Report on Operational Management Strategies for Watson Engineering

This report delves into the operational management practices of Watson Engineering, a UK-based manufacturing company. It examines the importance of operational management in transforming inputs into outputs and ensuring product quality and efficiency. The report analyzes Watson Engineeri...Read More

Introduction to operation and
services

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
TASK .............................................................................................................................................1
Importance of operational management in Watson Engineering................................................1
Techniques used for operational improvement strategy.............................................................3
Conclusion and Recommendations..................................................................................................7
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................10
.......................................................................................................................................................11

INTRODUCTION
Operation management refers to a business function which is responsible for planning,
organising, coordinating and controlling the resources. It is considered as core function of
organisation which transform all inputs into outputs. It includes manpower, material and money
needs to make products or services in best qualitative manner. For increasing efficiencies of
services, main role of operational managers of a company is to develop product value at each
phase of production. They also formulate strategic and tactical decisions in order to display
unique features of products. This would help a corporation in become competitive at marketplace
and increase sales performance as well (Bazargan, 2016). The present report is going to explain
how a company can introduce operational based improvement strategy. For this purpose, Watson
Engineering Tooling Company is taken which deals in manufacturing sector.
Watson Engineering Company provide a wide metal prototype and production parts to
other industries of UK. Providing metal fabrication solutions in manufacturing is considered as
core competencies of this company. Along with this, it also specializes in robotic welding, tube
bending (bent tubular product), CNC machined components, press brake, powder coating,
stamping, laser cutting and assembly services etc. Due to increase in competition and decline of
engineering in North East of England, it's managers have realised that there is a high demand of
products but run business successfully in future seems to be untenable. Therefore, to overcome
from this threat on future business, they need to make alternative radical strategies for survival of
company.
TASK
Importance of operational management in Watson Engineering
Operation refers to an activity of introducing and managing the resources which are
devoted to production as well as delivery of products at marketplace. It is also considered as
processes by which a company can transform inputs into outputs (Escolán and et. al., 2017).
Similarly, a service can be defined as a product of experience or interaction among business
providers and clients. This would made to provide satisfaction to customers who availed
products of a company. Service may be classified as tangible or intangible items as per nature of
business. For example: Increased saving costs refers to tangible service while customer
satisfaction as intangibles. Therefore, providing effective services to people and obtain their high
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satisfaction, considered as main goal of organisations. As per present Scenario, The Watson
Engineering Tooling Company has established its business in early 1980's. It deals in
manufacturing sector and offers a wide range of products like engineering calipers, scribes
(initial range of products which further supplied to local industries dealing in same sector) and
micrometers, etc. These initial items are required to manufacture further high quality and long
lasting items. The manufacturing operations in such organisations is generally stated as process
of making products, keep them proper store and deliver it on time to customers (Vuchic, 2017).
Operational managers of this company also concerns on understanding concept of service
management. It covers various activities like managing partners, investors and business clients
etc. This concept also emphasises with delivering products or services to customers in highly
efficient manner. It assists managers to understand demand and need of consumers, manage
process of delivering services as well as ensures that objectives should be met. This would
increase value of products and services in minds of customers. They will also used to purchase
commodities from such business organisation.
In manufacturing and construction sector, demand of such products are much high. But
still owners of Watson Engineering have realised that due to decline in North East of England as
well as increased competition from globalization, sustainability of this type of business cannot be
gained in future. The production plant of Watson Engineering had a strong financial base and
loyal staff members which helps a company to be more productive in a competitive market.
Watson Engineering has provided various forms of health insurances to their employee's and
their family members. They also give them rewards for their hard work and to generate a healthy
competitive environment within an organisation. They follow all the modern management
principles to manage their employee's in an appropriate manner to make their work efficient this
will simultaneously increases overall development of Watson engineering (Smith, 2014). The
main agenda of this organisation is to analyse all the internal factors that's why it is internally
strong as compare to it's competitors. It is an operationally specific firm that manage and operate
existing resources.
