Process Design and Analysis in Operations Management

This document discusses the importance of process design and analysis in operations management. It covers topics such as process positioning, volume-variety, and flow configuration. The document provides recommendations and conclusions for improving process performance. The subject is Operations Management and the course code is 80040 OMGT.

Operation Management 80040 OMGT
Binaya Sharma
a001863101
Interim Assessment written Report Phase 2
Word count: 1850
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Executive summary
Operations management plays a very important role in the smooth running of organizational
operations. There are some proper plans to run all the operations and this actually helps in
maximizing profits and reducing the cost so that customer can be fully satisfied as well as happy.
Every company know the mission and the vision and they know the way of becoming agile and
effective. There are many changes in the environment as this is 21 st century so customers are more
proactive and they know that there is a huge advantage of utilizing new technology in order to
reduce the cost and improving the quality of services. There is a person that is involved in the
company’s operations and he has a designation of operation manager. Operation manager has the
responsibility to handle each and every plan and policies regarding the operations of the
organization. He has to comply with all the requirements related to the operations and has to
analyse and redesign the process in case of any need. It is necessary to understand the whole
operation management process. There are five performance objectives that need to be fulfilled-
seed, quality, reliability, cost and flexibility. All these factors create a direct impact on decision
making related to the volume and variety and in return these factors determine the flow rate, WIP
inventory, resource utilisation and time consumption. The objectives of the process are related to
the initial point of design and the design is all about the layout, human interface and technology. As
per phase 1, there was a discussion on the five major performance objectives quality and it also
includes the role and individual tasks and related process. The analysis and design belong to the
process depends upon the performance of the objectives and the efforts undertaken in order to
improve the performance. There is an example that how to manage all the tasks on time. It is
important to maintain speed as per the time consumption of task and then analyse to improve the
speed.
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Table of contents
1. Introduction...............................................................................................................................2
2. Process Design- Positioning …....................................................................................................2
2.1 …Volume-variety …...........................................................................................................2
3. Process design – analysis …........................................................................................................2
3.1 Understanding the current process design …..........................................................................2
4. Conclusion (or Recommendations and Conclusions).................................................................2
5.References......................................................................................................................................2
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Introduction
There are mainly two discussions about two terms and the overall analysis to obtain the optimum
productivity and performance by spending minimum cost, resources and output. There is a
development of proper understanding of these issues and the designing process. It is the
responsibility of operations manager to critically analyse overall process so that it can help in
boosting the company. These terms are-
1) Process Design- Positioning
2) Process Design- Flow Configuration
3) Long term Capacity Design
4) Lean or agile supply chains
5) Supply network Configuration
6) Supply chain relationships
Process Design- Positioning
There are different types of organizations and they have different positioning strategies. Operation
manager is responsible to understand the concept related to the suitability of process design for the
growth of the organization. It is very normal to change the operations strategy because of any
changes as well as improvements in operational performance. Like if there is a price war strategy
opted by an organization and in order to make the process more efficient, the manager must decide
and create a path of improvement to contribute in the company’s strategy. In reference to some
companies, getting a leaner and more efficient approach clearly shows sacrificing on the material or
methods, product range and trimming service level. In most of the organizations, it is very easy to
accept existing process and try to make everything work and ignoring the changes needed by market
including the new customer internet technologies. Sometimes we try to put all the efforts in order to
analyse the current process and find out the requirement in the new process that help the
operation’s strategy to move business forward. For a deeper analysis of these issues, it is necessary
to look the process, volume, technology, job design and process engineering in a broad way.
Volume-variety
As per the textbook, the process and its position depend upon the volume scale and it creates the
process, technology and web design. It is the totally rely upon the market to decide the volume and
variety. Marketing is proved as a very efficient tool before starting the process design. Projects are
mainly infinite variable but on the other hand one-off in volume like there are some housing projects
that try to standardise the variety and deliver same type of home but again the volume is low.
Jobbing process is of high variety like there are different ways of repairing a car after accident. The
process of mass production is mostly use in the case of car, canned food or any other kind of product
where there is a high output volume and low variety. In case of processing of commodity, there is a
continuous process. The same procedure has to be followed in case of services like professional
services are easily customised as per the requirement of the customer and can’t be used for any
other person. Mass services are almost similar for everyone like services of big food chain like
McDonald’s is identical all over the world but again the volume and variety depends upon the
market needs, It highly influence the process type that is responsible in delivering the needs.
