 All companies strive for improving productivity. Improving productivity allows for more competitive prices.
There are basically three type’s productivity – technological, employee and manager. Increasing technological productivity is the use of equipment that is more efficient than your current system. These may include robots or computers that can increase a company’s output. Companies attempting to maintain a competitive edge have to remain at the forefront of technical advancements.
Some of these advancements include flexible manufacturing that use computers in order to control machines and help with companies automation. With a flexible manufacturing a single line can be quickly adjusted to produce small batches of certain products, simply done from computer instructions.
Other advancement in technology that some organisations can adopt:
CIM – Computer Integrated Manufacturing is the integration of all major functions that are associated with production of a product via computerisation. CAD/CAM
· CAD – Enables new designs in ½ the time of traditional methods. CAD system can be used to design layouts and determine any changes sizes and/or styles.
· CAM – where the computer is used to guide and control the process.
Increased employee productivity simply means having employees produce more in the same time period. A company can achieve this simply by offering better training; this could involve multi-skilling, the re-structuring of a company’s work practices or alteration of companies remuneration.
Increased managerial means that managers simply do a better job of running the business. Productivity improves when managers emphasise QC over quantity, Communicate with employees have participative decision with personnel as this helps with empowering employees to be more productive as they have been able to share some of their ideas within the company. Managers must learn to use increase employee involvement, better utilize teamwork and adopt other management techniques in order to be successful in increasing productivity.
Productivity is dependent upon people, operations and is a key contributor to improving your business competitiveness.
 Operations Manager Common mistakes most new managers make similarly the same regardless of what industry you are in.
First mistake always seems to be the lack of confidence in their new found role, and rightfully so however everyone can see that and in some cases there is one or two that will push the limits to see what they can get away with. Just that same as kids do with their parents. The trick is to show everyone that you can handle the pressure, and for those that want to push the limit one must take care of those situations ASAP, sit the person/people down in a private office setting and talk with them, make sure they understand that certain behaviour will not be tolerated.
Second mistake usually involves organization or lack of, this leads to mistakes, overruns, extra costs to name a few consequences. This usually occurs due to ones lack of confidence but it is easily corrected simply buy taking a little extra time each day to go over your tasks, placing them in a priority sequence and coming up with a contingency plan, you can honestly do this while having your first two cups of coffee in the morning before heading to the office. This simple procedure helps to define clearly your daily goals, keeping everything running smooth and allowing for the day to be less stressful.
Third and in most cases the simplest to do and hardest to balance: the dreaded personal limitations, most new managers want to make a good impression, unfortunately they tend to do this by taking on more than they can actually handle, first they are new to the position and need some time to get through the dreaded learning curve, however they want to make a good impression and hit the ground running. Some get lucky and can do so without any issues, but for the majority all that they accomplish is causing chaos within the organization and head aces or sometimes health issues for themselves. A new manager should learn about the organization, talk to some co-workers find out their about how things have worked in the past, what are the inside company procedures, heck even ask them for input to improve company functionality or moral. The more a manager knows about the people and procedures within the organization the easier her/his job becomes.
Managers roles are diverse and cover a wide range of duties but one thing that every manager needs to balance is delegation, make sure to spread the work load as needed but not just to anyone the person/people you delegate a task to must be capable to complete the job at hand.
 Quality Control and Assurance Most Operation Managers are concerned with the quality of the output of their operations. This quality may be associated with reliability of the product or service, conformity to regulations, the level of after sales service provided, design of the product and of course the consistency regarding delivery of their product or service.
Quality Benchmarking
Quality benchmarks can be achieved by using one or more of the following strategies:
· Quality control – QC (Monitoring the quality during the production or service phase)
· Quality assurance - QA ( certification that is dependent upon an organisation achieving specified levels of quality)
· Total quality management ( where an organisation applies both QC and QA in their production or service process)
· (TQM) Total Quality Management:
TQM’s aim is to improve quality and productivity by working to perfect the total production process. TQM stresses coordination between all departments. Promoting continuous improvement in quality of total processes involved is its basis.
v Statistical Process Control (SPC)
Another operations management technique for improving quality, productivity is the “statistical process control" (SPC). What is SPC? It is the application of statistical techniques to control work processes to detect defective items.
