Information technology services industry is a highly competitive cost based operation sector where availability of resources, tangible and intangible, is key to sauccessful projects. This makes a significant challenge to accurately reconcile capacity and demand. OpenText is a leader in providing enterprise content management solutions and we will analyse consulting services provided in the European market along with effect on demand in today’s changing economic environment.
Slack et al (2009, p.248) defines relationship between capacity and demand as:
"Capacity is the output that an operation can deliver in a defined unit of time. Demand is the quantity of products and services that customers request from an operation or process at any point in time".
Managing capacity is an on-going effort in the industry by reducing cost through repeat business and by engaging new potential markets and customers; This while managing customer expectations and ensuring quality of service. Customer engagement and service delivery are key to OpenText’s economic competitiveness in the market. Employee development and attracting highly skilled individuals to the organisation are essential in delivering quality service. When considering potential projects, OpenText need to know the resource availability to perform the tasks. This demand for resources is weighted against who is available (capacity) to determine if additional resources are required to meet the demand and if required what types of resources are needed. As a result the resource availability (capacity) planning is important in project (demand) planning and delivery. This demand is based on existing and new proposals for OpenText. Demand elements like opportunity, project portfolio, ...
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...supply uncertainty. IIE Transactions 34 717-728.
Slack, N., Chambers, S., Johnston, R., Betts, A.,(2009). Operations and process management: Second edition. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited
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Operations management is essential for the survival and success of any organization. According to Heizer & Render (2011), operations management (OM) is the set of activities that creates value in the form of goods and services by transforming inputs into outputs. Operations managers today contend with competition, globalization, inflation, consumer demand, and consistent change in technology. Managers must focus on the efficiency and effectiveness of processes such as cost, dependability, distribution, flexibility, and speed. The intent of this paper is to discuss the processes and operations management of the Kroger Company.
This question is about to examine the issue of what a full comprehension of operations and process administration implies in any business. During this exchange it is valuable to bring up the contrast between the specialized learning that is implanted in any operation or procedure on one hand, and the undertakings that are important to run the operation or procedure on the other. Marco Van Hopen is obviously educated and positively excited in view of his insight into the assignment.
Operations Management Process is the central arteries within the organization because it produces the planning process for goods and services, which are its reason for existent. Operations management is linked to all organizations as every organization is producing either a product or a service. However, it cannot be said to be the most important function since there are other functional areas and boundaries within an organization. In today's fast changing world, organizations have to have a tendency towards being efficient, effective and innovative to the changing environment to succeed. Operations Management has to use metrics in order for them to accomplish their task and be successful with minimal interruptions within the organization.
Marshall’s explanation of how producers decide is divided in two decision making functions: 1) the price bidding function and 2) the production level start up function. Producers do not impose prices; they propose list prices and buyers decide how much to buy at prices proposed, of course after some possible bargaining. All the same producers do not impose production levels, they invest with a production level target that sometime later may succeed or not. Both price and production follow demand in the same direction; if demand grows then producers observe that their individual inventories decrease and hence they, acting in cooperation or huge competition among them, raise their own prices and production levels. Next, each producer decide whether to accept the amount sold and keep the selling prices or to change bid prices and production levels again until a satisfactory, or inevitable, solution comes about. This satisfactory solution looks ...
Ferdows, K., Lewis, M., & Machuca, J. A.D., 2003. Zara. Supply Chain Forum: International Journal, 4(2), 62-66.
The Beer Game simulates the flow of supply chain management that occurs in the real world. While playing the practice round Beer Game and the two rounds with a group, the “bullwhip effect” was a clear malfunction in our supply chain. As backlog started to accumulate and an exponential amount of inventory began to pile up, it was evident we were affected by the bullwhip effect. The bullwhip effect is describes to be the increasing variation of demand going upstream the supply chain from consumers to suppliers. Coordination between the manufactures, wholesaler, distributor and retailer was key to playing a successful round. However, by not communicating with one another and not understanding the demand that exists, increase of costs and backlogs begin to spiral out of control. Each player controls their particular section in the supply chain, though, each player can influence the supply chain as a whole by not ordering enough or perhaps ordering too much. It was obvious that the decisions made by each player was impacting the performance of the other in the chain. We found that the longer the lead time, the larger the variation. This extended lead time impacts the manufacture to worry, and then causes them to increase their production in order to meet their forecasting predictions. Their forecasting predictions are then a result of assumptions that never really existed in the first place. As playing the role of the Retailer, I was unable to meet the consistent demands of consumers. The bullwhip effect was noticed as my level of inventory increased to over 111, and shooting up my costs to over $2,400. Thus, it was clear and obvious that every division in the supply chain plays a key role. It ultimately became a domino effect w...
Schonberger, R.J. and E.M. Knod Jr. Operations Management: Continuous Improvement. Richard D. Irwin, 1994, p. 44. 16. Selto, F.H. and D.W. Jasinski. "
Operations management is a dynamic field and presents exciting new issues and challenges for operations managers. For example, Maura Sprenger, human resources director at Techno Inc., a fast growing information technology company, is faced with a very difficult issue between winning a multimillion dollar business contract with Apex Company or run the risk of causing a very knowledgeable and valuable employee to quit.
In economics, one particular arresting feature is the price effect on demand and supply. With the aim of making commodity and service market balance, demand and supply should tend to be balanced. That is economic equilibrium. Market equilibrium is the situation where quantity supplied and quantity demanded of a specific commodity are equal at the certain price level. As the diagram shows below, at price1 quantity supplied is more than quantity demanded, a surplus occurs. That means producers cannot sell all the products because of the small demand of market. Then price will start to fall. At price 2, quantity demanded is more than quantity supplied, a shortage occurs. In this situation, more products will be made because producers have pursuit
Operations management focuses on managing the processes of producing and distributing products and services. Operations activities often include product creation, development, production and distribution. It deals with all operations within the organization. Related activities include managing purchases, inventory control, quality control, storage, logistics and evaluations. The nature of how operations management is carried out in an organization depends very much on the nature of products or services in the organization, for example, retail, manufacturing, wholesale, etc.
Operations management focuses on carefully managing the processes to reduce and distribute products and services. Related activities include managing purchases, inventory control, quality control, storages, logistics and evaluations. A great deal of focus is on efficiency and effectiveness of processes. Therefore, operations management often includes substantial measurement and analysis of internal processes. Ultimately, the nature of how the operations management is carried out in an organisation depends very much on the nature of products or services in the organisation, for example, retail, manufacturing, wholesale and etcetera.
Studying pre-existing models of operations management may be a smart approach to truly understand this field. But since technology is advancing by the minute, new concepts, and tools should be adapted for operations management. The book titled Operations Management strategically explains the different concepts, divisions, and approaches to operations management. References Encarta (2005) Definitions of Operations Management. Retrieved September 15, 2005.
Slack, N., Johnston, R. and Brandon-Jones, A. (2011).Essentials of operations management. 1st ed. Harlow, England: Financial Times Prentice Hall.
Demand is generally referred to how much ( the quantity) of a product is desired by the buyers and how much they are able to purchase and quantity demanded is the demand at a particular price that people are willing to buy. There is a bidirectional relationship between them, meaning that when the quantity demanded increase, demand also increase and vice versa. The graph below explain this relationship.