Literature Review on Operations Management

This assignment requires the student to find relevant literature related to operations management, including research papers, journals, and books. The student is expected to provide a list of references that demonstrate their understanding of the topic. The references should be from reputable sources such as academic journals, books, and government reports. The student should also include a summary of each reference, highlighting its relevance to the topic and any key findings or contributions. This assignment is an opportunity for students to showcase their research skills and ability to critically evaluate literature in the field of operations management.

MANAGEMENT &
OPERATION

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
TASK 1 ..........................................................................................................................................1
P1 Define and compare different roles & characteristics of leaders and managers....................1
P2 Role of leader & function of manager in different situational context..................................3
P3 Theories And Models Of Approach.......................................................................................5
TASK 2...........................................................................................................................................6
P.4 Key approaches to operation management and the role that leaders and managers play..........6
P.5 Importance and value of operation management in achieving business objectives..............7
P.6 Assess the factors within the business environment that impact upon operational
management and decision-making by leaders and managers.....................................................9
CONCLUSION .............................................................................................................................11
REFERENCE ................................................................................................................................12
.......................................................................................................................................................13

INTRODUCTION
Operation management is about planning and supervising the production and
manufacturing process. This focuses on conversion of raw material into finished goods.
Operation management consist two terms i.e. supply chain management and logistics. It also
have the responsibility of insuring efficient & effective use of resources. It cover sectors like
banking system, hospitals, companies and technology. Company taken to understand operation
management is BURBERRY GROUP PLC, it is a British luxury fashion house in London
England. It deals in clothing, accessories, perfumes & cosmetic items. On the basis of Burberry,
things that are going to be covered in this report is managers functions and leaders role,
approaches to management, how in different situations these roles can be applied and what
leadership theories & models company is using.
TASK 1
P1 Define and compare different roles & characteristics of leaders and managers
CHARACTERISTIC OF LEADERS-: Honesty- It is an important characteristic required in leader of Burberry Group because if
they are honest with their subordinates then only later will be honest with leaders. Which
in result give the better performance from the company (Apte, 2016). Ability To Delegate- Leaders of Burberry have this characteristic of delegating
responsibility which help them reducing burden and giving equal opportunity to work for
their subordinates. It make their employees very satisfied and they perform better. Confidence- Every leader need confidence in them because it make them work properly
without any fear. Having this quality in them, they can even perform difficult tasks. This
motivates employees of Burberry and in result they perform better by giving their best to
the company. Positive Attitude- Working in company like Burberry, leaders sometimes face a lot of
difficulties & hurdles in their work, but their positive attitude make their confidence high
and help them in performing their best (Bennett and James, 2017). This affect
organisations performance and image.
 Communication- Burberry is a very big organisation with lots of employees, so their
leaders need to have good communication skills. So that information can be shared
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properly without creating any confusion among pool of employees (Bhattacharya, A.,
Dey and Ho, 2015).
ROLES OF LEADERS-: Mentor- Role of Burberry's leader is that they act as the mentor for their subordinates. In
a role of mentor they guide employees in performing their task effectively. Employees
always find a helping hand for them if they get stuck anywhere.
 Motivator- Big companies have large number of employees, so do Burberry. Sometime
employees get demotivated if things does not work according to them and their
performance start getting down, in this type of situations leader perform the motivator
role so that they can retain them and improve their performance.
CHARACTERISTICS OF MANAGERS-: Problem solving skills- Managers of Burberry need to have this quality in them because
company is very big and they have large number of employees working for them.
Problems & conflicts are very obvious thing to come up in them, for handling this
situation it is important for managers to have this skills.
 Knowledge- Burberry managers have good knowledge because they are the representative
of the company (Giegerich, 2017). It is important for them to know everything about &
related to their company or industry so that they can think big for the industry.
ROLES OF MANAGERS-: Planning- Managers role is to plan things as per requirement of the company. Burberry &
their employees are dependent on the planning done by manager. They create a
framework for their subordinates within which subordinates need to perform.
 Organising- Burberry manager perform this role to create a systematic procedure of
performance so that employees does not get confused and can perform without any stop
hurdle.
LEADERS
 Leaders of Burberry are the people who
have followers and their purpose is to
create a vision for the organisation.
They communicate it & provide tools
to accomplish it.
MANAGERS
 Burberry's Manager have power of
controlling and organising a group of
people. They are also known as
executive or supervisor. Their purpose
is to create goal for the organisation.
