Assignment#1 Questions

1.1. What activities are involved in the operations function? How does operations
interact with other functional areas?

 Organizing work, selecting processes, arranging layouts, locating

facilities, designing jobs, measuring performance, controlling quality,
scheduling work, managing inventory, and planning production.
 These operations are connected with functional areas which composed of
four:
o Finance
 Accounting to obtain monetary resources for production,
operations provides in production and inventory data,
capital budgeting requests, and capacity expansion and
technology plans.
 Finance pays workers and suppliers, performs cost
analyses, approves capital investments, and communicates
requirements of shareholders and financial market
o Marketing
 Marketing provides operations with sales forecasts,
customer orders, customer feedback, and information on
promotions and product development
 On the other hand, Operations provides marketing with
information on product or service availability, lead-time
estimates, order status, and delivery schedules.
o Suppliers
 Suppliers who produce goods and provide services for
customers.
 Who are responsible in ordering materials, production
schedules, quality requirements, design/performance specs,
material availability, quality data, delivery schedules and
design.
o Human Resources
 Operations depend on human resources to recruit, train,
evaluate, and compensate workers and to assist with legal
issues, job design, and union activities. Outside the
organization, operations interacts with suppliers to order
materials or services, communicate production and
delivery requirements, certify quality, negotiate contracts,
and finalize design specifications.

1.2. What constitutes “operations” at (a) a bank, (b) a retail store, (c) a hospital, (d) a
cable TV company?

 a. Operations at a bank involves transferring funds, processing funds,

providing checks, cashing checks, preparing monthly statements,
reconciling statements, approving loans, loaning money, keeping track of
loan payments, approving credit cards.
  b. Operations at a retail store involves purchasing goods, stocking goods,
selling goods, keeping track of inventory, scheduling workers, laying out
the store, locating the store, forecasting demand.
 c. Operations at a hospital involves preparing the rooms, scheduling
doctors, nurses and other workers, processing paperwork, ordering
supplies, caring for patients, maintaining the facility, laying out the
facility.
 d. Operations at a cable TV company involves taking orders, installing
equipment, maintaining equipment, keeping the shows on the air,
scheduling work, processing statements and payments.

1.3. Briefly describe how operations has evolved from the Industrial Revolution to the
Digital Revolution.

 These are the first three industrial revolutions that transformed our
modern society. With each of these three advancements—the steam
engine, the age of science and mass production, and the rise of digital
technology—the world around us fundamentally changed. The Industrial
Revolution transformed the systems by how the world produced its goods.
It was the era when machines started to appear and replace the human
power. Machines help the production process of goods, so that humans
did not need to complete the whole process of production. The changes
have developed the system where operation industries were able to be
controlled by automated systems. People started to adapt themselves
regarding the changes in order to gain more knowledge in operating the
technological advancements.

1.4. What is productivity? How is it measured?

 Productivity measures how well resources are used. It is computed as a

ratio of outputs (goods and services) to inputs (labor and materials). The
more productive a company is, the better it uses its resources. The
equation is as follows: Productivity = output/input.

1.5. What is the balanced scorecard? How does it relate to operations?

 Balanced scorecard is a strategic management performance metric that

helps companies identify and improve their internal operations to help
their external outcomes. It relate to operations because It measures past
performance data and provides organizations with feedback on how to
make better decisions in the future.