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Source: Figure 4.6 from the textbook (Figure 5.6 from the 5th edition)
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Process design – analysis
As per the text book, there is a highly detailed structure of the process as well as process design. This
analysis shows that there should be a right process in the right place as per the concepts mentioned
in the part 1 and above. Understand the two examples given related to the process and then analyse
how you would look the operational process of your organization. According to the phase 1, quality
is the most important objective among the five objectives and mentioned that the process
performance objectives are referring to the individual task of the process and design of the process.
The process design and the overall analysis totally depend on quantifying the performance related to
each and every objective and try to improve the performance.
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Source: Table 5.2 of the textbook (Table 6.2 of the 5th edition)
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Understanding the current process design
By drawing a diagram, it becomes very easy to understand the process and it is the best way to
create a clear idea about the sequence of the activities. All the process is in sequence in some way
and all the activities can be clearly represented in the diagram. Diagram can be created by using
some standard symbols that shows operation task, inventory, movement, delays and inspection task.
In the textbook, there are mainly two types of symbols- the one that is derived from scientific
management and others that derived from systems analysis. It is very important to use these
symbols for “decision’ process as they are the basis of service processes. Scientific management
symbols are meant for straightforward mapping of physical work processes like in the case of
McDonald’s, there are two core processes- one is serving the customers and second is producing the
burgers. Serving the customers refer to the decision process as well as physical process. They have to
analyse whether customer wants anything else or any modification or upgrade. The decision type
process works ultimately in case of mapping the sequence of the operations and taking decisions
related to the same. Ob the other hand, preparation of burgers has a full-fledged process and
sequence that do not need any kind of decision making.
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The flow diagrams follows the basic hierarchy like input, process and output for each and every task
available in the system and this diagram clearly shows that it is important to understand each small
process and fitting them together in a proper sequence. On practical aspect, it starts with a large
piece of as per and then refine the drawing into the perfect arrangement of the tasks in the system.
Almost every operation in McDonald’s is visible to the customers and you can easily try the mapping
of different processes.
Recommendation and Conclusion
It has been concluded that the process design and the analysis are two very important issues in an
organization and an operation manager has to know everything before operating the performance in
the organization. This topic is mainly related with all the major issue in operations management and
operation manager has to know the understanding, management and improvisation of the process
in the organization. There are three very important concepts related to the process- processes
design – positioning, process design – analysis, and process configuration. All the issues and
concepts related to the topic are concerned with the management of operations and processes.
Now it is easy for us to draw the process and understand everything in detail, we can also know the
level of perfection and how it can be improved. The main concept behind designing and analysing
the process is to make an analysis to check whether the production rate can be easily improved or
not, costs can be reduced or bottlenecks reduced. It shows that calculating the flow rate of the
process and the cycle time, checking the balance of the cycle, consumption of manpower and
consumption of resources in the whole process. There is a term mentioned in this section of the text
book ‘capacity’. The reason behind the same is that every process is based on the quantity produced
in a given time period. There is a question in the mind of the manager every time that “how to
increase the capacity of the process in the cost- effective way”. There are many ways given in the
textbook to maintain everything in an effective way- series, parallel configuration, process flow,
cycle time, and process balancing, task precedence and relationship between the work in process
and cycle time. Computer repair service is a very good example of process configuration (see page
157 of the textbook; page 149 of the 3rd edition). In parallel processing, there will be one task at a
time rather than in sequence like opening another checkout in the supermarket so that there will be
an increase in overall service rate. It is important to create a balance of the flow with the help of the
system so that there can be an increase in output and reduction in delays. The staffing of a process
is all about the resource input into the process and it is not a good method for measuring the
capacity. Therefore there are different types of analysis that has been done when process flow
diagram gets completed. There is an availability of simulation programs that enables the animation
of the process as an operating system, highlighting the bottlenecks, unnecessary WIP and delays on
the performance of operations.
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Reference
Climent, C, Mula, J & Hernandez, JE 2009, ‘Improving the business process of a bank’, Business
Process Management Journal, vol. 15, no. 2, pp. 201–224
Slack, N, Brandon-Jones, A, Johnston, R & Betts, A 2015, Operations and process management, 4th
edn, Pearson Education Limited, Harlow.
https://learning.aib.edu.au/mod/book/view.php?id=61098&chapterid=3444
Source: Figure 4.6 from the textbook (Figure 5.6 from the 5th edition)
Source: Table 5.2 of the textbook (Table 6.2 of the 5th edition)
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