1 Overview This unit begins with some explanations of culture and discussion of how to distinguish between national and organisational culture. Reading what some well-known writers on organisational and national culture have to say will help you recognise some of the main dimensions of culture and reinforces that all of us, including organisations, construct different views of the world as a result of cultural influences. Thus culture plays a key role in the ways in which organisations perceive the envi
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2.5 Project meetings schedule You need to decide early on what meetings are essential to the monitoring process. All your stakeholders will expect to receive reports at regular intervals, whether formally or informally. So you need to ask yourself: Who needs to be informed? About what? How often? By what means? Effective communication involves giving information, collecting information and listening to people. To ensure the
1.1 The transition from planning to action In working on a project, it is sometimes difficult to make the transition from planning to action. It usually falls to the manager, as leader of the project, to make sure that activities are started; but not before it is clear who should carry out which tasks, and when. The first step for the project manager is to ensure that the plan is communicated to those who will be working on the project. It is not always safe to assume that others will understand the plan or its implications, particula
Introduction The focus of this unit is on implementing a project. The first part considers how the activities of a project start. Although planning and action run side by side, it is often difficult to initiate action to progress the first tasks. Once things start to happen, the project enters a new stage. Management of the project changes, from stimulating the initial action to monitoring and reviewing it in order to control the project's progress. Control systems are essential in managing a project of a
References 5 Summary The aim of this Unit has been to give you an introductory overview of operations management. Operations is one of the central functions of all organisations The first learning outcome was that you should be able to ‘define “operations” and “operations management”’. I took the view in this session that operations embraces all the activities required to create and deliver an organisation's goods or services to its customers or clients. The second outcome was that you sh 3.5 Feedback A further component of the transformation model in Figure 1 is the feedback loop. Feedback information is used to control the operations system, by adjusting the inputs and transformation processes that are used to achieve desired outputs. For example, a chef relies on a flow of information from the customer, through the waiter, about the quality of the food. Adverse feedback might lead the chef to change the inputs (for example by buying better quality potatoes) or the transformation process 2.2.2 Mass production In many industries, craft manufacturing began to be replaced by mass production in the 19th century. Mass production involves producing goods in high volume with low variety – the opposite of craft manufacturing. Customers are expected to buy what is supplied, rather than goods made to their own specifications. Producers concentrated on keeping costs, and hence prices, down by minimising the variety of both components and products and setting up large production runs. They developed aggress 1 Understanding operations management Consider the ingredients of your breakfast this morning. Unless you live on a farm and produced them yourself, they passed through a number of different processing steps between the farmer and your table and were handled by several different organisations. Similarly, your morning newspaper was created and delivered to you through the interactions of a number of different organisations. Every day, you use a multitude of physical objects and a variety of services. Most of the physical obj Introduction This Unit is designed to provide you with a basic framework for understanding operations management and its organisational and managerial context. It begins with a brief history of the changing nature of operations in a manufacturing context, but emphasises that the operations function is significant in all types of organisation, whether they produce goods or provide services, and whether they are in the private, public or voluntary sectors. This Unit presents a process model of operati 2.8 Network analysis One of the weaknesses of simple charts for planning and control is that they do not show how tasks are dependent on each other. Network analysis (or critical path analysis) seeks to overcome that drawback, particularly where large or specialist projects are concerned. The critical path is found as a result of the analysis of the network. There are many computer software packages which can help a manager to carry out a network analysis. 2.6.1 Compendium Compendium is a knowledge map software tool for visual thinking. It can be used
for personal reflection as you study or work on a problem, and you can share your maps
with others – your summary of a topic or a learning path through, say, an OpenLearn
unit. Follow the link to find out more about Author(s): 2.3 Influence diagrams An influence diagram shows the influences, from within the organisation or from outside it, which bear on a person or unit. 2.2.2 A second diagram This first representation can be developed in the way shown in Figure 11. 2.2.1 A first diagram For example, think about the inputs to the running of a commuter rail operation and the outputs from it. The diagram might look like the one in Figure 10. 1.1.3 The intercept When a line cuts an axis, the line is said ‘to intercept the axis at’ [the particular point]. In this example, the line cuts the vertical (y) axis at £10, so ‘the line intercepts the y axis at £10’. It can also be said that ‘the intercept with the y axis is £10’. 1.1.1 The horizontal and vertical axes The total costs depend on the output, so the output is the ‘independent variable’ and the total costs are the ‘dependent variable’. When there is a dependence of this kind, the independent variable is plotted on the horizontal axis, which is also called the x axis. In the graph, output has been plotted on the horizontal axis. The dependent variable is plotted on the vertical axis, also called the y axis. The total costs have been plotted on the vertical axis. Learning outcomes By the end of this unit you should be able to: understand the value of graphics as visual thinking tools; give examples of relevant graphics used in the business context. 4.3 Market segmentation and targeting Market segmentation and targeting is at the core of marketing strategy and consumers (or potential consumers) are the key stakeholder group for both commercial and social marketers. In this section we focus on those specific consumers whose behaviour is the focus of the social marketing activity. In Section 3.2, the factors which impact
