Heavy Electrical Operations Management

BEM2007

Operations Management

Group Case Study

E-SOLUTIONS

Table of Contents

Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………. 3

Heavy Electrics…………………………………………………………………………………....3

Automated Systems. ……………………………………………………………………………...3

Medical Solutions (MED)................................................................................................................4

References………………………………………………………………………………………....5

Introduction to E-Solutions

E-Solutions is organised into three different units and this report analyses and provides possible advantages the theories would have to those units separately. This report addresses improvements that could be done in terms of operations performance objectives. The aim is to improve the performance and customer satisfaction through the application of appropriate operation theories to E-Solutions.

 However,  

Performance Objectives of E-Solutions

Heavy Electrical (HE)

Kano Model

In order to be successful, HE should emphasise its efforts primarily on the collection of needs and expectations of all of its external, current and potential customers. Heavy Electrical (HE) customer satisfaction score has gone down from 72% to 65%.

According to Kano model, it can be proposed that an excitement factor can be the after sales service.

To be successful, an organization should focus its efforts primarily to the collection, knowledge, understanding and meeting requirements, needs and expectations of all its internal, external, current and potential customers (Paraschivescu & Cortirlet, 2012).

That is because over time features that were “exciting” become performance features, and performance features become basic quality (page 10, lecture 5). For the HE unit One-dimensional Quality category of KANO model (Matzler & Hinterhuber, 1998) needs to be applied, which means that HE will deliver products, which will satisfy all the basic needs of the customer. Also, HE should introduce the “wow” factor, such as aftersales service, which will improve long-term relations with customers. Customisation should be done only for the huge projects ordered to HE unit.

That means that HE should avoid high level of customization for all the single customers, and identify the most popular models, which were ordered in HE previously and start mass production of them. In terms of Operations Performance Objectives that will lower the cost of the products, because of the economies of scales; speed of response to the market demand will be improved a lot because there will be only fixed models and, therefore it will take much less time to deliver/replace customer's product; dependability will also improve because there will be lower amount of different products. Most of the customers will benefit from that, with an exception of the few who have highly specific requirements for the system.

The limitation to this approach will be decrease of the flexibility in the HE products and therefore to the lose of the unique selling point of this unit. However, company could expand from its niche market and gain bigger market share.

Automated Systems (AS)

Project Management

The high customer satisfaction score clearly demonstrates one of its well-established competitive advantage. The AS division is widely believed as transparent and easily approachable. Nonetheless, it has been criticised that the project management within is often way too informal, lack of planning and therefore without a well-constructed structure. Therefore, as AS’s service offerings involve negotiations with stakeholders and the partnership with customers, based on the project management model, AS should emphasize the importance of understanding the project environment (Kerzner, 2013). The most prominent factor is to manage closely with stakeholders who possess high power and interest.

Due to the nature of AS projects, it is hard to specify quality and cost for a unique information system ambiguously, since there is great emphasis on customization and often there are different perspectives between clients and design teams, which lead to miscommunication. Therefore, in respect of product design, AS should pay particular attention to the first stage of design- Concept Generation, to begin as divergent, to end up with convergent solution for suiting customized needs (Liu, 2003)

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It would be useful for design teams to generate ideas from customers, for instance, by creating focus group. With this act they can interact directly with customers, gather them together, to discuss and share views thus knowing the common values shared among customers. This could help eliminating the chances of imprecise desired output. Nonetheless, this might lengthen the processing time of delivering the desired design and there is always a notable cost in gathering data and researching.

When looking at the performance objectives, first, AS should focus on quality. One thing customers value so much is its capability of achieving the specification. Flexibility also plays a significant role, as clients require certain degree of redesigning.

Medical Solutions (MED)

Operations performance objectives

MED should focus on satisfying its customers’ needs for dependable and quality goods/services. The function of operations can allow for a competitive advantage through MEDs performance at the five competitive objectives.

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Quality

Is often the most visible part of an operation; customers generally use this part to judge the operation. Therefore, it affects the level of customer satisfaction or dissatisfaction (Slack, N. et al, 2013).

MED has to maintain a certain level of quality, particularly because they provide equipment to hospitals and they also lack the credibility of its larger competitors as well as offer healthcare consulting – which means they have to do things right by providing products/services glitch free. This will allow their customers to be satisfied and ideally return (Slack, N. et al, 2013).