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 Leader's main focus are employees
working for the Burberry. Like their
motivation, employees conflicts etc.
 leaders inspires their followers and
guide them to perform in a good
manner.
 Leaders take risks by trying new things
& experimenting irrespective of the
failure or success (Grant, Trautrims and
Wong, 2017).
 On the other hand managers main focus
is on thing. Like how to do something,
how to motivate, how to solve problem
etc.
 Managers make plan to perform task by
leaders and their employees. They
prepare a framework of performance.
 Managers task is to find some ways to
minimise those risks so that company
does not face any failure.
P2 Role of leader & function of manager in different situational context.
Burberry's goal is to improve their sale-:
In this situation two of them have their own different roles and functions to achieve the goal of
the company.
 Planning: In this situation manager's function is to decide which steps are important to
reach the goal and improve Burberry's sales. First they plan to increasing their
advertisement which attract more customers if they do it in a right way. Next planning
they will do is about increasing their inventory level so that more production can be
done . After all this they increase their sales staff so that every customer get personalised
staff attention in case they need any help. In this stage Leader's roles is to listen and
understand the requirement of manager so that they can train their team for the same.
 Organizing: After planning, manager of Burberry organise a team and arrange material
required to accomplish the goal of increasing the sale. In this step company's manager
assign work and grant authority to different people according to their skill set (Hitt, and
Carnes, 2016). In this stage role of Burberry's leader is to take their authority and start
leading the team organised by manager. They create a vision for that particular situation
among the team members.
 Staffing: Now manager's function is to recruit and select candidates for increasing their
sale's staff . Burberry's manager select those candidates only who have required skills of
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sales and marketing. After this, role of leader starts i.e. Their task is to give training to
them and enhance their skills & knowledge. Their role is to develop the employees.
 Leading: Next step for increasing the sale of Burberry is providing lead to employees. It
is the role of leader to motivate, communicate and guide the team members. By doing
this employees satisfaction toward their work will increase and they perform their best to
achieve the goal. In this stage function of manager is to assist and solve problems of
employees and leaders if they face any (Kopardekar and et. al., 2016).
 Controlling: Manager's function does not finished yet. They need to keep a check on
outcome against the goal so that they can take corrective actions for keeping their plan on
track. Role of leader in this stage is to find out their flaws and try to cover them.
Burberry's goal to create no conflict environment-:
For creating a working environment where no conflict take place require different roles of
managers & leaders.
 Right timing: Burberry is a very large organisation with many employees who sometime
create unnecessary conflicts. In this type of situations managers & leader should not
avoid it otherwise they will regret it later (Li and et. al., 2016). Leaders should take action
immediately when they find about it so that they can save the company from any negative
impact like poor company's image, decrease in sales etc.
 Analyse your team: Another function of Burberry's leaders and managers is to analyse
the team with which they are working. This is done to know if there is any wrong person
in the team, because these type of people are the reason of conflicts and poor result.
Manager's function is to find out the solution to make team free from wrong people so
that team can perform better.
 Actively listening: Managers & leaders of Burberry have to act as a good and active
listener for their employees and should block out the urge to response. There is no need
to necessarily agree with employees but listen to them because they have different
perspective than leaders & managers. By doing it leaders can find out the reason of
conflicts and misunderstanding among employees.
 Respect Differences: Leaders and managers of Burberry should try to understand
differences in people and respect their uniqueness (Longaray and et. al., 2015). This can
help managers to understand about how to manage conflict between them.
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P3 Theories And Models Of Approach
 Situational Leadership theory: Burberry apply this theory because it is a
situation based theory and leaders can choose the best course of action from it.
When the leader of company have more knowledge and experience than their
employees authoritarian style is appropriate for organisation to opt in which
leaders lead and have power to rule. But in case if team members are more skilled
then democratic style is more appropriate to choose in which group members have
right to give their opinions and advice.
 Systems Leadership: Burberry go for this theory because it brings creativity and
innovation in organisation. It always encourages employees of the company to
think differently. In this theory not only individual and organization is considered
but geo political borders are also defined. This leadership theory improves growth
& development in the company (Mahadevan, 2015).
 Contingency theory: Burberry apply this theory into their organisation when
they emphasize on different variables for determining the style of leadership
required for the particular situation. It does not only consist qualities of leaders
but also strike the balance between behaviours, needs and context.
