2.Operations strategy for competitive advantage

Presentation by Dr. Manuel Rodenes about Operations Strategy for Competitive Advantage

 

At the end of this lesson, we should be able to determine our company’s mission which consists on knowing where our enterprise is going.
First, we have to focus on several factors like the environment or the public image.
Once our mission has been determined, we have to decide the way we are going to achieve it.
The strategy can be divided into three parts which are :

• Marketing decisions
• Operations Decisions
• Fin./Acct. Decisions

To reach our mission, we need to focus on one of the following three points :

• Differentiation
• Cost leadership
• Quick response

 

There is a risk in trying to be good in every point and not to be the best in any of them.Then our product wouldn´t stand out from our competetor´s.

 

The ten most important decision areas of OM are as follow:

• Marketing decisions
• Operations Decisions
• Goods & service design
• Quality
• Process & capacity design
• Location selection
• Layout design
• Human resource and job design
• Supply-chain management
• Inventory
• Scheduling
• Maintenance

 

To implement our strategy, one needs to know about:

• Strengths & weaknesses of competitors and new entrants into the market
• Current and prospective environmental, legal, and economic issues
• The notion of product life cycle
• Resources available with the firm and within the OM function
• Integration of OM strategy with company strategy and with other functions.

 

It is important to know that strategy varies within the product’s lifecycle.

The main stages are the introduction, the growth, the maturity and the decline of the product.

To conclude, we now know that with a good description of our mission and of our strategy, a company can reach its goals with fewer risks.

 

The most important aspects in the class have been:

Identify or Define

• Mission
• Strategy
• Ten Decisions of OM

 

Describe or Explain:

• Specific approaches used by OM to achieve strategic concepts
• Differentiation
• Low Cost
• Response
  

 

Mission (where are we going?)
Why is a company’s mission so important?
We have to decide where do we want to get

 

Strategy (How are we going to get there?)
We should ask ourselves 2 important questions:
1.Where are we now?
2.Where do we want to go?
busssines we want to be
markets we want to work in?
buyers and groups we want to serve
outcomes we want to achieve

 

We should go from 1 to 2 through strategy (How we will get there?)

 

Ten Decisions of OM(Goods & service design,Quality ....)

Specific approaches used by OM to achieve strategic concepts
We have watch 2 videos in wich we´ve seen the same strategic concepts in 2 very different companies: a restaurant and a boat constructor. They all try to differenciate in

• cost (cheaper products)
• response (faster products)
• differenciation (something special in our products)
  

 

 

 

Exercise 1.You might ask students to prepare for class by visiting several company web sites, and, for each company:
locating the company mission, and printing a copy of the mission to bring to class.
The students should also be asked to, if possible, determine the strategy used by the company to achieve its avowed mission.