Therefore, in order to overcome from this threat and bring efficiencies of production, its
operational management has performed various activities. As per module of business
operational management, the main function of this concept is to transform input (resources) into
output (products and services). For this process, operational managers of Watson Engineering
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Company has conducted various activities like planning, organising, controlling and managing
the whole business processes. In general, operational strategy is based on three main criteria viz.
Design; Planning and Control; Improvement. Under this process, for formulating effective
strategies, managers first address problems significantly. Further, they make proper design about
activities required to resolve such issues and processes used for the same. After this process of
designing and implementing technologies, operational team of Watson will identify other areas
where improvement is necessary. It is generally related to areas from where business gets
opportunity to gain competitive advantages.
(Source:Module of Business operational management, 2018)
Techniques used for operational improvement strategy
According to given case study of Watson Engineering Tooling Company, it is observed
that although they are having wide product range that has commanded great respect throughout
industry but still they are facing decline issues in their operations due to increased competition
from the globalization (Bobbert, 2017). The course of business activity has become untenable in
long term, so Watson Engineering Tooling company has decided to do some modification in
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Illustration 1: Module of Business Operational Management

their operational improvement strategy. They are out looking for implementing radical strategy
that has to developed to ensure the survival of the business for long term and can achieve
competitive advantage over increasing competitions.
In order to overcome this competitive issues and retain in the market for long time
Watson Engineering Tooling Company has working on various operational improvement
strategy. Operational improvement act as the fundamental requirement and an continuous effort
of Watson Engineering Tooling Company in order to succeed in competitive environment of
change and challenges (De Florio, 2016). Along with enhancement of operational efficiency, it is
very crucial to focus on enormous role driving growth and profitability. Some of operational
improvement strategy that is used by Watson Engineering Tooling Company are total quality
management and lean operations. The details regarding to total quality management and lean
operations are discussed below:
Total Quality Management:
(Source: Tools and Techniques for TQM, 2018)
This key approach of operational management emphasis and consists of organisation
wide efforts in order to install and develop a permanent climate where both management and
workers continuously works on their operations for improvement of their demand of product and
services (What is Total Quality Management?, 2018). Total Quality Management allows Watson
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Illustration 2: Tools and Techniques for TQM

Engineering Tooling Company to emphasis on various departments in addition to productions
which includes sales, marketing, accounting, engineering, finance and design to improve their
operations.
Total quality management act as a philosophy which applies equally to different parts of
the organisations. Total Quality Management is viewed as an extension of traditional approaches
to quality. With the help and implementation of total quality management Watson Engineering
Tooling Company is able to focus on overall quality of their production and quality of the
product. This approach considers best qualities of products and services that company serves to
the desired customers for satisfying their demands and requirement (Gummesson, 2014).
Basically concentrates on total quality management approach for producing qualitative products
and services for meeting customer's demands. Watson Engineering Tooling Company offers
featured or attractive products with best quality to the customers which helps in attracting more
customers towards the company.
Total Quality management allows Watson Engineering Tooling Company to emphasis on
the roles and responsibilities of each and every member of the staff within an organisation in
order to influence the quality (Taleb, Maine and Kjeang, 2014). In order to be competition in the
today's market, it is very crucial for companies to provide more consistent quality and value to
their owners and customers. Through total quality management Watson Engineering Tooling
Company will be able to develop better and more direct relationship with many other owners or
customers in order to initiate more team work at job site and to produce better quality work.
Lean production:
It is considered as main key approach of operational management and defined as a set of
tools and methodologies that mainly aims for the continuous elimination of all the waste in the
production process. The main benefits of lean production is that it helps in lowering production
costs, increased output and shorter production lead times (Russell, Hunt and Delaney, 2014).
Lean manufacturing and production helps Watson Engineering Tooling Company to produce
products and services by lowering production costs. This approach is used for minimising the
costs as well as wastage in production department because it provides support to the production
department in getting best outcomes from limited resources (Watson, Long and Lu, 2015).
Watson Engineering Tooling Company should apply this approach for framing quality products
and less wastage. Lean production approach adopted by Watson Engineering Tooling Company
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management to focuses on cutting out waste and whilst ensuring quality. This approach can be
applied by Watson Engineering Tooling Company to do simple things well and involves
employees in continuous process of improvement and avoid wastage.
