Operations Management Reflective Discourse

Question: Discuss about the Operations Management for Reflective Discourse. Answer: As an electrical engineer, I was taught to work on variety of projects related to development new electronics. My work relates to designing, developing and maintaining electrical control systems and components to required specifications thereby focusing on quality, reliability and safety aspects of the work. Presently, I am undertaking operations management course as different topics that will be covered under this module closely relate to the work I was earlier engaged in and will be engaged in the future. I am sure that the study of this module will help me to form an integrated view related to what all activities are carried out before a product or service is made available to the end consumer. However, the topic controlling processes has attracted my attention the most as I had had a prior experience of working in manufacturing and process department. During that time, I had observed that after every plan, methods, procedures and standards of control were set. It made me realize that planning and controlling move in close harmony with each other in the context of operations. While planning is important to identify what is to be done, controlling is important to determine the quality of the work that is done. Controlling processes is concerned with coping with the changes that occur in and around the organisations and can be applied to any process or procedure to improve bottom line performance of the process or the procedure. Additionally, implementing control on the processes is necessary to produce output that conforms to the norms and requirements of the consumers and the regulatory authorities. Therefore, I am positive that the knowledge gained from studying this topic will be useful in my professional career. I am of the opinion that controlling processes is important from the organisations point of view because it helps an organisation to achieve its goals by reducing the gap between expected results and the actual results to the minimum. It helps in judging accuracy of working standards and to maintain order and discipline by eliminating wasteful practices and processes leading to less than desirable outcomes. Moreover, controlling processes helps to ensure efficient use of human and physical resources of the organisation leading to work and cost efficiencies. My understanding from the past work experiences are that monitoring and controlling process is far more messy and difficult to implement in real organisations. Organisations, being social systems, are complex and ambiguous. Hence, their objectives are often not clear and at times are even conflicting. Furthermore, the outputs from processes are not always measurable. In such context and uncertainty, establishing proper control is difficult to achieve. Thus, controlling processes will open in front of me the vast possibilities of things that can be controlled be it input, output or behaviour. Also it made me realize the fact that how accustomed we are to working in a highly controlled work setting. It will equip me with knowledge about different tools that can be used to control processes like control charts, cost estimates, usage estimates, etc. Along with this, I also learned how to set control standards and measuring units. I came across certain work related aspects that are difficult to measure and such processes were left at the best judgments of the manager in charge of that particular process. Therefore, a process manager has to be active, mindful of his/her work and good at identifying and pin pointing even minor irregularities at the work. As an electrical and electronics engineering graduate, I am only aware of the what and how of the machines and operations but i think that this particular topic will help me understand the why of different processes, machines and operations. After completion of this module, I will be in the position to not just understand the problems that can be encountered during a process but I will also understand why it is necessary to maintain or control processes from the point of view of a business. This module will provide me with the ability to think and take decisions from managerial perspective. Thus, the ability to think critically from managerial perspective will help me professionally and allow me to take up managerial positions in the future. Lastly, I would like to end this reflection with a quote which was continuously running in my mind all the while I was working on this report. The quote is Prevention is better than Cure. The same goes for controlling the processes and operations of any organisation. Regular monitoring and controlling of the processes helps an organisation to become proactive rather than reactive. Controlling processes helps in early identification of probable problems in the organisation thereby allowing the organisation to develop solutions to tackle them. This in turn helps organisations to save their valuable resources, time and human efforts.