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Process of Operations Strategy

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The process of operations strategy – substitutes for strategy? (Week 9)

Lecture aims

This lecture is a little different from the other lectures in the book. It deals with a number of ‘new’ approaches to the management of operations that are often seen as operations strategies, but are not actually strategies in themselves. Six of the more important ‘new’ approaches are treated in this lecture, namely, Total Quality Management, lean operations, Business Process Reengineering, Enterprise Resource Planning and Six Sigma. They all need to be understood (particularly, the similarities and differences between them) if they are going to help with strategy or strategic implementation. Of course, none of these approaches can transform an …show more content…

And this probably applies to all the ‘new’ approaches discussed in this lecture. Getting the details right is a necessary (and important) but not sufficient condition for successfully adopting any of these approaches.

Nevertheless, as this lecture puts it…‘Before anyone can judge whether any of these new approaches is right for them, they must understand what they are, their underlying philosophy and how they differ from each other '. The five approaches discussed are as follows:

1. Total Quality Management
2. Lean operations
3. Business Process Reengineering
4. Enterprise Resource Management
5. Six Sigma

Total Quality Management
Total quality management (TQM) is ‘an effective system for integrating the quality development, quality maintenance and quality improvement efforts of the various groups in an organisation so as to enable production and service at the most economical levels, which allows for full customer satisfaction’. TQM was one of the earliest management ‘fashions’ that peaked in the late 1980s and early 1990s. TQM now seems a little dated. Yet this does not mean that the ideas behind TQM are no longer worth studying or that TQM is no longer influential. In fact some of its principles have been ‘absorbed’ into many organisations’ improvement philosophies. Partly this is because TQM was never just about ‘quality management as such’, but it was always about more than simply assuring product or service quality. It would be more

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