Lean manufacturing methods are implemented by all the best and leading companies in
the world in order to gain competitive advantage (Saunders, Gao and Shah, 2014). Lean
operations allows Watson Engineering Tooling Company to move towards the elimination of all
waste in order to develop an operations that is much faster and more reliable, more dependable
and produces higher quality services and product at low cost. In order to gain competitive
advantage, Watson Engineering Tooling Company uses lean manufacturing that allows them to
deliver products without defects, on demand and at the lowest possible cost. The lean philosophy
of operations act as the basis for just in time techniques which also includes just in time time
methods for proper planning, controlling and monitoring. Watson Engineering Tooling
Company uses just in time approaches that is generally considered as set of techniques for
managing operations which includes basic working practices, design for manufacturing product,
small and simple machine flow layout, total production management, set-up reduction, JIT
supply, visibility as well as total people involvement.
Lean manufacturing act as crucial operational improvement strategy that is adopted by
the Watson Engineering Tooling Company in order to identify and eliminate waste through
continuous improvement by flowing the product or services at the pull of the customers. Lean
products allows Watson Engineering Tooling Company to deal with various types of waste
which involves defects and rejects waste, inventory waste, overproduction waste, over-
processing waste, transportation waste and motion waste (Kalpakjian, Vijai Sekar and Schmid,
2014). Watson Engineering Tooling Company should adopt lean manufacturing to become more
competent in market that will allow the to gain competitive advantage.
Moreover, lean manufacturing helps them to recognise the wastage, standard processes,
maintain continuous flow, maintain quality at source, maintain and focus on continuous
improvement. With the help and implementation of lean manufacturing defects in the production
process can be reduced and good quality of products and services can be delivered to clients or
customers. Effective lean production allows to create good relationship with the suppliers, along
with this it helps to maintain, commit, skilled and motivate employees with the organisation.
Furthermore, in order to implement practices for better understanding precise area of waste,
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managers of Watson Engineering can use value stream and process mapping. It helps in reducing
or eliminating issues which can be pointed out in production. Along with this, using concept of
tightly controlled automation and production flow, managers should accommodate live workers
within business where quality control demands.
Conclusion and Recommendations
As per this report, it has analysed that behind success of a company, operational team
plays an important role. They perform various responsibilities in order to run business
successfully and utilise resources more appropriately. It is necessary for Watson Engineering to
adopt a new long term operational strategy for survival of it's business due to a rapid decline of
engineering in North England. It is essential for the chosen organisation to allocate their
resources effectively in order to support their infrastructure and production. They should design a
effective production system with a support element of minimizing overall cost of a firm. It
should be an overall business strategy which will evaluate their competition and globalization.
This strategy should typically defines total working capital and target customers of Watson
engineering. The strategy should also include techniques and actions to create new productive
directions for the firm.
For improvement of production and increase efficiencies of operational management,
managers of Watson Engineering needs to adopt effective approaches. It includes Just-In-Time
(JIT), Lean Production, Total Quality Management (TQM) and more. All these approaches helps
in manufacturing products in systematic manner. Here, Total Quality Management aid this
company in emphasising on various departments for improving operational activities. In addition
to productions, this concept covers marketing, sales, engineering, accounting and more. It is
recommended to Watson Engineering to use both techniques of operational management i.e.
Total Quality Management and Lean Production. As this company faces an intense competition
and also realised threats in future therefore, its managers need an appropriate application of
quality management for ensuring optimum result. In this regard, implementing TQM approach
helps this company to gain a number of advantages. It includes continuous improvement,
reducing wastage, taking quantitative measures to analyse deviations in quality etc. This concept
not only helps in enhancing quality of production as well as increase reputation of business also.
It helps in increasing revenue of business also by minimising input and maximising output of
business. TQM also facilitates cash inflow within organization as well as ensures that workflow
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will be smooth and interrupted as well. Moreover, this approach of operational management
emphasizes on eight main principles. It includes Customer focus, Leadership, Process approach.
Involvement of stakeholders, continuous improvement, process approach and fatal of decision
making. These principles help in increasing efficiencies of operation so that adequate services
can be provided to customers. This would give advantage to Watson Engineering to gain high
revenue so that business can be expanded in future.
