Nigel Slack, Stuart Chambers Robert Johnston 2007

1 © Nigel Slack, Stuart Chambers & Robert Johnston 2007 Instructor's Manual Operations Management Fifth edition Nig el Slack Stuart Chambers Robert Johnston Downloaded by Samuah Online ([email protected]) lOMoARcPSD|21753429 1 / 4

5 © Nigel Slack, Stuart Chambers & Robert Johnston 2007

CHAPTER 1

Operations management Teaching guide Introduction Teaching the material in Chapter 1 of the book is both the most important and the most difficult part of teaching an operations management course. It is the most important because it is vital that students develop an enthusiasm for the subject and this is best attempted early in the course.It is difficult because one has to establish some key principles before the ‘building blocks’ of the subject have been taught. We have found it useful always to work from whatever experience the students have. For post-experience students like MBAs this is not difficult. One can always ask them to describe the nature of operations in the companies they have worked for. One can even explore some of the prejudices they might hold about operations management (dull, obstructive, always screwing things up, etc.) and base the discussions on that. Undergraduates are more difficult to teach because they usually have less experience, but even so they have experienced many different operations from a customer’s point of view. Therefore, one can ask them about their recent experiences as a customer (both good and bad) and base a discussion on the importance of operations management around those experiences.Key teaching objectives • To enthuse students with the ‘hands-on’ excitement that can be gained from an understanding of operations management (‘… I want to prevent you ever enjoying a theatre performance, restaurant meal or shopping experience ever again. I want you continually to be looking for the operations implications of every operation you enter. You are going to be turned into sad people who cannot go anywhere without thinking of how you could improve the process’).• Convince students that all organizations really do have an operations function; therefore operations management is relevant to every organization.• Convince students that all managers are operations managers because all managers manage processes to produce outputs (‘Even marketing managers are operations managers. What you learn as marketing in business school is really the “technical” side of marketing. Of course this is important, but marketing managers also have to produce marketing reports and information, without mistakes in them, on time, relatively quickly, flexibly enough to contain the latest information and without using an army of marketing analysts to do so. In other words, they are producing services for internal customers’).• To introduce the key ideas in the chapter, namely, • Operations managers manage transformation processes, with inputs and outputs.Downloaded by Samuah Online ([email protected]) lOMoARcPSD|21753429 2 / 4

Nigel Slack, Stuart Chambers & Robert Johnston, Operations Management, fifth edition, Instructor’s Manual 6 © Nigel Slack, Stuart Chambers & Robert Johnston 2007 • Operations can be analyzed at three levels, the level of the supply network, the level of the operation itself (sometimes called the level of the organization) and the level of individual processes.• Operations differ in terms of their volume, variety, variation and visibility (the four Vs).• Operations managers engage in a set of activities, devising operations strategy, designing operations, planning and controlling operations and improving operations.Exercises/discussion points There are many cases and exercises that one could use to introduce operations management. The companion volume to this book (Johnston, R. et al, 2nd edition, ISBN 0 273 624962) contains several useful cases. In addition, you might like to try some of the ideas given in the subsequent text, all of which we have used.• Teaching tip – Use the pie chart that shows the consultancy spend in each functional area (a PowerPoint version is available with the other PowerPoint slides) to prompt a discussion.For example, ‘Operations and process management is the biggest single sector of spend in the consultancy market. Why do you think this is’? Try to guide the discussion to the idea that excellence in operations management reduces the cost base of the operation and helps to bring in more revenue. We call this the ‘double whammy’ effect of operations. No wonder it is important when it can do both these things. ‘Remember the old adage, profit is a very small number, made up of the difference between two very big numbers. It only takes a bit to be taken off costs and bit to be added on to revenue to make a big difference to profit’.• Exercise – A useful exercise for demonstrating the ubiquitous nature of operations is to ask the class to identify every service they have encountered from waking up in the morning to going to bed at night. The radio alarm which wakes them up depends on the operations of the radio station. The water in which they wash (presumably) was delivered by a water utility. The public transport operation transported them to college, etc. etc., through to the bar, or other place of entertainment that they finish the day with.• Teaching tip – Many television programmes can be recorded off-air, which illustrate operations. Looking ‘behind the scenes’ of well-known operations such as airports, is a favourite topic for TV producers. Any of these could be used to promote group discussions on what operations management might be like in such operations.• Exercise – The four Vs dimensions of operations can be used for many types of exercise.For example, one could ask different groups to identify different types of restaurant, food retailer, car servicing operation, cinema, club or pub and plot the ‘similar but different’ operations on the four dimensions.• Exercise – For residential courses, especially for post-experience students, an evening could be spent ‘on the town’, where syndicates are required to sample the services of a restaurant, a retail operation and an entertainment operation, and report back the following morning.This is a great way of giving participants a change of scene on the Thursday of a one-week course.• Teaching tip – Remember ‘role-play’ can be used effectively in an introductory session.The lecturer can role-play two operations managers managing separate similar but different Downloaded by Samuah Online ([email protected]) lOMoARcPSD|21753429 3 / 4

Nigel Slack, Stuart Chambers & Robert Johnston, Operations Management, fifth edition, Instructor’s Manual 7 © Nigel Slack, Stuart Chambers & Robert Johnston 2007 operations, for example, the chief tailor of a ‘fashion label’ and the production manager at a mass-produced ‘off-the-peg’ garment factory. The differences in the types of resource (people and equipment), the operation’s objectives, the four Vs and so on can all be emphasized during the role-play.• Teaching tip – ‘Role-play’ can also be used with a standard case study. For example, the Concept Design.Services case at the end of Chapter 1 lends itself to role-playing the operations manager and marketing director of the company, to illustrate their different perspectives.• Exercise – All the chapters start with an example of ‘Operations in practice’ . It is often a good idea to ask the students to read through this example and then use it to promote a discussion on the topic. In this chapter IKEA is described. Questions such as the following could be used to prompt discussion.

• Did the company simply conform to the conventional operations model in its

sectors or did it devise something new?

• What did the company do differently from previous furniture retailers?
• Why do you think it decided to be different from other companies in its sector in the

way it manages its operations?

• What advantages did making these changes give it?

See later for suggested answers to these questions.• Teaching tip – It is always worth illustrating the ideas in operations and process management with reference to not-for-profit organizations. Charities, local government organizations and particularly health care services (although some of these are private) provide a wealth of examples. For example, try asking the students to contrast an accident and emergency (A&E) department of a hospital with a unit that specializes in cosmetic surgery. The former has to cope with very high variety, high variation and high visibility.Demand is relatively unpredictable and it must provide fast and responsive service (relatively at least, it would be measured in minutes and hours rather than weeks and months). The cosmetic surgery unit by contrast, may still have high variety but, because patients are able to wait, it is unlikely to have very high variation. Because of this, the process can be planned and scheduled in advance so that there will be far higher utilization of the process’s resources.Case study teaching notes Design House Partnerships at Concept Design Services This exercise is best used as an introductory exercise towards the beginning of any operations management course. It is a 'soft' exercise in that many of the issues are in the form of opinion.Downloaded by Samuah Online ([email protected]) lOMoARcPSD|21753429

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