OSCM Assignment No.

2
Name – Sampada Mowade
Campus – ICEM Roll No. – 71142

Que.1 What is the role of operations manager?

Ans. Following are the roles of operations manager:
1. Product Design:
Operations manager’s responsibility is to ensure that the products sold to
consumers meet their needs, as well as match current market trends.
Consumers are more interested in the quality of the product more than the
quantity, and the organization should create systems that ensure the products
produced meet the needs of the consumer.
2. Forecasting
The manager relies on past and present data on the uptake of the company’s
products to determine future trends in consumption. The forecasts help the
company know the volume of products needed to meet the market demand.
 3. Supply Chain Management
The operations manager manages the supply chain process by maintaining
control of inventory management, the production process, distribution, sales,
and sourcing of suppliers to supply required goods at reasonable prices.
4. Delivery Management
The operations manager is in charge of delivery management. The manager
ensures that the goods are delivered to the consumer in a timely manner. They
must follow up with consumers to ensure that the goods delivered are what
the consumers ordered and that they meet their functionality needs.
5. Organizational Abilities
If a manager is not organized, uncompleted tasks will pile up, important
documents will get lost in the process, and a majority of the time will be spent
finding lost documents that could be easily accessible had the manager been
organized. Good organization skills can increase production efficiency and help
the manager save time.
 6. Coordination
An operations manager needs to have good coordination by knowing how to
integrate resources, activities, and time to ensure proper use of the resources
toward the achievement of the organization’s goals.
7. People Skills
Most of the responsibilities of an operations manager involve dealing with
people. This means that they must know how to relate with the employees,
outside stakeholders, and other members of senior management. An
operations manager should know how to manage the fine lines with other
colleagues by knowing how to communicate, listen, and relate to them on
professional and personal levels. 
8. Tech-savvy
In this age of rapidly advancing technologies, an operations manager needs to
have an affinity for technology in order to be in a position to design processes
that are both efficient and tech-compliant. Modern organizations are
becoming increasingly tech-dependent in order to gain a competitive
advantage in the market.

Que 2. What are your recommendations to IKEA management for future

business strategy?
 Develop customer focus in each step of the process and train employees
to provide the best customer satisfaction. IKEA depends on its
consumers, and it needs to prove to the consumers that they can
depend on IKEA as well.
 Customer focus is very important internally as well as externally in the
workings of the organization.
 Leadership: The international size of the organization makes it difficult
for them to manage and lead the process. Leadership is required for
each different store and all the leaders need to have a similar set of
rules, aims and objectives. This can be done by training each leader of
the store together. With the values that needs to be used in the
organization.
  Process based quality management. One theory of quality management
states that if each process in the organization deals with the optimum
use of resources and time, the overall outlook of the organization will be
much different.
 Decision making approach of the organization needs to change. The
management needs to realize that they can no longer be over cautious
in their approach if they want to gather all the market share and
potential sales if they continue being conservative.
 They need information that is correct, and they need to work slowly
because of their mere size but they also need to take an aggressive role
in this slow recession filled economy in order to survive and compete.
 Continual improvement in quality: Quality management is not a onetime
approach, the organization must imbibe it into its day-to-day workings,
control the quality and give feedback on the improvements done. The
constant feedbacks would be supplied along with the advantages that
the organization achieved due to the process of quality management.

Que 3. How can Operations Management integrate with Business Strategies?

 The role of operations strategy is to provide a plan for the operations

function so that it can make the best use of its resources. Operations
strategy specifies the policies and plans for using the organization's
resources to support its long-term competitive strategy. Operations
management is one of the most crucial factors for a business or an
organisation. With the help of operations management, an organisation
can enhance its key aspect, which is to provide services or products in
accordance with the demands and needs of the customers. Operations
management include effective and efficient maintenance of processes
regarding the design and management of products and services along
with supply chain management. IKEA mainly manufactures types of
furniture, such as varieties of beds, bookshelves, sofas, and tables along
with bathroom articles and kitchen utensils. The company consists of
certain departments which are responsible for the effective
management and efficient functioning. IKEA is an organisation that
produces furniture and some operations management decisions that
are involved with this organisation are purchasing wood and fabric,
hiring and training workers, planning the location and layout of the
furniture factory, as well as purchasing cutting tools and other
fabrication equipment. These operations management decisions help
the organisation to produce furniture, which is affordable, functional,
and attractive. The primary areas of operation management that are
focused by the organisation are quality management, supply chain
management and cost. Operation management can help in various
aspects of business such as – reduction in cost, increase in efficiency,
reduction of manpower, improving moral of employees, etc. Operation
management can help in carrying out these aspects effectively. Supply
chain is also an important part of the IKEA operations and with
integrating operations management successfully IKEA can and is
operating with very good capabilities.