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A Massive Earthquake, A Nuclear Emergency, And A Tsunami

Decent Essays

A massive earthquake, a nuclear emergency, and a tsunami have impacted Nissan Motor Company, an automobile manufacturer. The below paper describes how proper operations management practices will help with the recovery of Nissan. “Operations Management (OM) is the set of activities that creates value in the form of goods and services by transforming inputs into outputs” (Heizer & Render, 2014). Nissan uses operations management functions, such as organizing, leading, planning, staffing, and controlling, which are all related to the supply chain, to generate value (Heizer et al., 2014). This management process helps correctly address operations decisions. For Nissan, the leading OM output is automobiles, but to make this company run …show more content…

This helped the company and its customers when doing business with other regions and people, specifically dealing with communication problems. Finally, distinguished from the competitors, Nissan was able to provide a simple product line. “The company adopted a build-to-stock strategy for just a few SKUs in each model and a build-to-order strategy for the rest” (Schmid et al., 2013). Management states that this strategy has allowed Nissan to pick and chose what they wanted in the vehicles, in order to fulfill the needs of their customers, which increased sales as well. Nissan’s customers feel appreciated and that their voice matters too, which builds loyalty and more sales for the company. Nissan has been able to achieve a competitive advantage using OM. A competitive advantage is “the creation of a unique advantage over competitors” (Heizer et al., 2014), which Nissan has been able to do with the operations function and keeping a focus on flexibility. “In January 2012, Nissan announced that it would increase the localized production of its cars in the America from approximately 70% to 90% by 2015. This displayed a competitive advantage against other automobile manufacturers following the impact of a massive earthquake, a nuclear emergency, and a tsunami. Since financial crises in 2008 had caused higher costs, the company used localized production to lower those costs. Nissan has actually established a competitive

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