 Success by Justin Stewart All companies strive for improving productivity. Improving productivity allows for more competitive prices.
There are basically three type’s productivity – technological, employee and manager. Increasing technological productivity is the use of equipment that is more efficient than your current system. These may include robots or computers that can increase a company’s output. Companies attempting to maintain a competitive edge have to remain at the forefront of technical advancements. Some of these advancements include flexible manufacturing that use computers in order to control machines and help with companies automation. With a flexible manufacturing a single line can be quickly adjusted to produce small batches of certain products, simply done from computer instructions. Other advancement in technology that some organisations can adopt: CIM – Computer Integrated Manufacturing is the integration of all major functions that are associated with production of a product via computerisation. CAD/CAM · CAD – Enables new designs in ½ the time of traditional methods. CAD system can be used to design layouts and determine any changes sizes and/or styles. · CAM – where the computer is used to guide and control the process. Increased employee productivity simply means having employees produce more in the same time period. A company can achieve this simply by offering better training; this could involve multi-skilling, the re-structuring of a company’s work practices or alteration of companies remuneration. Increased managerial means that managers simply do a better job of running the business. Productivity improves when managers emphasise QC over quantity, Communicate with employees have participative decision with personnel as this helps with empowering employees to be more productive as they have been able to share some of their ideas within the company. Managers must learn to use increase employee involvement, better utilize teamwork and adopt other management techniques in order to be successful in increasing productivity. Productivity is dependent upon people, operations and is a key contributor to improving your business competitiveness.
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 Operations Manager Common mistakes most new managers make similarly the same regardless of what industry you are in.
First mistake always seems to be the lack of confidence in their new found role, and rightfully so however everyone can see that and in some cases there is one or two that will push the limits to see what they can get away with. Just that same as kids do with their parents. The trick is to show everyone that you can handle the pressure, and for those that want to push the limit one must take care of those situations ASAP, sit the person/people down in a private office setting and talk with them, make sure they understand that certain behaviour will not be tolerated. Second mistake usually involves organization or lack of, this leads to mistakes, overruns, extra costs to name a few consequences. This usually occurs due to ones lack of confidence but it is easily corrected simply buy taking a little extra time each day to go over your tasks, placing them in a priority sequence and coming up with a contingency plan, you can honestly do this while having your first two cups of coffee in the morning before heading to the office. This simple procedure helps to define clearly your daily goals, keeping everything running smooth and allowing for the day to be less stressful. Third and in most cases the simplest to do and hardest to balance: the dreaded personal limitations, most new managers want to make a good impression, unfortunately they tend to do this by taking on more than they can actually handle, first they are new to the position and need some time to get through the dreaded learning curve, however they want to make a good impression and hit the ground running. Some get lucky and can do so without any issues, but for the majority all that they accomplish is causing chaos within the organization and head aces or sometimes health issues for themselves. A new manager should learn about the organization, talk to some co-workers find out their about how things have worked in the past, what are the inside company procedures, heck even ask them for input to improve company functionality or moral. The more a manager knows about the people and procedures within the organization the easier her/his job becomes. Managers roles are diverse and cover a wide range of duties but one thing that every manager needs to balance is delegation, make sure to spread the work load as needed but not just to anyone the person/people you delegate a task to must be capable to complete the job at hand.  Quality Control and Assurance Most Operation Managers are concerned with the quality of the output of their operations. This quality may be associated with reliability of the product or service, conformity to regulations, the level of after sales service provided, design of the product and of course the consistency regarding delivery of their product or service.
Quality Benchmarking Quality benchmarks can be achieved by using one or more of the following strategies: · Quality control – QC (Monitoring the quality during the production or service phase) · Quality assurance - QA ( certification that is dependent upon an organization achieving specified levels of quality) · Total quality management ( where an organization applies both QC and QA in their production or service process) · (TQM) Total Quality Management: TQM’s aim is to improve quality and productivity by working to perfect the total production process. TQM stresses coordination between all departments. Promoting continuous improvement in quality of total processes involved is its basis. v Statistical Process Control (SPC) Another operations management technique for improving quality, productivity is the “statistical process control" (SPC). What is SPC? It is the application of statistical techniques to control work processes to detect defective items. Steps in SPC include: · Define the characteristics of high quality output · Break down various work activities into individual activities required to produce high quality outputs. · Have standards for each process · Discuss performance expectations regarding each task and employee. · Have check sheets that collect data for each activity · Frequent intervals of employee progress evaluation. This process relies heavily on the (PLAN-DO-ACT-CHECK) approach. This involves planning to achieve standards of performance, identifying areas needing improvement, implementing said strategies, monitoring performance for corrective actions. |
