Operation Strategy Management

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criteria are those factors that must be satisfied before customers will consider making a purchase in the first place. Order winning criteria, on the other hand, are the factors on which customers ultimately make their purchasing decision. For example, with most customers of DML Ltd the order winning criteria is price, with criteria such as durability, convince of retail outlets, branding etc. being the market qualifying criteria. However, for wealthier members of society the order winning criteria would be the style of the shoe. Therefore DML Ltd’s operations strategy should be developed to satisfy market qualifying criteria, but excel at order winning criteria for the market segment that the operation wishes to serve. Therefore we see again that this perspective contributes to the content of the organizations operational strategy.

The fourth and last operations management perspective is the capabilities of operations resources approach. This perspective is one in which its excellence in operations is used to drive the organization’s strategy. This perspective’s premise is that superior performance comes from the way that an organization acquires, develops and deploys its resources and builds its capabilities rather than the way it positions itself in the market place. Therefore, the process of strategy development should be based on a sound understanding of current operational capabilities and an analysis of how these could be developed in the future. For example DML Ltd currently purchases raw materials on demand, in future DML Ltd plans to improve its credit facilities with suppliers and begin to purchase all its raw materials In bulk in order to achieve economies of scale. This would again align itself to the organization’s objective of producing and distributing at a low cost. Here again we see that this operational strategy perspective contributes to the content of the organization’s operations strategy. This perspective also entails six resource categories, which are not mutually exclusive, these are: tangible resources, knowledge resources skills and experience, systems and procedural resources, cultural resources and values, network resources and resources important for change. The resources are evaluated against three criteria: value, sustainability and versatility. Resources that individually or collectively score highly in these criteria are considered to be important resources. They are sources of existing or potential competitive advantage to the organization.

Ability of any operation to contribute to business strategy could be assessed by using the four staged model, which was developed by professors Hayes and Wheelwright. The model assesses the performance of the operation function In four stages. The first stage, internal neutrality aims to correct the worst problems associated with the operation. The second stage, external neutrality aims to adopt the best practice (benchmarking) and also implements new strategies. The third stage, internally supportive deals with the link between strategy and operations and the last stage, externally supportive deals with giving an operations advantage, in other words it is the driving strategy. Organizational strategy is of great importance to an enterprise as it aids in achieving the business and strategic objectives of the enterprise.