“The operations function is a critical element in every business. No business can survive without it” Johnston, R. Chamber, S. Harland, C. Harrison, A. Slack, N. (1997). At centre point, operations function is one of the three primary functions along with marketing and finance. In addition, the supporting functions will include human resources and information systems. Functional areas are concerned with a particular focus of responsibility and decision making within the organization.
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Marketing- responsible for creating demand and generating revenue
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Operations- responsible for the production of services (generating temporally accommodations such as emergency night shelters, short stay hostels, foyers and supported flats )
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Finance- responsible for the acquisition and allocation of capital
Functional are closely associated with organizational departments because centre point, likewise other businesses is typically organized on a functional basis. Supporting functions like HR are essential to provide staff support to the three primary functions.
Every function within the organisation is concerned not only with its own decision and responsibilities but with integrating decisions with other functions. Centre point vows to allocate the responsibilities of various functions in the organisation so that its operations function is protected from the external environment, promoting the stability of the organisation: this is called the organisational buffering. (Appendix1)
OPerationsprocess
With this operations process, centrepoint aims to be able to deliver a reasonable service within reasonable time scales. The nature of the work is to provide an accommodation to residents within two years time; we are at present working closely with our housing partners across London to establish at least 20-bedsits unit in each borough, so that we can free up the hostels places for other young people who seek our assistance. Targets have dropped with the shortage of social housing, the dropped in findings and the increase of young homeless persons. It has been difficult to balance a cost effective move on programme with quality, dependability and flexibility with reducing resources. The figure below (F1) demonstrates some of the problems encountered when we tried to deliver a quality service with budget restriction.
Operations Performance Objectives:
The aims of operations are to guarantee that our tenants receive the better assistance possible centrepoint can deliver. The four most common objectives of operations are:
Quality: This relates to centrepoint satisfying its customer requirements, with superior service attributes or a feature that help achieve lower costs via customer satisfaction. This may be achieved by defining specific customer requirements and then designing a process and product or service that is capable of meeting those requirements, training the workforce (supported housing officers) to provide the service needed by this group of homeless people. A quality objective leads to certain actions and policies in operations to provide a service that the customer wants: supporting vulnerable people to rebuilt their lives by giving them the necessary tools to do so: a home.
Cost: Refers to minimizing the cost of the whole process thus leading to a cheaper service. The best way of lowering cost is to focus on the customer requirements i.e. fulfilling the quality objective in both product design and operation, as a way of eliminating rework, scrap, inspection, and other forms of non-value-added steps in operations. Operations should focus on getting the supplied service right. It should be also co-ordinated with processes like information systems which help reduce errors such as
Delivery: Refers to faster delivery time of producing and delivering accommodations service to our tenants. This may be achieved by focusing on the cost objective i.e. when rework and other non-value added steps are eliminated from operations, the time to order, produce, and deliver the product is also reduced. The best way to achieve this is by minimising the waiting time in the production line which may be done by processes like reducing machine changeover time, by moving processes closer together, by smoothing outflows, by simplifying complex operations, and by redesigning the product or service for fast production. These actions should be taken in addition those of a cost improvement objective.
Flexibility: Refers to flexibility in the speed of change of the processes and the product or service. It may be brought about by focusing on delivery objective i.e. when production and delivery time is reduced, it is possible to change schedule thus, making operations more flexible to changes in customer requirements. Flexibility can be also brought about by processes like adding capacity, by buying more flexible equipment, or by redesigning the product for high variety.
“Thus, it is observed that all operations objectives are connected. If quality is improved, cost is also reduced, thus time is also improved and which in turn leads to more flexibility. Thus by starting with quality, along with time reduction the other objectives are directly attacked by taking unique actions for that objective, as needed. Hence, a series of such actions will then result in continuous improvement of all four operations objectives at the same time.” (Schroder:2007-pg:24-25)
This operations program time table comes hand in hand with the implementation progress of the move on process; training is designed with an aim to help staff attain the appropriate proficiency level for job adjustment role and enhance their competitiveness, strategic operations process by allowing contengency plans consisting in alternative accommodation is abiding to the just –in-time and just-enough concepts. (Appendix 2)
Examination of capacity planning and control within service sector environment
“Capacity management is an essential part of operations management. The objective is to match the level of capacity to the level of demand both in terms of quantity and capability.” Roger g. Schroder (2007) Capacity decisions are aimed at providing the right amount of capacity at the right place at the right time. Long-range capacity is determined by the size of the physical facilities owned or managed by centre point and its partners. Capacity is sometimes augmented by extra shifts undertake by our staff or subcontracting agencies staff. Capacity planning, however, determines not only the size of facilities but also the proper number of people in operations. Staffing levels are set to meet our customers’ needs, demand and the desire to maintain a stable workforce. Available capacity is allocated to specific tasks and jobs in operations by scheduling people, equipment, and facilities. Planning and managing capacity requires balancing time-scale, looking at alternatives and executing our objectives by ensuring that we have the right resources (staff) and equipment (right tools for the job) that will produce service at a reasonable cost. (Appendix3)
Determination of the scope of quality Management within Operations
Quality is a difficult topic to monitor as it can be very subjective and rely on personal judgement. However, the organisation has set standards/specifications such as ‘moving on’ protocols, post move on forms/letters and data base entries that are used to measure quality. While we work very closely with our partners in Social Services, there is a critical need for protocols relating to particular areas of concern. We are at present developing these protocols and are looking to set up a dedicated team to work on them. Through our officer who liaises with the housing services, we aim to feed into protocols that alleviate bed-blocking at hostels across the capital; we will feed into protocols around homelessness issue.
