Operational Management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Operational Management - Essay Example For example, the researcher as part of the product designing division works range of consumer items like outerwear, Protective Fabrics, bike wear, fibre strings, running wear and filters and more than 50% of the revenue of the company comes from the above mentioned products (Gore, 2013a). Therefore, it can be surmised that the researcher as part of consumer product designing team put significant contribution in achieving top and bottom line growth for W L Gore & Associates. Before going to the main discussion, the essay will briefly describe the business operation of W L Gore & Associates. W L Gore & Associates W. L. Gore & Associates, Inc was established in 1958 by Genevieve (Vieve) Gore and Wilbert L. (Bill) (Gore, 2013b). The company is headquartered at Newark, Delaware while employee base of the company is more than 10,000. The company specializes in offering industrial products like fluoropolymer, polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), versatile polymer etc which are being used for med ical implants, fabric laminates, signal transmission etc (Gore, 2013c). In case of consumer products, W. L. Gore & Associates offers fabrics and polymer items which can be used by customers for leisure activities, clothing and protective measures during adventure sports. As the research is working on consumer product designing division, therefore, the study will only focus on consumer items of W. L. Gore & Associates in order to address the research problems in focused and precise manner. Operations Tasks Consideration of the research works of Slack (2004) and Slack and Lewis (2008) reveals that marketing and operation management are closely related and both the aspects complement each other. According to Slack (2004) and Slack and Lewis (2008), marketing function works well when it comes to identifying the needs of customers but a firm needs to implement operational strategy in order to provide the required products or services and resources which can satisfy the need of identified need of customers. In case of W L Gore & Associates, four dimensions of operational strategy designed for offering consumer items like outerwear, Protective Fabrics, bike wear, fibre strings, running wear and filters can be defined in the following manner. Figure 1: Four Dimensions of Operational Strategy (Source: Slack and Lewis, 2008) In Top Down approach, top management of W L Gore & Associates suggests the product engineering team to design products which can fit functional strategy of the company, in Market Requirement, task of the operational team is to design items as per requirement of customers identified by marketing department of W L Gore & Associates, in Bottom up approach, operational team of W L Gore & Associates needs to optimize cost and resource allocation from their daily operational experience while working on product designing and in Operational Resource, operational team of W L Gore & Associates needs to conduct resource audit in order to understand existing fi nancial and non

Adaptive Culture and Cultural Artifacts Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Adaptive Culture and Cultural Artifacts - Essay Example While the organization needed to know every accurate detail about its stakeholders, the latter also needed to provide an honest and realistic output of needs or wants that are to be fulfilled. In other words, information is the framework of those mentioned requisites; its timing and accuracy significantly determine the capability of the organization to process and integrate it with the organizational processes and practices. Moreover, all other aspects that serve to shape an organizational culture has to be taken into consideration -- its level of impact on organizational culture should determine its ability to be incorporated in the whole adaptive culture-framework. While in general, these aspects are conveniently referred to as processes and practices, in specific it includes policies, competencies, reinforced norms, et cetera. A more binding reinforcement for an organization aspiring an adaptive culture is the top management’s commitment. Additionally, the organization†™s people should be tirelessly reminded of the purpose of such adaptive culture. Both commitment and purpose are consistent ‘reinforcers’ of any desired organizational culture, and adaptive culture is no exception. I think that our organization has a relatively strong culture. First, because everybody knows what and who we do for; more than just profit or bonuses, we serve people. Every business unit, whether directly or indirectly involved, recognized its part in the whole value chain. In other words, each of us, from top to the bottom level, could identify ourselves in the organization’s collective mantra. Moreover, this recognition is reinforced through the individual integration of our own task to the company’s core task. Second, our Human Resource Recruitment filters the entrant workers; they make sure that the individual’s goals are well aligned or approximately paralleled with the company’s. Moreover, the HR people look at the