LEADERSHIP MODELS-:
 Autocratic Model: Burberry follow this model of leadership when they have very
important task in which no fault or mistake is acceptable. In this situation leader become
autocratic in nature and take all the decisions as well as give all the directions by their
own , staff have no right to suggest or give their opinion for the team. This model have
some advantages like it make decision making easy and reduces possibility of any doubt.
 Transactional Model: Company follow this model when they want to judge the work of
their group members. In this style employees are assigned some tasks to perform, if they
perform good they will be rewarded but if their performance is not upto the mark then
they will get punished. For this employees are trained, this is done to achieve the desired
goal of the organisation(Piercy and Rich, 2015).
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TASK 2
P.4 Key approaches to operation management and the role that leaders and managers play.
Operation Management is a field of Management which is concerned with designing,
executing and controlling of operations which convert the resources into goods and services and
implements business strategy. This business practice is used by the Burberry company to convert
their raw materials and labour into goods and services to increase its profitability. The key
approaches to operation management of Burberry are -
 Quality Management – Quality is one of the most important element for any product in
developing good brand image. The firm addresses this key function through continuous
improvement of their product standard which is under the set of management principles.
Burberry uses best raw material and fabric called Gabardine, which is completely
breathable and exclusive. This attracts more customers and increased sales(Radnor and
et. al., 2015).
 Design of Goods and Services – As the industry deals in fashion, which requires
continuous innovation, so the firm designs its products with the use of latest technology.
The organisation takes the help of the research and development team to ensure the latest
trends in its goods. Fashion accessories, scarves and trench coats are the unique products
made by the company.
 Location Approach – Global Location is an important approach used by the firm. It
helps the company to spread the network worldwide and to attain the long term goals.
Burberry starts all its set up in new country at prime location so that the brands can gain
attention by the customers and serve them in a better way. This helps the firm to flourish
its growth as well as to earn brand loyalty.
 Process and Capacity Design – The industry focus on maximising its process efficiency
by reducing waste. For this, the firm uses cost effectiveness in capacity design so that it
can utilise its resources effectively (Ravindran, 2016). Thus, reduces the initial cost of the
product which maximises revenue for the company.
 Craft manufacturing: This approach explains the process under which skilled
craftspeople manufacture products in low volume but with variety in order to fulfil the
requirements of customers. These kinds of people mainly work in small workshops; this
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kind of system is effective for local production or for firms who operate at small level
and with low level of competition.
 Mass production: Process of manufacturing standardised products at large quantities
with help of automation technology and assembly lines is known as mass production. In
other words, production of large number of products at efficient level is known as mass
production.
Leadership and management are vital components for the business, as they help in utilisation
of resources to achieve the objectives of the organisation. The roles of the manager and the
leader of Burberry are -
 Informational Role – It is the role of the manager to deliver the important information to
subordinates provided by the supervisors (Reid and Sanders, 2015). The key role of the
leader is to be the mediator in the company and to create awareness among the employees
by passing relevant information.
 Leadership Role – The manager acts as a leader for its team. The leader plays a crucial
role in the employee performance and productivity. They motivate their co workers and
sets clear vision in accomplishing the targets given by the manager on time. Thus both
the manager and the leader are the support system for Burberry.
 Liaison Role – Team leader communicates regularly with their co workers. This help
them to solve the problems faced by the employees. The manager too gets in touch with
the leader on daily basis to maintain a close working relationship. This results in
coordination as well as effective planning.
 Resource Allocator – Time is the most important resource which the manager of the
Burberry allocates to its sub-ordinates (Schönsleben, 2016). Role of the leader is to
provide the resources in terms of physical, monetary and human to the firm.
 Decision-making – With the world-wide scale of fashion business, Burberry manager
uses the approaches for decision in operation management. Waste minimisation with
higher production capacity is one of the strategic decision taken by the manager, which
influenced sales of the company. The leader influence its team members to focus on the
decision of reducing waste with innovation and motivates them to enhance their skills.
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P.5 Importance and value of operation management in achieving business objectives.
Operation management is the process of converting the inputs into goods and services
which adds value for the customer. This process is made up of various management activities
like planning, organising, controlling, monitoring etc. With regards to Burberry, major objective
of operations manager is making sure that high quality goods and services are manufactured
within the entity and made accessible to customers. Importance and value of operations
management is described below -
 Reduction of cost – Operation management acts as an effective tool in finding and
eliminating the costs related to wastage within Burberry (Schönsleben, 2016). Here,
managers find unique and creative ways to reduce the cost of operations and enhance the
quality of the goods and services. Leaders in Burberry motivate the workforce timely by
providing them training at regular intervals.