Understanding reasons for failure of systems also help maintain quality. Figure 2 details some of the reasons for failure that can arise in the inspection programme.
Each member of the team can be trained in common methodologies, and the team can be given responsibility for achieving its own goals’ (Schroder:2007-pg:9)
Explore service operation management
Operations Management has been focused on addressing the needs of the housing sector. The need to specifically address the ‘Service’ component of centrepoint is paramount for future competitiveness. Service Operation includes a number of Processes and Functions.
Decisions: ‘Making decisions is an important element of operations. As all operations managers are responsible for making decisions, which makes it the key focus point in operations. At centrepoint the supported housing manager is responsible for some major decision areas associated with the delivery of service (allocation of permanent accommodation) i.e. Process, Quality, Capacity, and Inventory.
Function: Operations is one of the three major primary functions of the company along with marketing and finance. The operations function is responsible for supplying services for the business. In general, the generic term “operations” refers to the function that produces goods or services. Thus by separating operations out in this manner is not only useful for analyzing decision making and assigning responsibilities, but also to integrate the business by considering the cross-functional nature of decision making in the charity.
Capacity:
Queuing:
Process: The operations managers plan and control the production process and its interfaces. This process view not only provides a common ground for defining the move on operations as transformation processes but is also a powerful basis for design and analysis of operations. Using the process view, we consider operations managers as managers of the conversion process in the firm. But the process view also provides important insights for the management of productive processes in functional areas outside the operations function’. (Schroder:2007-pg:4)
Evaluation of role of technology within Operations
Information Technology is at the very core of the project. Telecommunications technology has been used to develop the seamless voice mail and Shelter Bed Hotline system and the Internet used to develop our regional Provider Library. Most voice mail systems are used for private business communication rather than for serving the community. Centrepoint has introduced a seamless infrastructure for assisting young homeless people. Using state- of-the-art voice mail systems, centrepoint has created a unique partnership between private, nonprofit and faith-based organizations to bring a communication tool that is easy to use to those who need it. A memorable 0800 number is used throughout London for shelter bed information.
Role of Operations Management
- “Operations” is responsible for supplying the service of the organization.”
- Operations within an organization is a key element to the step by step production of service within the organization.
- Operations will coordination the activities of all the factors of service delivery, namely workforce, premises, technology, funds and equipment etc...
Operations as such constitutes a process and is directed by the operation manager which in centrepoint’s case is the supported housing manager who is directly responsible of all activities related to the production and delivery of the service (tenants action plan monitoring, referals, nomination), as well as being responsable of other activities involved in interfacing with other part of centrepoint. Both direct responsibilities of communicating with other functions and the broad responsibilities are important to operations managers. This relates back to the idea of buffering. The broad responsibilities of operations managers involves scanning the cenvironment inwhich centrepoint operates.(PEST Analysis & Potters five Forces)
CONCLUSION
Operations management, in short, is the use of various management processes and techniques to increase the value and worth of services produced by centrepoint in order to fulfil the requirements of both internal and external customers, at an acceptable cost. It actually manages, in a coherent and systematic manner, a complex wed of different operations, systems and processes, in the most economical and efficient ways. Hence, operation management is an integral function of any organization. In a manufacturing concern, it would be the management of the production division that produces the end products. For service-oriented companies like ours, it is less obvious but an example would be the management of staff and organisational processes of centrepoint that provides housing services to homeless youngsters. By managing resources effectively to transform inputs into outputs, operations management strikes a balance between strategic targets, such as increasing output by 10% within 2 years, and operational capabilities. By efficiently and effectively transforming inputs into outputs that meets customers needs and wants, operations management ensures that the company strategies are met.
Recommendations
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The setting of clear targets supported by relevant evidence for the reduction of homelessness met with varying degrees of scepticism, depending on the scale of the problem in the hostel concern.
- The important thing was to measure the progress achieved, and targets could always be adjusted if they were found to be unrealistic. Thus while targets are useful as a monitoring tool they need to be realistic and adjusted over the cycle of acceptable time-periods.
- Cross Functional Product Development & Design Strategy
- Staff Training and Development Programme
- Joint approaches at strategic level to facilitate the cross boundary working required to arrive at a generalised approach and to provide the mutual trust between partner agencies to avoid issues such as cost shunting, and to avoid overloading frontline staff.
