OPERATIONAL MANAGEMENT

INDIVIDUAL ESSAY
TOPIC: REFLECTION ON THE COURSE

Student Name: Phạm Hải Linh

Student ID: 11205856
Class: EBBA 12.1
Making my entrance into a business school is the riskiest decision of my life. It is because,
embarrassingly, I never thought of the potential of my career with the knowledge of economics and
business, and how I could apply what I learnt into the real world. It is only a vague vision of the future.
At that time, I did not have one sense of what my strength was in order to set some criteria to pick a
suitable university environment for myself. The only motivation was that NEU was one of the top
national universities, and all my friends at high school were competitive to step into it.

On my very first days, I used to think that doing business mostly depends on luck. It comes from a fact
that I observe that many people who have low education usually decide to ‘open a coffee shop’ and
think of it as the easiest thing a human being would do to make a living. In some cases, luck may
actually be the key factor that makes a business succeed. But the percentage is low, maybe one in
thousands of business owners can build up something successfully without proper knowledge of
running a business. Another thought of mine was that to make money, a business only had to focus on
enhancing the quality of their products, and the customers would come to them naturally. Gradually, I
realize my scope of business was too narrow and there are endless factors which contribute to success.
Success here is not only making sure that the business is getting profits, but more importantly, it is
about how to utilize every resource we have to gain the highest possible amount of money. So how do
we achieve it? That is when Operational management knowledge comes in handy.

Operational management mostly focuses on the process of transforming inputs into outputs. One thing I
find interesting is that the techniques we learn in this course can apply throughout the world to virtually
all productive enterprises. It does not even matter if the application is in an office, a restaurant, a
factory, or a hospital, as the production of any goods or services requires operations management.
Activities creating goods and services happen in all organizations, but it is more obvious to see in
manufacturing firms where the products are tangible, such as an iPhone, or a Sony TV. Other
companies may provide intangible products, which are called services. Anyway, learning this subject
definitely helps me know the process of how goods and services are produced. I consider this part to be
the costliest in an organization, and for one firm to try to be productive and save some money, this is
the part they should be taking considerations. Being good in managing operations also means that I can
have numerous and lucrative career opportunities, as everywhere needs to have operations managers.

Throughout every lesson I took in this course, one thing relating to studying methods that I learnt was
that the most useful way to absorb something new is to use them in practical situations. That's why in
every lesson Mr. Soren always asks us to do some work after explaining the basis. It is a good
opportunity for us to have a deeper understanding of what just seemed to be theoretical. The most
interesting thing is that we have the chance to use what we learnt to apply to a real firm and help them
fix problems, and not many of the courses we take at this university let us to have such precious
experience that we could never think of. This time, we luckily came and visited DKSH, one of the
world-famous logistics companies.

I remember the first lesson with Mr. Soren was about decision-making matrix, which was related to the
previous course of Critical thinking. As a very indecisive person, I think it comes as a helpful tool for
me to make my mind, not only in business area but also in other aspects of life. Before, I used to make
important decisions by list out the pros and cons of something and compare them, or in some cases, I
decide intuitively. But the matrix is much more logical, because it requires me to think and write down
the criteria that I consider essential and have a better view of the whole situation instead of focusing on
one biggest pro or one biggest con that may lead to the final decision.

Secondly, I got to get used to the phrase of ‘standard operating procedure’ and ‘key performance
indicator’.

SOP is probably the first thing I want to be informed of after becoming a new employee, as it is a
document containing step-by-step instructions on how to perform a technical, repetitive process. Even
if without instructors, following the written SOP will help a person get a task done. Most companies
have SOPs for different internal procedures, which are detailed enough to maintain lean, efficient,
uniform workflows and reduce multiple risks, including safety at work. During the trip to the
warehouse of DKSH, we also had to look at the SOP of their procedure in picking and packing the
goods, as it was difficult for us to catch up with everything the workers did in a relatively short time.
All the symbols of flowcharts that we learnt in class became useful. Somehow, I felt amazed thinking
of the fact that each and every company had such documents using the same symbols, which for the
first time made me believe that what I learnt at school was real and applied.

About KPI, I think this is one of the most misunderstanding phrases for the Vietnamese. Until now, I
have taken part in several projects and got a part-time job. But now I know that every organization I
have been part of uses ‘KPI’ wrong. They always mention it as a goal, a particular target that we have
to reach. For example, in marketing a product, every post I upload on social media is set with a goal of
reaching how many viewers, or how many interactions the post gets. Only after studying thoroughly
did I realize KPI has to go with SOP, at which we follow and measure our performance in every step
we do over time. It is an useful tool, helping a person or an organization to evaluate how successful
they are at reaching a target, but obviously not a target itself. With several KPIs, the easiest way to
report is with an executive dashboard, where we demonstrate them with graphics. If the managers want
to know the overall condition of their organization, looking at the dashboard will be timesaving
because it provides an at-a-glance view of their business performance. Based on that, they know the
progress, and in case the business is not doing good, at least they know it is time to find ways to be
back on track again.

Next thing I learnt is the Gantt chart. I was only familiar with creating a schedule for my daily life. But
to apply to a project, it is much more complicated. With the help of Gantt chart, teamwork seems to be
easier. First thing we do is to break down the project by phase and task, where most likely it is the first
time we ever think about what there are to be done in order to achieve a something. The assignment we
got in this course is a team project, so Gantt chart is well-used. The group has nearly 10 members,
therefore it is simpler to look at the chart and know exactly who is responsible for what task, task start
and end date, and percent completed, instead of having to remind each of the members what to do,
when the deadline is,… Also, it is helpful in keeping track of the progress and supporting each other if
someone is falling behind.

The most memorable experience in this course is definitely the two trips with my team to DKSH
warehouse. Once for visiting, and once for presenting our solutions to their manager. I was genuinely
grateful for this opportunity as I probably never get to see how this company operates without this
course.
Before stepping into DKSH, I thought that every logistics company has one simple job: it is to receive
goods, conserve them, and distribute them again to the customers, which include retailers and
supermarkets. However, with such a large number of goods and orders, things are harder than I
thought. They require systematic control and arrangement of each box of goods. It is interesting to get
to know the detailed process of what each employee has to do within the warehouse, from the first step
of confirming an order to packing and finally transporting it to the customer. People from different
departments must work with each other smoothly to reduce the risk of errors. More importantly, we
needed to dig in their procedures to find if there was any way to utilize time, electricity and water,
money or any other resources they have to use to operate. Finally, we did figure something and
proposed to the manager, who later gave us some compliments regarding our solution. That was the
most practical thing I have ever done using what I learnt since my fresh year.

Another thing I find valuable after the course is teamwork. Personally, I always think of myself as
someone who is better at working individually than working with a group of people. Of course, in other
previous courses of the university program, we had multiple chances to do team projects. But what we
did was assigning all the tasks to each teammate, and eventually merging our work together to have the
final. In this course, we had to get all of us to understand every detail of the project, in order to get an
agreement in identifying problems and proper solutions, to support and learn from each other, and most
importantly, to be able to do the task we were assigned in the best way we could. We are proud of what
we have done as a team, that is for sure.
Operational Management course really helps us to find the courage to contact a large firm, pay a visit
to their workplace, and the confidence to tell the experienced leader that there are things which can be
improved in their old long-lasting process. It is also about be aware to always listen to instructions,
follow the models we learn and gradually things will get done.

Being a operation consultant is probably a position I will consider after graduation. I would love to start
the whole teamwork process again, with a new company, new problems, come up with other fresh
solutions for them, and save them some MONEY.