As efficiencies of business is also more important for manufacturing industry therefore,
in this regard, lean production will be helpful for getting this objectives. It increase quality of
products, helps in streamlining the manufacturing processes, keeping sustainability, increased
profitability, etc. Implementing this concept of lean production in their organisation Watson
Engineering can minimize their waste which is created through work loads without sacrificing
their productivity. It mainly focus on removing unnecessary activities, expenses, manpower and
stocks. By reducing waste Watson Engineering company can able to improve the quality of their
products and services. This will help them to maximise their value and minimise waste and also
benefits customer from improved customer services. Employees will also get safe work
environment because the risk have already been reduce.
Similarly implementing just in time approach within business also aids Watson
engineering increasing efficiency of business. It is a simple inventory system where a company
don't store their extra resources and items. They only produce when they have actual need or
demand for any product or services. By establishing this system organisation can minimise or
eliminate their waste of time and overproduction. This approach helps a company to maintain
smooth workflow and make continuous improvement in their performance and production level.
It manages company to order their material, machines in exact number specification and
distribute their products faster than competitors.
Thus, it has analysed from this assignment that operations and services are considered as
two main aspects of business on which overall profitability of company is depended. If an
organisation concerns more on improving efficiencies of operational activities and implement
various techniques then it will help in minimising inputs and maximising outputs. It includes
Just-In-Time, Total Quality Management, Lean Production and more, all are considered as main
key approaches of operations. It gives advantages to organisations in improving and enhancing
performance of business so that best services or products can be provided to customers. In
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context with Watson Engineering, by making effective operational strategies within business, it
gives opportunity to stay competitive at marketplace. Under this process, its managers can set
broad objectives which direct all associated people towards overall goal. Along with this, by
planning the path and entire activities for maximising outcomes will helpful in achievement of
such goals. Therefore, it is also suggested to this manufacturing company to stress on longer
term objectives instead of short term.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Kalpakjian, S., Vijai Sekar, K. S. and Schmid, S. R., 2014. Manufacturing engineering and
technology. Pearson.
De Florio, F., 2016. Airworthiness: An introduction to aircraft certification and operations.
Butterworth-Heinemann.
Bazargan, M., 2016. Airline operations and scheduling. Routledge.
Vuchic, V. R., 2017. Urban transit: operations, planning, and economics. John Wiley & Sons.
Smith, S. L., 2014. Tourism analysis: A handbook. Routledge.
Gummesson, E., 2014. Productivity, quality and relationship marketing in service operations: A
revisit in a new service paradigm. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality
Management. 26(5). pp.656-662.
Russell, R., Hunt, N. and Delaney, R., 2014. The Mortality Peer Review Panel: a report on the
deaths on operations of UK Service personnel 2002–2013. Journal of the Royal Army
Medical Corps. 160(2). pp.150-154.
Saunders, T., Gao, J. and Shah, S., 2014. A case study to evaluate lean product development
practices in the global automotive industry. International Journal of Product
Development. 19(5-6). pp.307-327.
Taleb, A., Maine, E. and Kjeang, E., 2014. Technical-economic cost modeling as a technology
management tool: A case study of membranes for PEM fuel cells. Journal of
Manufacturing Technology Management. 25(2). pp.279-298.
Bobbert, Y., 2017. On Exploring Research Methods for Business Information Security
Alignment and Artefact Engineering. International Journal of IT/Business Alignment
and Governance (IJITBAG). 8(2). pp.28-41.
Watson, M., Long, H. and Lu, B., 2015. Investigation of wrinkling failure mechanics in metal
spinning by Box-Behnken design of experiments using finite element method. The
International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology. 78(5-8). pp.981-995.
Escolán, A.and et. al., 2017. Thermo-mechanical fatigue approach to predict tooling life in high
temperature metal forming processes. International Journal of Material Forming. 10(4).
pp.535-545.
Online
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What is Total Quality Management?. 2018. [Online]. Available through: <http://asq.org/learn-
about-quality/total-quality-management/overview/overview.html>.
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