Assignment Sample Operations Management
Introduction and Background to the chosen organisation
Operations management is a significant part of any business as this study helps the company officials to plan, organise and supervise its operations to meet the necessary goals of production or services, set by the company. The company selected for the purpose of this research on operation management is Aston Martin, one of the leading companies in the automotive industry of the UK. The company has been selected for writing this report as it has detailed and organised processes and layouts for maintaining its operations. Three group members have been selected for conducting the research on operations management of Aston Martin.
Aston Martin has been focussing on improving its domestic supply chain without outsourcing most of its manufacturing operations to other countries. It distributed its manufactured cars mainly in Europe, North America and some parts of Asia-Pacific. It has been improving its operations management standards consistently in order to meet the demands of its customers. Efficient operations management have led the company to maximise their net operating profit (Babich and Hillary, 2020). Modifications of operations to meet the demands of customers, increase in profitability and ensuring maintenance of environmental guidelines in its operations have made this organisation suitable for this research.
Critical evaluation of operations management of Aston Martin
Operations Management practices may vary a little from company to company however general practices of operations management are followed by every company to get optimum results. One of the general practices followed by organisations is the 4V model of operations management.
4V Model of Operations Management
The 4V model of operations management is based on evaluating and improving the performance of an organisation based on four factors – Volume, Variation, Visibility and Variety. The Volume dimension of the model is important to the company as it ensures more profit by lowering operations costs. It does so by organising its operations to produce huge quantities of items within a certain period of time. Huge volumes of production is often carried out by Aston Martin as it receives orders for premium cars from all over Europe and North America (DuHadway et al. 2019). The operations are designed in such a way that it can produce huge quantities of components for the cars being manufactured. It also helps in assembly as the assembly operations get smoother and faster.
Variation is one of the areas of key strengths for Aston Martin as it is keen to launch cars with exclusive designs, thus offering a higher value proposition for its products. It has dedicated design and fabrication teams that select the designs that are at par with the company’s vision and most appealing to its customers. Visibility factor is also an important area in operations management as it makes the customers aware of the presence of the company. It helps the company to maintain a value chain to its customers. Aston Martin organises its operations to provide services to the customers after the cars are being sold. After-sale services increase the visibility of the company and help it to build a greater brand image (Ghadge et al. 2021).
Variety is the last dimension of the 4V model of operations management and it offers greater functionality of the products being offered. This dimension is significant to a company’s profitability as it modifies the product to provide more features and benefits to the users. Aston Martin mainly manufactures premium cars; however, it is also keen on producing sports variants of those cars in order to attract more customers having such preferences. According to Choi et al (2018), greater functionality leads to greater popularity of the cars and the brand among the customers. It helps the company to penetrate new markets and cause sustainable growth for the business.
Operations Performance Objectives
Study shows that most successful businesses have effective operations management teams that streamline its operations to obtain optimum results. The teams monitor the performance of the organisation based on five Operations Performance Objectives and take necessary steps to drive the company towards success. The five objectives of operations performance can be listed as – Quality, Dependability, Cost, Speed and Flexibility (Benjaafar and Hu, 2020)
The most important area of value proposition for any company is the quality of the products or services that it offers. In the case of Aston Martin, most of its customers are attracted due to the quality of the cars that it manufactures. Quality factor of the operations management differentiates it from other competitors and gives it a competitive advantage. Dependability factor is high in the case of Aston Martin as it manufactures high-quality cars that offer high performance and reliability. The brand has earned its reputation on the basis of the trust that its customers have on it due to its policy of no compromise with the quality of the manufactured products (Glock et al. 2019).
Aston Martin is a car manufacturer that mostly focuses on luxury and premium cars however it tries to keep the operations cost low in order to increase the profitability. Cost factor of operations performance objectives are effectively managed in order to direct some of the resources towards further research of automotives. Speed is one of the performance objectives that our selected companies excel at. As it has organised its operations to systematically produce its cars, it becomes a comparatively fast process and time wastage is almost eliminated from procurement of raw materials to shipping of finished products (Misic and Perakis, 2020).
The Flexibility factor of the operations performance objectives can be classified into four more areas – Product flexibility, Volume flexibility, Mix flexibility and Delivery flexibility. Aston Martin shows improved performance in all of the four areas of flexibility. It is involved in bringing flexibility of product manufacturing by launching cars with different designs and in variable volumes. According to Ahmed and Omar (2019), its delivery and shipping facilities are also immensely helpful to the customers, providing them greater value for their money.
Operations Strategy
The operation strategy of Aston Martin can be discussed under six key components – Positioning, Design, Allocation of resources, Service facilities, Adoption of technology and Facility planning. Positioning is crucial for Aston Martin as it focuses mainly on selling to customers who are interested to buy premium cars at a slightly expensive rate. As described earlier, operations management has been effective in justified allocation of resources and service facilities. The company has been successful in following the strategy of dealing with local suppliers for procuring raw materials for car manufacturing (Al-Doori, 2019).
