Operations Management

The Strategic Role of Operations

Operations play a strategic role for the organization, ranging from neutral to supportive, internally or externally. Learning needs and opportunities permeate the development of this strategic role as managers exploit their insights into practice and explore new opportunities emerging from experience.

Operations strategy thinking and action involve reconciling the requirements of the market with the [Page 573]capabilities of operations resources. Problems and opportunities in operations strategy revolve around fit, sustainability and the risks attached to differing configurations of product or service offerings, process technology, capacity, supply networks and organization. The content and process of reconciliation involve improvement within the firm and between firms—the locus of improvement. The focus of this improvement can be operational or strategic. Operational improvement is evident in the change to operational performance. Strategic improvement is evident in the changed fit or the reconciliation of market requirements and operations resources beyond the time frame of the improvement initiative. In every improvement with an operational focus, there is a latent strategic focus.

Action Research in Operations: See the Layout, Hunt the System

The operations improvement process may be visualized as a cycle with three elements:

• 1.
  Directing (or co-directing in the supply network) improvement through comparing targets with performance
• 2.
  Developing (or co-developing in the supply network) operations capabilities through process control and process knowledge
• 3.
  Deploying (or co-deploying in the supply network) operations capabilities to create market potential

Action research fits with the improvement process and with the associated ambition to capture learning from practice. As such, action research is recognized as a valid methodology for research in operations management.

Through action research, managers and researchers collaborate around conceptually and managerially relevant operational problems. Enacting in a disciplined way a set of iterative action research cycles yields unique insights that deepen understanding, improve practice and extend theory. When working together, both the operations manager and the researcher need to take action—to experiment systematically—and to observe the workability of the operation. From this shared experience, they infer the manageability of the operation and evaluate its viability as run in this way. The outcome is a shared sense of areas for improvement and a process by which the improvements may be realized. In effect, the operations management and improvement challenge is condensed down to a single action-oriented statement: See the layout, hunt the system.

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