Role
What is operations responsible for?
Producing goods and services
Define corporate social responsibility.
Going above and beyond the law in consideration of society and the environment
What are 3 examples of transformed recourses.
Materials, information, and customers.
What are the 6 performance objectives?
Quality, speed, dependability, flexibility, cost, and customisation.
What is the dot point under strategic role of operations management?
Goods and/or services in different industries
What is interdependence?
The mutual reliance between key business functions.
Distinguish between government policies and legal regulations.
Legal regulations are laws that are generally long term or permanent, whilst government policies are rules the government enforces to achieve their goals and are generally short term.
If businesses do not provide warranties as part of their outputs, what law are they breaking?
Australian consumer laws.
What is supply chain management and what factors are a part of supply chain management?
Supply chain management is the flow of supplies throughout the transformation process to best meet the needs of consumers. The factors under supply chain management are logistics, e-commerce, and global sourcing.
What are the 8 influences of operations management?
Globalisation, technology, quality expectations, cost-based competition, government policies, legal regulation, environmental sustainability, and corporate social responsibility.
What is the strategic role of operations and define all key terms?
To achieve cost leadership (having lowest costs in the industry) and product differentiation (Having unique products).
Outline 3 advantages and 3 disadvantages of globalisation.
Advantages: Costs decrease as firms can outsource/globally source, can increase profit by expanding globally, and they can achieve EoS as they produce more to sell to a larger audience.
Disadvantages: There is increased competition, there can be logistical errors from global suppliers, and ethical issues can arise from unethical behaviour from foreign suppliers
Differentiate between sequencing and scheduling and identify how they can be measured.
Sequencing: The order in which the activities of the operations process occur.
Scheduling: How long the tasks for the operation process takes.
They are measured through Gnatt charts and critical path analysis
What is inventory management and what are some ways to achieve it?
What are the sub-dot points under transformation process?
– The influence of volume, variety, variation in demand and visibility (customer contact)
– Sequencing and scheduling – Gantt charts, critical path analysis
– Technology, task design and process layout
– Monitoring, control and improvement
Explain an example of how operations is interdependent with HR and provide a real-life example from a company you have studied.
Operations needs HR to hire experienced staff, while HR needs operations to tell them what skills they need so that they can efficiently hire staff. Both the Qantas and Volkswagen case studies are acceptable answers.
Explain the impact of using technology on a firms competitive positioning.
By using technology, firms can differentiate their products (as it may increase the quality), decreases their costs as robots don't need a wage/break, and be more efficient, allowing them to achieve EoS. All of these factors increase revenue for firms.
What are the 3 types of process layouts?
1) Product layout: It deals with low variety and high volume of production. Assembly lines are the most common layout here. E.g factories.
2) Process layout: It deals with high variety and low volume of production. It may see the creation of work teams according to the sequence. E.g. In banks, there is an area for bank tellers and another for bank loans
3) Fixed position layout: It deals with large scale, bulky activities (like bridges and houses). This is where the output stays in one location and the process is conducted at the site of the finished product
What is e-procurement and how can it be used in at least 2 operations strategies?
E-procurement is when stocks are replenished automatically after they fall below a certain threshold. Contestants can link this to any operational strategy, but the most suitable ones would be inventory management and technology.
A business looks at their competitors and implements what they do right.
What dot point is this information referring to?
Global factors – scanning and learning
A good has high production times. Which type of good is it likely to be?
a) Perishable
b) Non perishable
c) Customised
d) Standardised
The answer is C
Evaluate the response of a company to cost based competition.
Talk about the coles case study, provide at least 1 pro and con, and make a judgement
Using a company that you have learnt, how do they use technology to achieve customer service?
Uber case study is looked for, but any other case study with the correct content will be accepted.
Define and resistance to change and list the factors under it. Then provide strategies to overcome resistance to change.
Resistance to change is the desire for current working conditions to remain unchanged. The factors under resistance to change are financial costs, purchasing new equipment, redundancy payments, retraining, reorganising plant layout, inertia. Some strategies to overcome resistance to change are retraining, redundancy payment, a democratic leadership approach, change agents (people hired to promote the change), and the Jurt Lewis unfreeze-change-refreeze model.
How many times does technology come up in the operations syllabus?
3 times in total.