 Enhancing overall productivity – Productivity is concerned to be an important aspect
for any business organisation. Managers and leaders of Burberry gives special concern to
the element so as to ensure that employees complete the tasks in desirable manner within
due course of time. Main objectives of operation manager is to undertake such activities
that can result in increasing the overall productivity of workers of the company. Leaders
strive to create a positive and healthy atmosphere so that workforce can be encouraged to
perform in a better manner.
 Optimum utilisation of resources – Operation management brings all the resources
together. All the resources which are available such as money, machine, men and
methods are important for achieving the organisational objectives. The manager of
Burberry allocate all the resources in effective and efficient manner.
 Utilises the benefits of science and technology – Men has made fast progress in the
field of science and technology (Simpson and et. al., 2015). The manager of the company
utilises the benefits of the technology, as it provides the industry with the latest machine.
This helps in the reduction of labour work and time in manufacturing a product. Science
and technology leads to innovation. The leader of Burberry encourages the team
members to bring new and creative ideas and use them with modern methods and
machines so that the company can serve their customers with the newest products.
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 Team work – Operation management builds team spirit in the organisation. The success
of the company depends on the effective team work. The leader and the manager efforts
in leading the team is the reason of prosperity within Burberry. The manager and leader
motivates the employees by giving them bonus and good amount of incentives. This
boost the team to work harder which results in higher production.
Value of operations management
Concept of operations management is related with transformation of inputs such as
materials, capital, land and buildings into outputs which offer value to target customers of
organisation. One of the major benefit of operation management is that it makes the process of
production more efficient which help company to attract large number of customers. Value of
operations management relies on various elements including globalisation, empowerment and
technology used by organisation to carry out its commercial activities. Technology which a
company use has a great impact on its operations and profits. For example, if company use
advanced technology then it saves both time and cost of enterprise which make production
process more efficient. On the other hand, use of old technology create unnecessary delays in
productions process and also increase business cost. Overall value provide by concept of
operation management to enterprise depend or get affected by various elements exist at
workplace.
P.6 Assess the factors within the business environment that impact upon operational
management and decision-making by leaders and managers.
It is very important for every business to interact with its environment because business
environment direct link with the organisation. The company has little influence on the internal
environment and therefore it is necessary for Burberry to identify the factors which has an
impact upon operational management and decision making. Micro environmental factors are the
near by forces which directly affects the business environment. Thus, the following are some of
the internal factors within the business environment which has an impact upon operational
management -
 Customers – All goods produced by the organisation are finally consumed by the
consumer. There are various types of customer such as producers, retailers, government
etc. Business exists to serve its customers. The profitability of the firm depends on the
demand and supply of quality goods to the consumer. Thus, the manager of Burberry
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should take rational decision while manufacturing a product. Every product made should
be taken into consideration with customer preferences and their demand.
 Suppliers – These are the individuals who are responsible for making a business
successful or unsuccessful. Burberry manager should choose its supplier carefully
because if they supply poor quality products to the company and they resale the goods to
the consumer than the goodwill of the organisation will get affected. This leads to huge
loss to the firm. The manager should be aware of the policies of the supplier. Burberry
should deal with more than one supplier so that the change in policy of one supplier does
not affect the production and operation management (Slack and Brandon-Jones, 2018).
 Competitor – Manager of Burberry should use some strategic decision to compete in the
global market. Competitors of the organisation are Armani, LVMH, Prada etc. These
brands became aspiring brands because of their multiple categories of products. They are
famous because of their unique designs and hand stitched clothing. Burberry can compete
these brands by taking effective decisions such as improving its quality, adapting new
technology, using the resources which are rare. The leader should focus on implementing
this decision to earn brand loyalty and should take competitive advantage.
 Resellers – They are the main source of distribution named as the retailers or the
wholesalers. The reseller help Burberry by distributing, promoting and selling the goods
to the final buyers. The manager of the company should maintain good relation with the
resellers so that they can carry their activities smoothly. These market intermediaries can
effect the organisation both in positive as well as negative way. It is the responsibility of
the manager to keep a check on the resellers working for them.