Steps in SPC include:
· Define the characteristics of high quality output
· Break down various work activities into individual activities required to produce high quality outputs.
· Have standards for each process
· Discuss performance expectations regarding each task and employee.
· Have check sheets that collect data for each activity
· Frequent intervals of employee progress evaluation.
This process relies heavily on the (PLAN-DO-ACT-CHECK) approach. This involves planning to achieve standards of performance, identifying areas needing improvement, implementing said strategies, monitoring performance for corrective actions.
1. Style of products and services- Associated with quality and human resources.
2. Quality- The quality or product quality should be maintained throughout construction method merchandise (goods or services).
3. The look method and capability- Designing processes and the capacities associated with standards, human resources, inventory and scheduled maintenance.
4. Site choice- The choice of location related to offer chain management.
5. Style layout- The design layout is completed once the look method and capability.
6. Human Resources (HR) and style work- HR factors embody safety, health, job description, work surroundings and wages.
7. Offer chain management- Supply chain management is influenced by web site choice and products quality.
8. Inventory- Inventory selections are influenced by style processes and capability, human resources, and style layout.
9. Scheduling- Scheduling selections are influenced by the look method and capability, layout and HR.
10. Maintenance- Maintenance related to maintaining the standard or qualities.
 Inventory Management - warehouse An economical operations management system won't solely involve designing of the operations however additionally management the prices related to a company’s operations. an outsized a part of any operations managers’ job can comprises inventory management. Inventory management is crucial to firms, if inventory is sitting idle on a factory floor or on the shelf of a warehouse is costing the corporate cash. Current inventory management systems permit an organization shut inventory management vat with a capability to satisfy current client demands. there's no want for an abundance of inventory if an organization has an economical management system adopted.There are four necessary techniques to inventory management, these techniques include: > economic order amount, > material demand designing, > producing resource designing &, > just-in-time inventory designing.
 Operations Management There are four styles of management needed within the medium-large scale corporations. Namely, operations management, promoting management, monetary management and human resources management. There are many development trends in stress or focus attention on one side of management. Within the 1960s-70s in Indonesia, a growing purpose of read is balanced proportions within the management of a corporation. Experienced a shift within the year 1970s-80s, the corporate tends to emphasise monetary management. An accountant and economist terribly promising at now. In 1980s-90s, experienced a shift in accentuation of management. Promoting triumphed. Thought-about that if the company’s promoting isn't sensible, then everything is often chaotic. Apparently promoting isn't stuck to dominate the management of the corporate. Within the era of the Nineties till the year 2000, promoting management even thought-about little core of a corporation. Alternative management thought-about a supporter. Until the time when 2000, the promoting continues to be thought-about important in most giant company’s globe. Though the corporate isn't simply alittle core. Operations management encompasses a larger portion than the monetary and human resources. There are ten things aspects of attention within the Operations Management by Jay Heizer. Style of products and services, Quality, method style and capability, the selection of location, the look layout, Human resources and work style, provide chain management, Inventory, Scheduling, and Maintenance. But it ought to be noted additionally that the stress or focus is meant to be general. Else if speak of the business involved. As a result of it'd be a distinct trend.
 Project Management There are basic phases to any project.
Ø Phase 1: Investigation
Ø Phase 2: Planning & Design
The Investigation phase: Once a you have defined a project you must do further research in order to determine if is even worthwhile. This phase involves the commissioning of a project, the identification of the aim/goals, the possible ways a project could be completed. This phase provides a project brief to your team.
