Objectives of Operations Management

Objectives of operations management can be categorised into customer service and resource utilisation.

CUSTOMER SERVICE

The first objective of operating systems is the customer serivce to the satisfaction of customer wants. Therefore, customer service is a key objective of operations management. The operating system must provide something to a specification which can satisfy the customer in terms of cost and timing. Thus, primary objective can be satisfied by providing the ‘right thing at a right price at the right time’.

These aspects of customer service specification, cost and timing are described for four functions in Table. They are the principal sources of customer satisfaction and must, therefore, be the principal dimension of the customer service objective for operations managers.

Generally an organization will aim reliably and consistently to achieve certain standards and operations manager will be influential in attempting to achieve these standards. Hence, this objective will influence the operations manager’s decisions to achieve the required customer service.

RESOURCE UTILISATION

Another major objective of operating systems is to utilise resources for the satisfaction of customer wants effectively, i.e., customer service must be provided with the achievement of effective operations through efficient use of resources. Inefficient use of resources or inadequate customer service leads to commercial failure of an operating system.

Operations management is concerned essentially with the utilisation of resources, i.e., obtaining maximum effect from resources or minimising their loss, under utilisation or waste. The extent of the utilisation of the resources’potential might be expressed in terms of the proportion of available time used or occupied, space utilisation, levels of activity, etc. Each measure indicates the extent to which the potential or capacity of such resources is utilised. This is referred as the objective of resource utilisation.

Operations management is also concerned with the achievement of both satisfactory customer service and resource utilisation. An improvement in one will often give rise to deterioration in the other. Often both cannot be maximised, and hence a satisfactory performance must be achieved on both objectives. All the activities of operations management must be tackled with these two objectives in mind, and many of the problems will be faced by operations managers because of this conflict. Hence, operations managers must attempt to balance these basic objectives.

The below Table summarises the twin objectives of operations management. The type of balance established both between and within these basic objectives will be influenced by market considerations, competitions, the strengths and weaknesses of the organization, etc. Hence, the operations managers should make a contribution when these objectives are set.