Operation Management Series
Comment: I am going to begin this series on operations management by focusing on operations that are continuous and sustainable. Later, I will return to this series to add a project management focus. Let us begin.
As of November 2011, a series of articles and books on education, labor, and the economy was not good news and the outlook even worse. The consensus among most economist and scholars was that the world is looking at a double dip economic slump within the following 48 months and many national economies were on the brink of utter collapse which was to send shockwaves throughout the global economy. In a unique view, according to the book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, most societies failed to adequately identify and manage their sustainable environment resulting in a collapse. By environment that is inclusive of the natural and economic resources. In some cases, the societies attempted lifestyles not compatible with the resources at hand and others depleted thier resources. In a few cases the environment could not support the society at all in the first place. Environmental conditions were essentially the underpinning of the economies by providing energy, supporting food production and materials for housing, as well as other economic activities. The author looks to numerous environmental metrics to determine 'carrying capacity and capability' of a given environment. Taking this operationalized view of environmental conditions into account, the one term I saw that determined sustainability is adaptability.
Adaptability is a term that when parsed into component elements considers adjustments, effectiveness, and efficiencies that contribute towards long term sustainability. I want to avoid using the term survivability as that suggest reactionary efforts to sudden hostile conditions that require immediate and provocative countermeasures. Nonetheless, I'll draw on some of my military training in aircraft survivability and apply them to operations management in this series. Returning to the focus, adaptability is the pivotal interest in order to adjust an organization to transitioning environmental conditions. It is a long term design strategy that must be embraced through rotating management teams.
In this series, I am going to simply speak a lot from the heart and not from some overstated program ideologies such as Agile, TQM, or Win-Win. Although, I may refer to some salient points in these packaged programs as a common reference. There are also socio-political concerns that center on corporate governance. In this post series we will focus on the business importance of operations management (OM) and sustainability rather than other socio-political concerns under corporate governance. I desire to get back to OM basics, the focus on the framework under which the business operations become sustainable, effective, and efficient. I will begin by posting some previous posts here in support of this OM series. Some the of concepts I will present have been explored in earlier posts. As I develop other posts, I will add them here too. My hope is that these thoughts and ideas stir critical and creative thinking even if the specific thoughts I am presenting are not embraced.
Operations Management Posts:
Please feel free to email JT Bogden with any comments you may have.- Core Operations Management: Methods
- Core Operations Management: ManPower
- Core Operations Management: Materials and Machines
- Core Operations Management: Money
- Focus Areas of Interest: Operations Management
- Designing an Operation Part 1
- Designing an Operation Part 2
- Complex Adaptive Culture Implementation
- Complex Adaptive Management
References:
Diamond, J. (2005). Collapse: how societies choose to fail or succeed, 1st ED. Viking Adult, United States.
Friedman, T.L. (2005) World is flat. 1st ED. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. New York.
Looking forward to the series!
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