M4E #10: What is an Operations Strategy
Until now, we have mainly touched topics related to industrial processes and the shop floor. However, a good manufacturing business must behave like a well oiled and coordinated machine at several levels and departments. This is where Operations Management works its magic.
First of all, we need to understand what Operations means. We can say that Operations are “the business activities that a firm engages in to convert materials into finished products or services, sell them to customers, and earn a profit“. Hence the importance of designing a good strategy to guide these business activities. Today’s video from ETH Zürich gives us a good intro to this concept:
Time for Insights
In summary, we can say that an operations strategy is composed by a set of plans and actions aimed to define how a company will compete in the market with its portfolio of products and services.
The plan and actions defined in an operations strategy impact in aspects related with manufacturing, logistics, product design, supply chain strategies and many more concrete business areas. It’s very important to have lean methodologies in mind from the beginning when designing these strategies.
Professor Torbjørn Netland tells us in the video how HelloFresh uses data to forecast trends and analyze customer behaviour. Take into account that not every company has this large amount of data available to analyze from the beginning, but a digital transformation strategy shall follow closely the stages of Hayes and Wheelwright. Think big, start small, learn fast, but also plan properly.