Heavy Electrical Operations Management

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Internally, if quality is high within all the operational activities – fewer errors are made and would lead to savings in costs, dependability increasing and increases speed. As the fewer mistakes made on the operation line, the more time MED would have to respond to client’s requests (Slack, N. et al, 2013).

Speed

Is the duration between customer requests for goods/services and them actually receiving it. For MED the faster they are able to get their medical equipment to their customers or offering healthcare consulting – the more the likely they would purchase it, or even pay more for products/services. So for example MED should maintain the lowest possible throughput times or even the time it takes to deliver spare parts to repair equipment (Slack, N. et al, 2013).

Internally, speed is also vital – as to respond quickly to external customers, MED has to ensure decisions are made quickly and materials and information are moved speedily within the operational process. This will allow for cost reduction within MED as utilisation has increased on the operational level. It will also reduce risks as the quicker the throughput time within the operation, the less forecasting for future demand can be done and therefore reduce risks (Slack, N. et al, 2013).

Dependability

Is doing things in time in order for clients to receive their goods/services when they are needed/promised and in the long-run can supersede all the other criteria. MED seems to be doing terrible in this department – failing to meet service delivery obligations as well as ineffective inventory policies leading to stock-outs of basic items etc. Being late with the delivery of services/goods can be highly irritating to customers – particularly in the case of MED; they have business customers. Not being dependable can lead to suppliers of MED not renewing their contracts or even clients – so the more dependable MED is the higher the chance customers will return (Slack, N. et al, 2013).

Internally, dependability can affect cost – by saving time; you save money. It also gives stability – as the more dependable MED is the less disruptions they would have in their operations and therefore less surprises and more predictability within the operations (Slack, N. et al, 2013).

Flexibility-

Is being able to change the operation in some way; what is does? How it does it? When it does it? According to (Peters, T., 1998) ‘We must learn to love change and develop flexible and responsive organizations to cope with the dynamic business environment’. As such MED has to have some sort of a product/service flexibility, mix flexibility, volume flexibility, and delivery flexibility (Slack, N. et al, 2013).

Currently with larger equipment they produce such as CAT scan machines – the sale of these items are often complex and require some degree of customisation.

Product and service flexibility allows MED to create new products and services with the incorporation of new ideas which might interest clients. A mix flexibility can help MED produce a wider variety of services and products. Volume flexibility and delivery flexibility allows MEDs operations to fix its output levels and its procedures of delivery in order to cope with changes in demand as well as when and where customers wants the goods/service (Slack, N. et al, 2013).

Internally, flexibility helps speed up response – in the sense that if MEDs operations can respond to changes in circumstances i.e transfer of resources from department A to B where department B would not be able to operate without those emergency recourses from department A. Hence it can help MED save time; and money and inevitably become more dependable (Slack, N. et al, 2013).

Cost-

Cost is always a significant priority for operations regardless if they compete directly on price. For MED the cost of technological innovation has always been their main challenge; as some of their products lack the credibility of their competitors. Internally, MED should work on its other four objectives - together with high speed, quality, dependability and flexibility they can contribute to the reduction of costs in the operational activities (Slack, N. et al, 2013).

References

- Kano, N., N. Seraku, F. Takahashi and S. Tsuji: "Attractive Quality and Must-be Quality", Hinshitsu. The Journal of the Japanese Society for Quality Control, (April 1984), pp. 39 -48

- Lecture 5, page 10.

- Paraschivescu, A. O., & Cortirlet, A. (2012). Kano Model. Economy Transdisciplinarity Cognition, 15(2), 116-124.

- Matzler, K., & Hinterhuber, H. H. (1998). How to make product development projects more successful by integrating Kano's model of customer satisfaction into quality function deployment (18th ed.). Innsbruck, Austria: Elsevier.

- Kerzner, H. R. (2013). Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling. John Wiley & Sons.

- Liu, Y. C., Chakrabarti, A., & Bligh, T. (2003). Towards an ‘ideal’ approach for concept generation. Design Studies, 24(4), 341-355.