Effective Cross Functional Teaming : An Organization

Operations management refers to all levels of an organisation and how best to efficiently convene, fund, maintain and maximise its services and/or operations, both internal and external. The core goal/objective of operations management it to maximise outputs while reducing and minimising the inputs required to achieve the desired results.

Chase, R.B., Jacobs, F. R., & Aquilano, N.J. (2006) Operations management for competitive advantage (11th ed). New York: McGraw Hill/Irwin

According to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, most healthcare professionals are not trained to work in interprofessional teams.1 Due to this, it is negatively impacting the quality of care we give our patients. The lack of communication and respect for others is potentially putting the patient at harm. For example, test results are not being shared, other helpful opinions are not being heard, unnecessary costs are being added and trust is being lost. This is very surprising to me because every healthcare professional’s goal and focus should be on healing the patient. When collaboration with others is needed, it should be looked upon as equal as a treatment, a diagnosis and a test.

According to Investopedia ULC (2012), " Operations management is concerned with converting materials and labor into goods and services as efficiently as

Hiring consultant to solve conflicts, because they are outsiders of the team, they night have different view and solve problems more objectively.

Interprofessional team work which is “The levels of cooperation, coordination and collaboration characterizing the relationships between professions in delivering patient-centered care” should be added on the Terminology/Dictionary PPT. Also, Interprofessional competencies in health care which means “Integrated enactment of knowledge, skills, and values/attitudes that define working together across the professions, with other health care workers, and with patients, along with families and communities, as appropriate to improve health outcomes in specific care contexts” should be added to the PPT as

James, T. (2011) defines Operations Management as the management of the processes which aid production of goods and or services. This implies that all production activities must be coordinated well to ensure a lean process of resource management is adopted.

Operations Management in an organisation is repsonsible for managing and in making decisions concerning the activities that convert inputs into outputs , that is goods and services. This covers both short term actvities as well as longer term activities to meet strategic goals. Inputs can be the raw materaials need to manufacture goods such as furniture or the computers needed to create a service like online shopping site. Operation management’s role is to make decisions to improve how operation activities function, for example, to improve the final quality of the output or to change production methods to be more efficient in terms of cost and in time.

The term cross-functional team is new to me, however, after grasping a better understanding of the concept, I realize I have been part of one of these types of teams. However, the cross-functional team I was on, was not related to logistics or the supply chain. Instead, it was the way law enforcement coordinates certain units with specific skills to carry out an operation together. Recently, our agency experienced organization change to place employees with unique skills in other units to improve coordination and flow of communications between two or more units that would seldom speak with each other. This change has been welcoming and has improved the dissemination of information immensely.

I am able to apply the concepts of teamwork to almost every aspect of my career field since my job requires me to fulfill numerous roles on a day-to-day basis. There are several different pieces to the whole puzzle of what it is be a US Air Force Captain, Special Forces Pilot, Aircraft Commander, Planner, and Chief Scheduler. Although according to my career field I am strictly a fighter pilot, you can see that there is much more involved, and that actually flying is only one of the many functions that someone in my position must fulfill.

Operations Management explores the way organizations produce and distribute goods and services. Everything you wear, eat, sit on, use or read comes to you courtesy of the

My knowledge of operations management's impact on organizational effectiveness has grown considerably in this course. I now have a better understanding of how the design and improvement of operational processes and systems can be structured so that the resources required for producing and delivering goods and services are optimized to their full potential. I have a newfound appreciation for the role of operations managers. They take on the challenge of improving productivity to grow and enhance the business an effort that spans all business units and divisions including purchasing, manufacturing, shipping, packaging, supply chain, human resources, marketing, finance, and information technology.

Operations management focuses on managing the processes of producing and distributing products and services. Operations activities often include product creation, development, production and distribution. It deals with all operations within the organization. Related activities include managing purchases, inventory control, quality control, storage, logistics and evaluations. The nature of how operations management is carried out in an organization depends very much on the nature of products or services in the organization, for example, retail, manufacturing, wholesale, etc.

The decision is to select an action among a number of actions that solves a given problem, that prevents a problem from happening, or that forces to apply new ideas for development. The need for understanding decision making process is increasing because the complexity of modern organizations is increasing, and because the modern organizations' effectiveness depends on the decisions made by the managers. The question is how to select the most appropriate action to solve the problem satisfying all stakeholders.

Operations management is generally described as the planning, arrangement, and control of activities that change raw materials or an organization's input into finished products and services. The overall activities covered by operations management include the creation, development, manufacture, and distribution of products. The concept also relates to various activities such as inventory control, controlling purchases, quality control, logistics, storage, and evaluation ("Operations Management in McDonalds", n.d.). Since operations management covers the entire operations in an organization, it mainly focuses on the efficiency and effectiveness of the firm's processes.