Operations Management in Service and Manufacturing Environments
OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT IN SERVICE AND MANUFACTURING ENVIRONMENTS
In defining an organization we usually come across two major categories of organizations. First Manufacturing organization and the other Service organization. Both, above-mentioned organizations are completely different from one another and hence the role of operations management is different in both. Operations management is mainly concerned with making the proper use of available resources of the organization. Resources available to the organizations are completely different and are used by them in differently. Looking at the broader picture in a manufacturing organizations productivity is easily measured because of the production of tangible products whereas in service organizations it’s difficult to measure productivity because products are intangible (Dilworth, 2000). According to Krajewski and Ritzman (2002) the differences between the services and goods production can be classified as: Manufactured goods are physical and durable products whose quality can be measured easily whereas services are perishable products like ideas and concepts with high degree of customer contact and there quality cannot be measured easily.
Operation Managers are the people responsible for almost all activities concerned with the production of goods or services of organizations, they convert the ideas into final products. Operation managers usually work with all the other departments of a company because all the other departments are closely related to the operations department. Slack et al. (2010) has cited that wherever the word ‘produce’ is used there is some operation function associated to it. Both type of organizations have objectives of making profits from producing products or services. In manufacturing organization operations management make the use of machines to effectively assemble products whereas in service organization the operations management uses ideas and information for fulfilling the needs
In defining an organization we usually come across two major categories of organizations. First Manufacturing organization and the other Service organization. Both, above-mentioned organizations are completely different from one another and hence the role of operations management is different in both. Operations management is mainly concerned with making the proper use of available resources of the organization. Resources available to the organizations are completely different and are used by them in differently. Looking at the broader picture in a manufacturing organizations productivity is easily measured because of the production of tangible products whereas in service organizations it’s difficult to measure productivity because products are intangible (Dilworth, 2000). According to Krajewski and Ritzman (2002) the differences between the services and goods production can be classified as: Manufactured goods are physical and durable products whose quality can be measured easily whereas services are perishable products like ideas and concepts with high degree of customer contact and there quality cannot be measured easily.
Operation Managers are the people responsible for almost all activities concerned with the production of goods or services of organizations, they convert the ideas into final products. Operation managers usually work with all the other departments of a company because all the other departments are closely related to the operations department. Slack et al. (2010) has cited that wherever the word ‘produce’ is used there is some operation function associated to it. Both type of organizations have objectives of making profits from producing products or services. In manufacturing organization operations management make the use of machines to effectively assemble products whereas in service organization the operations management uses ideas and information for fulfilling the needs
Cited: by Perera et al., 1997). The customer influences the choices of the operation department of both organizations. Therefore, it does not look feasible to consider operations management as a separate subject for service and manufacturing organizations. In view of Bowen and Ford (2002) “marketing scholars have discussed the differences extensively, but management scholars have rather discussed similarities.” Hence, according to Bowen and Ford, even the scholars are in doubt whether to recognize operations management as a separate subject or the same for service and manufacturing industry. In conclusion, I agree with Winter and Kellogg (1999), the operation managers face challenges in service industry due to factors like intangibility and inseparability of production and consumption. The operation managers in manufacturing industry work on theories, tools and techniques developed in manufacturing organizations, which restrict them to be applied in service industry. Therefore it is difficult to say whether operations management should be treated as same or as a different subject in manufacturing and service organizations.