the situation they take decisions by themselves and
will not take advice from their team members about it. But if in case supportive
behaviour is strong and team also have knowledge about situation then leader will take
help of workers in taking decisions (Kerzner and Kerzner, 2017). With adoption of this
leadership style, leaders of Uber can create and maintain a comfortable environment for
workers and improve their productivity at workplace. Further, leaders can take better
decision through which company can achieve its set objectives.
2. Contingency theory: Uber apply this theory in their organisation because it states that
leader's effectiveness can be judged on the basis of how much their leadership style
matches with the situation. This theory consists of two things i.e. there is not one best
style of leadership and other is leader's effectiveness is directly proportionate to style fit
with situation. Major benefit of this leadership style is that it fits best in every kind of
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situation. Further, this improve decision making skill of leaders through which Uber can
operate in market in appropriate manner.
3. System Theory: company's like Uber opt for these leadership theory because it help them
in bringing innovation and creativity in the company. It encourages team members to
think big in favour of organisation. This theory also bring development in the company as
well as increases growth. With adoption of this leadership style, leaders of Uber can
enhance organisational adaptability to all the changes take place in external environment
through which company can better fulfil the requirements of its customers.
4. Autocratic model: Uber uses this model when they want their communication in one
direction, when leader have enough knowledge about the situation and when time is
limited. In this style, leader tell others what they have to do and even they limit
discussion of their ideas (King and Farrel, 2015). One benefit of this leadership style is
that it ensures clear line of control, this remove all the grounds of errors which help
handle situation in an appropriate manner. With this, leaders of Uber can motivate
unmotivated employees to perform their job roles in appropriate manner.
5. Democratic model: Company uses this model when they want two way communication
in which leaders welcome the discussion from team members and their feedbacks. In this
style of leadership power is shared among team as a whole from the leaders. It provides
motivation to the workers, they feel valued and respected about their contribution which
in result their performance improves. One of the major benefit of this leadership style is
that it improves relation of leaders with other all employees that help in implement any
kind of change at workplace. With adoption of this leadership style, leaders of Uber can
identify effective solution for complex problems and can create an innovative work
environment that offer various long term benefits to company.
6. Laissez-fair Style: Uber adopt this theory of leadership when their workers possesses
good skills, knowledge and motivation. Complete freedom is given to the team, they can
take decisions and plan by their own without the help of leaders (Longaray and et. al.,
2015). This style build trust between leaders and their team members and also provide
motivation to the workers. This is one of the best and effective leadership style as this
make all employees responsible towards their work and also provide internal satisfaction
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to them. With adoption of this leadership style, Uber can retain employees for long time
period and can sustain in market for long run.
TASK 3
Covered in PPT
TASK 4
Covered in Booklet
CONCLUSION
According to this report it has been concluded that management and operations are the
two different but interrelated part of the organisation which is handled by managers and leaders.
Both are the important members of the company because they have their own different roles to
perform in achieving the goals. Other than this it has been observed that organisations perform
different leadership styles as per the situation they face because it keeps on changing time to time
so they can not stuck with one style or theory of leadership.
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REFERENCE
Books and Journals
Ardestani-Jaafari, A. and Delage, E., 2016. Linearized robust counterparts of two-stage robust
optimization problems with applications in operations management. GERAD, École des
hautes études commerciales.
Cheremisinoff, N. P. and Davletshin, A., 2015. Hydraulic fracturing operations: Handbook of
environmental management practices. John Wiley & Sons.
Cosola and et. al., 2016. Carbon footprint of forest operations under different management
regimes. Croatian Journal of Forest Engineering: Journal for Theory and Application of
Forestry Engineering. 37(1). pp.201-217.
Davidson, M. J. and Olsen III, J. A., United Parcel Service of America Inc, 2016. Systems and
methods for utilizing telematics data to improve fleet management operations. U.S.
Patent 9,324,198.
Dias, J., 2017. Teaching operations research to undergraduate management students: The role of
gamification. The International Journal of Management Education. 15(1). pp.98-111.
Fagel, M. J., 2016. Principles of emergency management and emergency operations centers
(EOC). CRC press.
Gillen, D., Jacquillat, A. and Odoni, A.R., 2016. Airport demand management: The operations
research and economics perspectives and potential synergies. Transportation Research
Part A: Policy and Practice. 94. pp.495-513.
Harrison, F. and Lock, D., 2017. Advanced project management: a structured approach.
Routledge.
Kerzner, H. and Kerzner, H. R., 2017. Project management: a systems approach to planning,
scheduling, and controlling. John Wiley & Sons.
King, D. and Farrel, A., 2015. A PCE-based architecture for application-based network
operations (No. RFC 7491).
Longaray and et. al., 2015. Assessment of a Brazilian public hospital’s performance for
management purposes: A soft operations research case in action. Operations Research for
Health Care. 5. pp.28-48.
Machado and et. al., 2017. Framing maturity based on sustainable operations management
principles. International Journal of Production Economics. 190. pp.3-21.
Piercy, N. and Rich, N., 2015. The relationship between lean operations and sustainable
operations. International Journal of Operations & Production Management. 35(2).
pp.282-315.
Rios and et. al., 2016, September. NASA UAS traffic management national campaign:
Operations across Six UAS Test Sites. In 2016 IEEE/AIAA 35th Digital Avionics Systems
Conference (DASC)(pp. 1-6). IEEE.
Schönsleben, P., 2016. Integrales Logistikmanagement: operations und supply chain
management innerhalb des Unternehmens und unternehmensübergreifend. Springer-
Verlag.
Spandre and et. al., 2016. Panel based assessment of snow management operations in French ski
resorts. Journal of outdoor recreation and tourism. 16. pp.24-36.
Spring and et. al., 2017. Creating the competitive edge: A new relationship between operations
management and industrial policy. Journal of Operations Management. 49. pp.6-19.
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