Preface
Operation management is the management of the productive resources of the firm, which includes raw materials, human resources, land, equipment and facilities in the manufacture of goods or the delivery of services. It entails the design and control of operations processes centred around activities and people in order to provide maximum value.
Each operation comprises a set of highly interdependent sub-system, none of which can survive independent of the others. All operations produce either goods or services and very often both at the same time.
The nature of the operation is to satisfy the customer demands. The operation function is concentrated with the design of transformation process, planning, organizing and controlling their day-to-day activities, i.e. how input can be acted upon to produce the required outputs, in the right quantities, of the right quality, at the right time.
Any operations system, if examined in sufficient detail, will be found to be unique.
Dragonversion
Mrs. Burke Roche (LOC)
RocheA French engineer - Henry Fayol identified in 1930 the six elements of the management process: forecasting, planning, organizing, commanding, co-ordinating and controlling. For a specific firm, it may comprise a set of functional departments such as purchasing, production, engineering, marketing, distribution, safety & environmental protection, quality, R&D etc.
In this essay, not focusing on the macro aspects of the operation, I am trying to look into one part of the operation - management of quality in my own organization, a big multi-national health-care company - in order to further understand in a narrow approach of operation management in a real business environment.
Background
Hoffmann La-Roche is a multi-national heath-care company based in Switzerland with an annual turnover 14 billion USD and total employee of 67,000 around the world. Roche is famous for producing vitamin products, he is the first industrial scale producer of Vitamin C -...