Importance of Operations Management in Business Operations Term Paper

Essays on Importance of Operations Management in Business Operations Term Paper The paper â€Å"Importance of Operations Management in Business Operations" is a cogent example of a term paper on management. Every business organization is managed through three important and interrelated functions: marketing, finance and operations management. Other functions such as human resources, accounting, engineering, and purchasing, are subordinate to the three major functions. The marketing function is responsible for understanding customer needs and generating customer demands while the finance function is responsible for managing an organization’s cash flows, capital investments, and current assets. In between these two functions lies the operations management. Primarily, the operations management is a core business function that plans, organizes, controls and coordinates an organization’s resources to produce the required goods and services. To a great extent, operations management is a managerial function and involves managing people, technology, equipm ent, information, and other resources.All organizations have operations management functions. Ideally, all other organizational functions are there to support the operations management function. Companies use operations management to add value to inputs during the transformation process. This helps companies produce high-quality products and gain competitive advantages in the production and marketing processes.Today’s businesses are operating in very competitive environments than was the case a few years ago. To survive competition, businesses must remain focused on efficiency, quality, international perspectives, customer relationships, and time-based competition. The Internet and other advances in the field of technology require appropriate responsiveness and flexibility. This new focus in business operations has cast new light as regards the significance of operations management in organizations. This is because it is only through operations management that companies can a chieve the competitiveness required to survive in the highly dynamic, modern markets. In their book, Dennis and Ajit (2003) have reckoned that some of the world’s most successful companies such as McDonalds and Wal-Mart have attained world-class status because of their unwavering focus on operations management. Accordingly, these companies have developed unique and highly sophisticated operations management processes, which have kept them ahead of other companies in their respective industries. Essentially, operations management has become a key managerial function for organizations to reckon with in the 21st Century DiVincenzo, 2006).Definition and Significance of Operations ManagementOperations management is an integrated business approach that focuses on the careful management of business processes to produce and distribute products (Klassen Whybarl, 2005). Primarily, operations management activities relate to product creation, development, production, and distribution. R elated activities include inventory control, managing purchases, overseeing storage and logistics, quality control and evaluation of processes. According to Dennis and Ajit (2003), a great deal of focus on operations management is on the efficiency and effectiveness of business processes. As such, operations management often includes substantial analysis of internal and external business processes. Undoubtedly, the nature of the operations management process and how it is carried out in organizations depends on the nature of the product in the organization.Role of Operations ManagementThe main purpose of operations management in organizations is to transform inputs into finished services and goods. The main inputs include human resources, facilities, processes, technology, and information. According to White and Fortune (2002) operations management is responsible for orchestrating the resources an organization needs to produce its products and services and meet customer needs. This includes designing the product and the production process, deciding on the resources that are needed, arranging schedules, managing inventory, controlling quality and designing the marketing criterion (Skinner, 2002).