Chapter 2 Operations Management
Cost Leadership
Strategy used by businesses to create a low cost of operation within their niche. The use of this strategy is primarily to gain an advantage over competitors by reducing operation costs below that of others in the same industry.
Competitive Advantage
condition or circumstance that puts a company in a favorable or superior business position.
SWOT Analysis
Analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Access the internal and external environments
Order Winners
Characteristics of an organization's goods or services that cause it to be perceived as better than the competition
Order Qualifiers
Characteristics that customers perceive as minimum standards of acceptability to be considered as a potential for purchase
Competitiveness
How effectively an organization meets the wants and needs of customers relative to others that offer similar goods or services. Important factor in determining whether a company prospers, barely gets by, or fails
Process Flows, Flexible Flow
Organized in department by process. Health Clinic Example
Partial Productivity Multifactor Productivity Total Productivity
Productivity Measures can be based on a single input.... on more than one input... or on all inputs...
Operations Strategy
The approach, consistent with the organization strategy, that is used to guide the operations function
Productivity
The efficiency with which operations transform input into Outputs. Outputs/ Inputs A measure of the effective use of resources, usually expressed as the ratio of output to input
Market Segmentation
The process of defining and subdividing a large homogenous market into clearly identifiable segments having similar needs, wants, or demand characteristics. Its objective is to design a marketing mix that precisely matches the expectations of customers in the targeted segment.
Core Competencies
The special attributes or abilities that give an organization a competitive edge
Distinctive Competency
a competency unique to a business organization, a competency superior in some aspect than the competencies of other organizations, which enables the production of a unique value proposition in the function of the business. Difficult for competitors to copy
Product Strategy
establishes the fundamental basis on which it will compete in the marketplace.
Positioning
the process of crafting an operations strategy that assures that the firm's process/flow strategy (internal) aligns with or supports the product strategy (external) that they are pursuing in the marketplace
