Course reflection
Operations and supply chain management is a really wide and complex field in business. Throughout the course, this domain has been demonstrated as a multidisciplinary line of work that incorporates manufacturing, logistics, purchasing, distribution and service operations (Jacobs, Chase & Chase, 2010). As such, career opportunities that result from this discipline are numerous. In addition, the role it plays in daily business processes are significant to the sector’s success and economic development. We saw that the efficiency of a firm significantly depends on its supply chain process management. Industries that have not streamlined their supply chains are losing a lot of efficiency to overheads. It is also particularly important in aviation and production industries. Determining pricing, scheduling flights, ticketing and resolving route conflicts are all in the domain of operations and supply chain management. Therefore, failure to use top skills and best practices presents a recipe for business failures in the long term.
We saw the importance of a sustainable business strategy and its connection with operations and supply chain management. A sustainable operations strategy should be able to meet current needs without negatively affecting future operations. Risk assessment and management also came out as an important element in supply chain operations since it ensures business continuity in the event of disruptions. The course learning process trained us about the factors that go into product design and development. The whole process and the final product must adhere to industry standards so that the process is effective and economically viable. Moreover, it’s important to ensure that the final product can compete with rivals in quality and price.
We went through the details of project management and involved sub-processes where a lot was revealed about the discipline. Information systems have an increasingly important role in designing, analyzing and monitoring projects. This section of the unit explained to us the significance of capacity management in designing business strategy. A business should ideally utilize its maximum production capacity; but since other sections of the supply chain may not be able to operate at full capacity, production needs to be adjusted to match the other sections. This is just an example of capacity management. From the course, it was evident that capacity management can be applied in many other areas of a firm’s operations. There must always be a constant balance between production and demand of the end product. Capacity management is also applied in service production where time is considered as a supply. The concept of learning curves in firms was an important lesson too. We realize that learning occurs in operations and supply chain management, which gradually increases the efficiency of personnel working in these areas. The learning rate is a useful consideration when searching for employees.
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