Operation Management Course Learning Experiences

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Operation management course has made me learn the various concepts and methods utilized in planning, directing, and controlling the "transformation process" of resources into goods and services.

Learning Experiences:

I learned and understood the problems and issues confronting operations managers and others in the real world situations. I learned the language, concepts, insights and tools to deal with different issues in order to gain competitive advantage through operations. The various concepts and aspects of operation management like total quality management, process analysis, service management, capacity management, inventory management, cycle time management, supply chain and logistics management, production planning, lean production, and quality management expanded my horizons. Also, made me think that how these concepts relate to the real business world scenarios.

Changed behavior in me:

This course has made me learn how to differentiate between observations and problems. Taught me how to link the process design to market demand and business strategy. Understood how operations and technology can be a source of "competitive advantage". It helped me to think like operations management executive and improved my critical thinking, judgment and communication skills. By doing case studies in group, it developed my personal skills in teamwork and leadership.

Learning Experiences from Case Studies:

According to me the most powerful cases in my learning process were Donner Company; Benihana of Tokyo; Toyota Motor Manufacturing, USA; Deaconess-Glover Hospital; and Zara: Fast Fashion. These cases made me learn various concepts of operation management like lean or world-class manufacturing, just-n-time operations, time based competition, business re-engineering, information management, performance capacity, Toyota production system, etc.

The best part of this course was the learning that was based on case analysis and solving techniques in groups and individually. This made us think outside the box and made discussions more meaningful.

Recommendation:

Professor can enhance this learning experience by letting us choose any one company which is not in the syllabus and make us work and analyze that particular company and write a paper on it. For e.g. Accenture, how does it manages its operations, etc.

Conclusion:

I feel text book learning and understanding the concepts before doing the cases could be more beneficial. This will make the learning experience more meaningful. In nutshell, this course enhanced my learning experiences and made me connect the

course's ideas and techniques to their real-world application.

Sincerely,

Meghna Makwana

DEACONESS-GLOVER HOSPITAL CASE ANALYSIS

Introduction:

Deaconess Glover Memorial Hospital (DGH) began operation in 1909, serving the Needham Community. In 1980 Glover began to encounter financial difficulty which lead the town (community) hire the Corporation of America to provide professional management. In 1991 John Dalton Joined Glover administration and Learned that Needham wants to privatize the hospital. In 1994 Deaconess Hospital a large Harvard-affiliated teaching and research institution purchase Glover. In 1996 Deaconess merged its system with that of Beth Israel medical Center, and the combination named CareGroup which included Six Hospital network based in eastern Massachusetts, 13,000 Employees, and 2000 person medical staff. DHG was 41-bed community hospital had lost $2.7 million 12 months and DHG was part of CareGroup a 1,500 Bed hospital had lost $100 million.

Objective/Idea:

Dr. Carter, a vascular surgeon's primary objective was to indentify a site within DGH for a model line. The model line would be placed where small tests in applying TPS to health care would be tested. The idea was that once the model line was tested for functionality and its benefits where verified, the lessons learned can be throughout the rest of the hospital.

Problems Identified at DHS:

There are many unknowns in the case which are not highly specifies. How nurses should be assigned to patients, exchange patient information, record patient information, etc is not organized properly. How medications should be staged and changes to be made in the patient’s chart should be notified, and how additional medication deliveries should be made is not mentioned. Verbal communications of information are heavily used in the medication administration process. Doctor-nurse communications are not direct and half and two-thirds of a nurse’s time was spent not doing the value-adding nursing work. Time needed from the prescription of a medication to its administration is not specified. Pharmacy learned about the needs of patients in different ways and doctors could prescribe medications that were not available in-house, and many more.

Toyota Production System: Steps used for Analysis:

Before Dr. Carter made any change or new process he had to understand current conditions i.e. how the process actually works, grasping the current Condition, and determining the number of the distinct pathways. Communication played an important role over here. During a shift change a nurse completing a shift and a nurse starting shift would do a review of entire narcotics inventory and compare it to the narcotics usages. Once the count was done a "white sheet" was completed and send to pharmacy. The Nurses would frequently get interrupted by others who needed help to do their job or frequently asking to clarify information. Nurses also needed to communicate with the Dr's. about the patients and how they would care from them and with pharmacy to order medications.

The Dr. would also talk with patients twice a day during their rounds, make notes in the patients chart, let the nurse know about the new medications and information about the patients that where admitted at night. Some nurses would stage the medication for the entire day while some nurses would visit the medication room every two hours for the next round of doses.

Medication Orders where send to the pharmacy on Green sheets. Green orders are basically written by a Dr. during their rounds, or by nurse after discussing the patient's condition with a Dr. and a pharmacy personal would modify the pharmacy’s patients medication record (PMR) for intravenous medication. Pharmacy would also create new PMR patients who were admitted during the night, create and label the medication and staged the medication in the cart.

Toyota Production System (TPS) Principles:

TPS Principles consists of four major principles i.e. (1) Having a long-term philosophy that drives a long-term approach to building a learning organization, (2) The right process will produce the right results, (3) Add value to the organization by developing its people and partners, and (4) Continuously solving root problems to drive organizational learning

TPS for Medication administration:

Medication administration directly affected the quality and cost of patient care. Wrong medication could delay or compromise a patient’s well being. National studies has shown "prescribed medication to patients in the correct form and quantity, and right time, had error rate in the parts per hundred". The error problem could be solved by computerized prescription tracking and drug dispensing.

