The Relationship Between Operations Strategy and Marketing Strategy

Introduction:

The increasingly volatile market conditions that now face many firms around the world are bringing new challenges to operations management. There is now a recognition that operational efficiency and effectiveness are critical to gaining and retaining competitive advantage. Survival in these global markets demands far higher levels of agility and responsiveness that was ever the case in the past. yesterday’s model of how to manage operations is now being questioned. New solutions are required as well as a wider view of what constitutes operations strategy and management.

The value that is added by both operations management and operations strategy is fundamental to most organizations. Operational activities are central to the provision of services and/or goods. Every organization provides a product and service combination. A meal in a restaurant, a visit to the hospital, buying a pair of Levi 501s, making a pair of Levi 501s, Woodstock Festival, insuring an automobile, staying in an hotel, going to the cinema, even the workings of a prison; all have operations activities and their management is central to the successful provision of goods and services. Even Government departments can draw heavily upon operational initiatives and strategies when they talk about supply chain management, lean supply, just in time and total quality management.

Operations Management:

Operations management has its origins in the study of ‘production’ or ‘manufacturing management’.

These terms still very much apply to manufacturing organizations that will have distinct operational activities that convert say, beans and rich tomato sauce into cans of baked beans to be sold by a retailer. Thus, we can initially think of operations...

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...opment of operations management capabilities that are able to coordinate functional capabilities more effectively.

In the above approaches to strategic management, the need to consider the business as a whole is outlined, to assist in reducing risk while also giving specific attention to long-term improvements. For this reason, operations strategy as defined by Slack and Lewis (2001) needs to represent four major areas of operations to aid consistent management of such an important aspect of the business entity. In the more traditional views of business, such an approach to strategy may seem like the manufacturing strategy approaches, although the operations that take place are not necessarily production. The operations could be any type of business, not necessarily manufacturing, but rather the element of the business where the transformation process takes place.