 Public – These are the group of people who has a potential interest in the firms ability to
achieve its interest. It includes employee as well as other officers of the company. Thus,
Burberry should give bonus and incentives on regular intervals to their workers to
appraise them. This will satisfy the need of the human resources working in the
organisation and employees will be willing to flourish the companies growth. Public can
affect the operation management of Burberry both in positive or negative way, the public
has the power to help to reach to the organisational goals, just as they can also prevent the
firm from achieving those goals.
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The business environment also gets affected by external factors which impact on the operations
as well as the decision making part of the organisation. Therefore, it is essential to identify the
external factors which affects the operation of Burberry. The various external factors which are
identified are social, political, economic, technological, environmental and legal.
 CSR – Corporate social responsibility is an approach of business which contributes to the
development by providing economic, social and environmental benefits to its
stakeholders. Burberry should ensure that natural resources used are according to the
demand of the situation so that excess production of a product is controlled. The CSR
policy should assure that the industry do not become the cause in increasing pollution by
its activities in particular area, rather should focus on decreasing the pollution level of
that area.
 Culture – It is defined as the ideas, social behaviour and custom of people of a particular
place. The manager of Burberry should make product decision, only after identifying the
cultural background of that particular market. They should keep in view that people
accepts the product by perceiving it as a part of their culture so that the firm can increase
its profitability. Culture plays an important role in operation management too as the
strategies to increase the workforce effectiveness are formulated by considering the
culture of the employees of that place.
 Technology – In the modern world, the future of all kind of business are shaped by the
technology. Manager of Burberry should take decision to use the latest machines for
making the new products so that it will consume less time and produce more goods. This
will flourish the sale of product and growth of the company.
CONCLUSION
From the above report it has been concluded that operation management plays important
role in t activities of the organisation. Managers and leaders have their own different
responsibilities for the success of the company. Other than this it has also been learned that how
their roles and functions are applied in different situations for achieving the goal of the company.
Leaders and managers follow different approaches for efficient performance of the company.
Organisation should also focus on internal as well as external factors that are affecting the
productivity of the company.
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REFERENCE
Books and Journals
Apte, A., Gonçalves, P. and Yoho, K., 2016. Capabilities and competencies in humanitarian
operations. Journal of Humanitarian Logistics and Supply Chain Management. 6(2).
pp.240-258.
Bennett, M. and James, P., 2017. The Green bottom line: environmental accounting for
management: current practice and future trends. Routledge.
Bhattacharya, A., Dey, P. K. and Ho, W., 2015. Green manufacturing supply chain design and
operations decision support.
Chan and et. al., 2017. The role of social media data in operations and production management.
International journal of production research. 55(17). pp.5027-5036.
Giegerich, B., 2017. European military crisis management: connecting ambition and reality.
Routledge.
Grant, D. B., Trautrims, A. and Wong, C. Y., 2017. Sustainable logistics and supply chain
management: principles and practices for sustainable operations and management.
Kogan Page Publishers.
Hitt, M. A., Xu, K. and Carnes, C. M., 2016. Resource based theory in operations management
research. Journal of Operations Management. 41. pp.77-94.
Kopardekar and et. al., 2016. Unmanned aircraft system traffic management (utm) concept of
operations.
Li and et. al., 2016. How smart cities transform operations models: a new research agenda for
operations management in the digital economy. Production Planning & Control. 27(6).
pp.514-528.
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.
Mahadevan, B., 2015. Operations management: Theory and practice. Pearson Education India.
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.
Radnor and et. al., 2015. Public Service Operations Management: A Research Handbook.
Routledge.
Ravindran, A. R., 2016. Operations research and management science handbook. Crc Press.
Reid, R. D. and Sanders, N. R., 2015. Operations Management, Binder Ready Version: An
Integrated Approach. John Wiley & Sons.
Schönsleben, P., 2016. Integral logistics management: operations and supply chain management
within and across companies. CRC Press.
Schönsleben, P., 2016. Integrales Logistikmanagement: operations und supply chain
management innerhalb des Unternehmens und unternehmensübergreifend. Springer-
Verlag.
Simpson and et. al., 2015. Professional, research, and publishing trends in operations and supply
chain management. Journal of Supply Chain Management. 51(3). pp.87-100.
Slack, N. and Brandon-Jones, A., 2018. Operations and process management: principles and
practice for strategic impact. Pearson UK
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