Operations Strategy 7 - Improvement Strategy
Two stero types of bsiness improvement -Continuous improvement and BPR
modification - minor realignment of activities; extension - redesign of sequence or routing between activities; development - redefinition of purpose or role of activities; pioneer - novel or radical change.
The more extensive the degree of process change (development or pioneer) the more the need for breakthrough approaches to improvement. See the figure below
[img[.|http://www.warwick.ac.uk/~bsscr/images/mod8_table1.gif]]
!!History of approaches 1. Structural solutins - to solve operational problems - ie outsource 2. Systems solutions - ""the unmanned factory" - High capital investment in automation 3. Philiosophical approaches - TQM - changing the culture - Could be fuzzy clouds of semantic overkill
!!Top down and bottom up approaches Top Down
- Reconfigure operation structures
- Pilots and prototypes
- Benchmarking i.e SPC
Bottom Up approaches Upton says that
- Direction is needed
- Training improves skills but should not be a trojan horse for structural change
- Poke-yoke - error proofing
!!Direct Develop and Deploy Direct, develop and deploy
The majority of the chapter is taken up in expanding the "three Ds" strategic improvement model. This proposes three sets of activities which any operations function must develop in order to take a strategic approach to improvement. These three sets of activities are as follows:
direct - understand the intended competitive position of the organization in its marketplace so as to let that direct the operations resources and processes;
develop - within the operations function develop an understanding of the resources and processes so as to enhance their overall capability;
deploy - make sure that operations capabilities are fully understood by the organization so that potentially advantageous changes in market position can be made.
In fact a fourth set of activities completes the loop, the development of market strategy. This is seen by the model as the choice of a specific market position (or sets of market positions) within the potential scope of feasible market positions dictated by the operations capabilities.
[img[.|http://www.warwick.ac.uk/~bsscr/images/mod8_slide1.gif]]
!!performance measurement
!!!DIRECT How do we know if our operation is performing well or not?
- What factors describe performance
- What are the most important factors to measure
- How do you measure them
- Against what stds to you compare them
Neely 1997 gives an example of a performance measurement and how it should be anlaysed
Purpose - identify emerging technolgies Realtes to: Business objective Target - 1000 questionnaires to be completed Formula - Forms completed Frequency - monthly Who measrues - CFO Sources of daya =- tech questionnaire Who acts on data - CPO What di they do - acknowledges completion
Balanced Scorecard approach - Financial, Internal, Customer, Innovation and learning
!!What are the most important factots to measure
few and straightforward or many and complex
!!How do we measure them - Neely
- derived from strategy
- simplet o understand
- Timely and accurate feeedback
- consistent
- provide information
- focus on improvement
- objective etc - Neely
!!Perfroamnce standards tio use
- Historial
- Traget based
- competitir based
- Absolute performacne based -
!!!DEVELOP - capabilities Learning / experience curve Roger Bohn - 8 stages of knowledge
!!!Deploy capbailities Hayes and Wheelwrights four stage model [img[.|http://www.warwick.ac.uk/~bsscr/images/mod8_slide4.gif]]
- Internal neurality
- External neutrality
- Internally supportive
- External;ly supportive
[img[.|http://www.warwick.ac.uk/~bsscr/images/mod8_slide2.gif]]
!!Sandcone theory
Imopriovement by focussing quaoity then dependability then speed flexibilty then cost
[img[.|http://www.warwick.ac.uk/~bsscr/images/mod8_slide3.gif]]
!!Performance Improvement Matrix [img[.|http://www.warwick.ac.uk/~bsscr/images/module8_graph2.gif]]