Processes and layouts of the organisation to deliver goods and services to its customers
Aston Martin is one of the reputed car manufacturing companies who follows a standardised flow of operations to ensure effectiveness of the operations. The supply chain and logistics are the primary areas which help the company to initiate its production. It purchases car components from trustworthy local suppliers and performs effective inventory management processes (Caridade et al. 2017). It has been found that Aston Martin possesses several financial assets compared to its list of liabilities. It thus has a better chance for sustained growth by improving its flow of operations to meet the demands of customers.
It focuses on hiring talented individuals into its workforce and offers them extensive training to maintain the quality of products being manufactured. It has a dedicated research and development team that works on modifying existing equipments and manufacturing processes to provide more effective processes of manufacturing. Thus, a refined knowledge pool is created in the company that often leads to company’s growth due to exclusivity of such know-how possessed by the organisation (Goswami et al. 2020). Automation of products have helped Aston Martin to reduce the operations time, resulting in greater profitability of the company.
The manufacturing and production processes are subjected to different transformation systems such as Alteration, Transportation, Storage and Inspection in order to provide high quality products to customers. The car manufacturer has adopted certain methods to comply with the environmental sustainability regulations such as manufacturing engines with very low rates of greenhouse gas emission. It follows a scheduled monitoring practice to ensure consistent quality in its operations and finished products (Zahraee et al. 2018).
Conclusion
Based on the above discussion, it can be concluded that one of the important factors for long-term success of Aston Martin is effectiveness of its operations management. It has followed standard practices of operations management in all areas of the business, from procurement of raw material to shipping and delivery of final products, with appropriate modifications with respect to the automotive industry. It can also be said that the company enjoys the trust of its huge consumer base due to quality and performance of the car manufactured which was a direct result of effective operations management. The study of the operations strategy of the company provided insights about its intention of growth by providing service to different sections of consumers, thus increasing the overall revenue of the company. Effective operations management has also led the company to ensure justified allocation of its resources.
Different areas of operations management, as discussed in the report, helped us to evaluate the viability of the products being sold and possibilities of sustained growth for the company. Discussion about design and layout of the processes of the entire sequence of operations provided an overall view of operations management for sustained growth of the company.
References
Ahmed, W. and Omar, M., 2019. Drivers of supply chain transparency and its effects on performance measures in the automotive industry: case of a developing country. International Journal of services and operations management, 33(2), pp.159-186. Available at: https://www.inderscienceonline.com/doi/abs/10.1504/IJSOM.2019.100291
Al-Doori, J.A., 2019. The impact of supply chain collaboration on performance in automotive industry: Empirical evidence. Journal of Industrial Engineering and Management, 12(2), pp.241-253. Available at: https://upcommons.upc.edu/handle/2117/175978
Babich, V. and Hilary, G., 2020. OM Forum—Distributed ledgers and operations: What operations management researchers should know about blockchain technology. Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, 22(2), pp.223-240. Available at: https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1287/msom.2018.0752
Benjaafar, S. and Hu, M., 2020. Operations management in the age of the sharing economy: what is old and what is new?. Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, 22(1), pp.93-101. Available at: https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1287/msom.2019.0803
Caridade, R., Pereira, T., Ferreira, L.P. and Silva, F.J.G., 2017. Analysis and optimisation of a logistic warehouse in the automotive industry. Procedia Manufacturing, 13, pp.1096-1103. Available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2351978917308089
Choi, T.M., Wallace, S.W. and Wang, Y., 2018. Big data analytics in operations management. Production and Operations Management, 27(10), pp.1868-1883. Available at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/poms.12838
DuHadway, S., Carnovale, S. and Hazen, B., 2019. Understanding risk management for intentional supply chain disruptions: Risk detection, risk mitigation, and risk recovery. Annals of Operations Research, 283(1), pp.179-198. Available at: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10479-017-2452-0
Ghadge, A., Duck, A., Er, M. and Caldwell, N., 2021, April. Deceptive counterfeit risk in global supply chains. In Supply Chain Forum: An International Journal (pp. 1-13). Taylor & Francis. Available at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/16258312.2021.1908844
Glock, C.H., Grosse, E.H., Jaber, M.Y. and Smunt, T.L., 2019. Applications of learning curves in production and operations management: A systematic literature review. Computers & Industrial Engineering, 131, pp.422-441. Available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360835218305114
Goswami, M., De, A., Habibi, M.K.K. and Daultani, Y., 2020. Examining freight performance of third-party logistics providers within the automotive industry in India: An environmental sustainability perspective. International Journal of Production Research, 58(24), pp.7565-7592. Available at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00207543.2020.1756504
Mišić, V.V. and Perakis, G., 2020. Data analytics in operations management: A review. Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, 22(1), pp.158-169. Available at: https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1287/msom.2019.0805
Zahraee, S.M., Mamizadeh, F. and Vafaei, S.A., 2018. Greening assessment of suppliers in automotive supply chain: An empirical survey of the automotive industry in Iran. Global Journal of Flexible Systems Management, 19(3), pp.225-238. Available at: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40171-018-0189-5
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