Benefits applying TPS to DGH:

There are many benefits to DGH with the application of TPS. First, it lowers delivery drug cost i.e. it allows Dr. and Nurses to have a view of the pharmacy stock. Second, it helps in improving the quality of patient care i.e. decrease errors in medication dispensing. Third, it improves communication by creating simple Paths i.e. all communication will be direct. Lastly, it helps in decreasing waste i.e. Nursing activities, by organizing medicine room.

Conclusion:

Since Dr. Carter has a strong understanding of issues and problems that are present at DGH. Dr. Carter faces challenge of applying TPS a manufacturing set of rules to a health care system. To apply TPS carter must: Define the individual work activities with a well defined sequence of steps. The steps should be defined in a ways that they are easy to perform by individuals and they are done correctly, and the activities are performed create the desired results. The communication paths could be defined between the different groups (i.e. nurses, Dr. and pharmacy ). Reduce redundant connections and generate simple pathways to move information among peoples who have the information to those who need the information to do their job.

ANALOG DEVICES: THE HALF-LIFE SYSTEM

Background:

Analog Devices Inc. (ADI) was a leading manufacturer of integrated circuits. It converted between analog and digital data. From the years 1981to1996, ADI experienced periods of growth and stagnation. Management at ADI introduced a number of different management tools to implement change and meet the needs of the changing market. One such tool was its corporate scorecard. ADI's corporate scorecard was acknowledged as a management best practice. Despite this ADI's management was wondering in 1996 how to change the scorecard to best fit the needs of management. How fast to change it and how best to use it to focus was management's attention in the future.

A single-page scorecard was introduced initially for measures within the categories indicated how well ADI was moving toward the goals. As well, it measured each critical success factor and financial performance. Half-life and target were provided as complementary linking between short-term results and long-term plans. Besides, 5-year planning was done every year. Latter, balanced scorecard was rolled out to the entire company. It became a communication tool and coordinated with various methodology methods. Consequently, scorecard has become natural and diversity.

The case explores the conflict between financial measures and performance improvements. Analog sales and revenues were stagnant when the rest of the industry was growing. In 1986, Analog hired a VP of Quality Improvement Productivity (QIP). The VP had a theory called the Half life concept. The purpose of the half-life method is to produce achievable and realistic goals. These goals helps for getting quality performances and then monitor the actual performance against the goals. The basis of the half-life system is the core of Total Quality Management.

SWOT analysis of ADI:

Strengths

ADI recognizes problems quickly

They use the concept of TQM and their products were fundamentally basis of many internet devices.

E-commerce has always played an important role for the company because of the success in the internet sales.

Using the Executive Information System(EIS) managers at all levels could break down performance result by region, product, customer or channel.

Weakness

ADI has very weak value chain in comparison to its competitors like Motorola who has more efficient value chain.

Due to poor quality control management, the cost and quality has become a responsibility for ADI.

They focused on existing customers and do not invite new customers to their innovation and product design.

Opportunities

The company should have greater focus on Research and Development.

In order to strengthen their outsourcing strategy and gain competitive advantage ADI attracts business and commercial customers and reduce their costs.

ADI should provide with reward systems and incentive policy.

Threats

ADI’s competitors had on-time delivery records and yields well above ADI’s level.

The supremacy of digital circuitry created new competition

The supply chains that ADI participated in were de-integrating

The traditional distinct separation between digital and analog markets had diffused.

Limitations of half life concept:

Difficult to determine half life as it is dependent on technical and organizational complexities

Calculated based on historical data which may not give a very clear picture

Conflicts between the QIP and the financial measures:

ADI’s incentive and performance evaluation systems were based on the financial measures only. QIP measures emphasized on the cost reduction whereas the financial measures were more inclined towards revenue enhancement. QIP measures were more useful for evaluating the performance of the cost centers whereas financial measures could more effectively capture the performance of the profit centers. QIP measures were not given much importance as these are mere avenues to achieve higher financial measures.

Current Situation:

Suttler noted that Quality Improvement Process (QIP) had worked nicely at improving wealth reducing activities, but it doesn’t naturally cause wealth creation activities. With this in mind that added "Hoshin Kanri" to the scorecard. Hoshin Kanri is the idea from Japan that focuses on improving one or two breakthrough objectives. At the same time, this idea is hard to do. It was helping with on time delivery for platinum products and sales from new products. They began focusing on planning to help in wealth creation using a program from Hewlett Packard called the 10-step planning methodology. This changed planning from centralized to multi-skilled teams within the organization that would actually implement the plans. These plans are now more important than the scorecard. Using Hoshin, specific goals are now translated into specific and measurable objectives.

Analysis:

Analog has obviously been through a long process of developing tools to help them control their business. They started with the correct end in sight, but lost focus due to lack of commitment from management. The measures were primarily financial at first but grew to include non-financial measures later. As the financial performance of the company continued downhill, they became convinced that QIP was not working and needed something else, like Hoshin even though the QIP measures were improving. While part of the problem is financial, the big problem is that their focus changes too often. The scorecard is supposed to give the overall big picture, not just pieces.

Recommendations:

I feel they need to focus on what they want. They need to balance everything they do. If they go to mass production they need to focus on optimizing their process. If they plan to diversify their products they need to concentrate on process flexibility and a force of designers with multiple capabilities to support the different processes. In order to decide which products serves them best, they should study their current core competencies. DSP is definitively a very good decision because the acquisition gave them capabilities in the digital and analog arena.