Indeed, quality culture starts with top management. There need to be top management leadership to drive this culture of quality across the organization. For this to happen, business leaders and managers must have the commitment in setting up quality control programmes, strategic planning for quality and provide resources for quality. In addition, top management leadership role is also a distinguishing element of a quality culture. Adopting a democratic leadership style where workers are not punished for errors and failures and that continuous learning is what prevails in the organization. Management attitudes should be towards treating employees as members and remove barriers of superiors or subordinates. This suggests to everyone that the work of all members of the company is important and adds value to the final outputs. Members of the organization should focus on the purpose for which they are all here to get better and better at creating that Continue reading
Operations Management Techniques
Location Strategy in Operations Management
The location of a plant or facility is the geographical positioning of an operation relative to the input resources and other operations or customers with which it interacts. Three main reasons are identified why a location strategy is required. The first reason is that a new company has been created and needs a facility to manufacture products or deliver a service to its customers. The second reason is that there is a decision to relocate an existing business due to a number of factors such as the need for larger premises or to be closer to a particular customer base. The third reason is relocate into new premises in order to expand operations. Decisions with regards to where an organisation can locate its plant or facility are not taken often, however they still tend to be very important for the firm’s profitability and long-term survival. An organisation which chooses an Continue reading
Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) – Meaning and Importance
Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) is a concept in the Supply Chain Management, which considered in the aspect of establishing and sustaining the business relationship along the supply chain. Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) concerns the practical processes to integrate the communication and coordination between organizations and their suppliers. Supplier chain relationship was considered to be one of the important factors in most business, since it can influence the potential of supply chain concept. Now, the modern business seems to be more complex with high competition. Due to the information has more valuable in the supply chain management, firms then need to re-design the ways of managing and sharing information among each others. Organizations cannot independently run the business by themselves. Not only good relationship can help companies to have more competitive advantage to survive in the market, but it can also help companies expands the market too. Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) Continue reading
Characteristics of a Good Plant Layout
The layout of a plant or facility is concerned with the physical placement of resources such as equipment and storage facilities, which should be designed to facilitate the efficient flow of customers or materials through the manufacturing or service system. The layout design is very important and should be taken very seriously as it can have a significant impact on the cost and efficiency of an operation and can involve substantial investment in time and money. The decisions taken with regards to the facility layout will have a direct influence on how efficiently workers will be able to carry out their jobs, how much and how fast goods can be produced, how difficult it is to automate a system, and how the system in place would be able to respond to any changes with regards to product or service design, product mix, or demand volume. In many operations the installation Continue reading
Role of the Warehouse in Postponement Strategies
The rapid changes occurring in customer-supplier relationship has resulted in shortening the product life cycle along with the product variations, which could meet the complex customer satisfaction demands. As the customer requirements changes rapidly, it increases the complexity of planning and demand forecasting to suit the changing demands. Hence, postponement strategies are able to help in solving such complex issues. The strategy involves delay in the production process to the maximum possible time, while delaying the point of product differentiation. As the whole strategy is related to the value of information, it can be maximized with delay in production decision time, giving more time to receive and analyze the customer requirement and demand. Hence, the postponement strategies help in improving the quality of decision, while also optimizing the quality of product planning and demand forecast. The relevant strategy also allows for the flexibility in the production scheduling, where the actual Continue reading
Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DFMA)
Design for Manufacturing and Assembly (DFMA) method was introduced by Geoffrey Boothroyd since 1960s on automatic handling. This enables the use of gathered data of previously done mistakes, speeding up the development process and accomplishing new philosophies and technologies to further ensure that the activities that are quicker and more precise in generating results can really reach this target. All aspects of design, development, manufacturability, total parts, assembly time, cost and modularity are considered in this analytical process. This process mainly focuses on enhancing the product to allow improvements in the manufacturing, quality, reliability, cost, time to market, and many other fields. Integration of discrete but highly interrelated issues of manufacturing processes and assembly occurs in DFMA. Through its use companies can make the full use of manufacturing processes that exist while minimizing the number of parts in an assembly. Design for Manufacturing and Assembly (DFMA) is a system that Continue reading