The Planning & Design phase: this is a rather important phase to any project as it provides your foundation for the rest of the phases, in this phase you will determine that the objectives can & will be met on time + budget.
This phase involves
Ø Defining of the exact purpose of a project, clearly defining the objectives.
Ø Breaking the project down into tasks, defining each tasks purpose.
Ø Estimating the time for each task, longest and shortest time lines.
Ø Identifying Key time markers of the project that will keep the project on schedule.
Ø Which tasks can be completed before others can start?
Ø Which tasks can be done at the same time?
Ø Assigning of people, equipment, materials.
Ø Cost estimating of resources.
Ø Drawing a calendar of events.
The Production phase: This is where the plan is put into operation and should provide a complete project that is ready to be handed over your client’s.
This phase includes:
Ø Providing of resources
Ø Completing of agreed activities
Ø Monitoring and recording a projects progress via Gantt chart
Ø Comparison of current progress against that of the planned schedule, you should also be ready to update & refine the planned schedule as needed.
Ø You need to monitor resources to make sure the project stays on budget.
 An operations manager role involves decision-making with long, mid and short-term consequences. These decisions will affect the initial design of the product or service, the assets + equipment that will be required, the skills employees will need, employee remuneration, and the company’s location of operations all of these decisions have to be made to support the strategic direction of the company.
Capacity planning helps determine the level of resources including human that will be needed to meet the production targets of a company. Capacity is contingent on the company forecasting the future demands + supply chain availability.
There are many ways a company can increase their capacity, some of these ways include:
> Hiring more staff or implementing additional shifts, or outsourcing.
> Having your current staff working overtime.
> Sometimes it is more feasible to outsource some of the work load to other companies.
> Increasing current plant and machinery.
> Increasing your inventory or taking back orders from client’s
Always keep in mind you need to weigh all the pro’s and con’s of each as there is always repercussions to each decision, one must make sure that they look at the long term impact before committing to their decisions.
 Gantt chart example A project plan contains all activities and milestones, these tasks are placed in a particular time sequence. Some of the tools needed to assist with any project are gantt & Pert Charts. A Gantt chart displays tasks, Costs along a horizontal time scale similar to a calendar. A Gantt should show the best possible way to complete a project in the shortest possible time. These activities can be done either in parallel or sequentially, the Gantt shows this clearly, however it doesn’t show the critical path. But a PERT (Program Evaluation and Review Technique) uses a graph to show the relationships between tasks + time frames. They are better to help identify relationships rather than progress of tasks over time. Some Key elements of a PERT diagram: Ø Activities ( activities within a project & their dependencies) Ø Events ( Beginning or the end of a task) Ø Independency of tasks Ø Critical path ( sequence of dependent events who have the sum of longest duration) Ø Slack time ( events not on the critical path that does not affect the timing of other tasks, these tasks can fall behind schedule that has no impact on the completion date of said project) If you would like to create your own Gantt or PERT you can try them at the following links. project kickstart or minuteman-systems
Just about everyone has done some sort of project management with in their life time, whether it is simply scheduling the upcoming family events, right down to organizing and planning your day, week, month at work. Project management is not a new concept; even the ancient Egyptians used a form of project management to construct the pyramids.
However modern project management tools were not available until the 1900’s, with the first one being the Gantt chart. Then in the 1950’s the Critical Path Method (CPM) and the Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT). These tools are the basis for documentation and managing progress of a project. All three tools produce a graphical representation of a given project.
Project management requires organization of people, equipment + procedures in order to get the project completed within a set time frame and budget. A project manager is responsible for the coordination of all the resources to achieve the set objective of a project.
Things that need to be considered when planning a project:
Ø The purpose and aim of the project
Ø The resources available, both material and human
Ø The cost, time + human constraints
Ø Tasks, procedures or activities required to complete the project
Project managers ensure that organisational objectives are met on a timely, accurate, relevant and complete manner. They provide a way of controlling people, procedures and resources of a project.
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