- Through the review it has become apparent that work is not joined up and indeed there are barriers to change: The current funding and grant regime, which sees many voices clamouring for limited resources. We would like to see more grants given to pursuit our work helping the most vulnerable youngsters.
- Enable agencies to co-ordinate their approach to grant applications and build partnership applications year on year to address identified objectives
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Des, D. (2007) Operations and Project Management 4th Edn. Kingston: Kingston University.
JOHNSTON,R. CHAMBERS, S. HARLAND, C. HARRISON, A. SLACK, N. (1997) Cases in Operations Management. 2nd Edn. Great Britain: Pearson Educational Limited.
LINES, D, MARCOUSÉ, I, AND MARTIN, B.,(1996). The Complete A-Z Business Studies Handbook: Great Britain. Hodder & Stoughton Educational.
MARCOUSÉ, I. et al. (2000) Business Studies. 2nd Edn, London: Hodder & Stoughton Educational.
MODEN, Y. (1994) Toyota Production System: An Integrated approach to Just-In-Time. 2nd Ed., London: Chapman & Hall.
REFFERENCES
Roger g. Schroder (2007) Operations Management Contemporary Concepts and Cases, New York: Mc Graw Hill.
Roger g. Schroder (2007) Operations Management Contemporary Concepts and Cases, New York: Mc Graw Hill.
Roger g. Schroder (2007) Operations Management Contemporary Concepts and Cases, New York: Mc Graw Hill.
Roger g. Schroder (2007) Operations Management Contemporary Concepts and Cases, New York: Mc Graw Hill.
APPENDICES
Appendix 1: Organizational buffering
In many organizations the responsibility for acquiring the inputs to the operation and distributing its outputs to customers is not given to the operations function. For example, the people who staff the operation are recruited and trained by the personnel function; the process technology for the operation is probably selected and commissioned by a technical function; the materials, parts, services and other bought-in resources are acquired through a purchasing function; and the orders from customers which trigger the operation into activity will come through the marketing function. The other functions of the organization are, in effect, forming a barrier or buffer between the uncertainties of the environment and the operations function. These relationships have developed partly for stability which allows the operation to organize itself for maximum efficiency.
The approach which many companies have taken to the idea of ‘buffering’ their operations says a lot about how the role of operations management has changed over the last few years. Traditionally, operations managers were seen as being unable to cope with disruption from outside the organisation. Wildly fluctuating demand levels required physical buffering in the form of finished product inventories so that demand could be satisfied, even if the operation could not flex its output levels to cope with changing demand. Nor were operations regarded as being capable of expertise outside their core area of producing goods and services. So, for example, a personnel department would deal with the labour market, recruit staff and look after much of their welfare while they worked in the operation. While operations are still buffered in most organisations, it happens far less. As the text discusses, this is because over protecting an operation can deprive it of an opportunity to learn how to cope with changes in the business environment, or learn the skills necessary to manage its own resources (people are an important part of any operation, why should not operations managers take an active part in their welfare rather than personnel managers?). The two figures below illustrate the idea of physical buffering and organisational buffering.
Appendix 2: Just-in-time concept
About Just-In-Time (JIT) concept
What is the Just-In-Time concept? Since the emergence of this term it was difficult
for sciences and business people to define it. Even today many companies think that
they are using JIT concept, but actually, they are not realizing that JIT must be
integrated in company philosophy and no just dead letters.
Just in Time (JIT) production is a manufacturing philosophy which eliminates waste
associated with time, labour, and storage space. Basics of the concept are that the
company produces only what is needed, when it is needed and in the quantity that is
needed. The company produces only what the customer requests, to actual orders,
not to forecast. JIT can also be defined as producing the necessary units, with the
required quality, in the necessary quantities, at the last safe moment. It means that
company can manage with their own resources and allocate them very easily. Figure
2 shows a drawing of the JIT concept
Just-in-time (JIT) is an inventory strategy implemented to improve the of a by reducing in-process and its associated . In order to achieve JIT the process must have signals of what is going on elsewhere within the process. This means that the process is often driven by a series of signals, which can be (看板 Kanban), that tell production processes when to make the next part. Kanban are usually 'tickets' but can be simple visual signals, such as the presence or absence of a part on a shelf. When implemented correctly, JIT can lead to dramatic improvements in a manufacturing organization's , quality, and efficiency. Some have suggested that "Just on Time" would be a more appropriate name since it emphasizes that production should create items that arrive when needed and neither earlier nor later.
Quick communication of the consumption of old stock which triggers new stock to be ordered is key to JIT and inventory reduction. This saves space and costs. However since stock levels are determined by historical any sudden demand rises above the historical demand, the firm will deplete inventory faster than usual and cause issues. Some have suggested that recycling Kanban faster can also help flex the system by as much as 10-30%. In recent years manufacturers have touted a trailing 13 week average as a better predictor for JIT planning than most forecastors could provide.
Appendix 3 Capacity performance Table
