Operations and Quality Management – 2 key parts of any production or manufacturing process
The contribution and value-adding role of operations management is rightly at the heart of most organisations.
Operations management should be important within all businesses, with operations managers responsible for the efficient and effective management of the processes within the company.
In different operations, these processes can have different characteristics, but all operations managers have a similar set of responsibilities and activities.
Operations are responsible for efficiently managing tasks whilst seeking improvement methods to better meet the relevant business objectives and tasks that have been set. Operations management may also be seen as part of a function’s or manager’s responsibility involving the production of internal products and services within the organisation.
Operations managers are concerned with managing the processes which transform a set of inputs (the business’ goods) into outputs (satisfied customers). This is done using an effective and efficient team. These inputs are often referred to as the external phase of a supply chain.
The inputs have links with other key business functions: marketing, finance and human resources and may be classified as materials, people or physical resources.