Chapter 2

SteveP

Summer 2016

Extra Credit 2

        The Operations Management course has greatly increased my interest in the operational aspects of businesses.  My current role is one of Engineering and operations support for a software and services company.  I have always intended to pursue a purely engineering role long term, but from the first day of class, I could how the use of a properly modeled operations structure is the real glue for solid organization.

The initial overview that discusses the layers, sales and marketing, operations and finance, has helped me look at my current role differently.  Operations and operational support play integral roles in all service or production organizations and this holds true for mine as well.  Several topics peaked my interest throughout this course but two were something I feel really helped me better understand the usefulness of operations management methods.  The first is using formulas to better understand and determine the best facility locations, and the second is forecasting.

I was very impressed how the process in determining the location of a new facility could be broken down mathematically.  In my engineering role, I rely heavily on numbers and metrics to back up assumptions and verify options available.  This analysis, along with other factors helps me to determine the best option and path for a given project.  I’d previously not given much thought on the use of data in determining a physical local for an operation, and found the process to determine this can very easily be applied for other projects as well.

In forecasting, I was keen to better understand the quantitative forecasting methods and believe I may pursue this further outside of class.  Although both qualitative and quantitative methods were very valuable to learn, I believe I’ll be able to apply quantitative forecasting immediately in my current role.  

This was my first Operations Management class and I found it to be extremely useful and applicable. In fact in the future I will advise new business students to take OM as early in their schooling as possible as I think the topics covered in this class are valuable and it may help persuade some non-declared students to take a deeper look at majoring in supply chain management.  I found the explanation of Six Sigma and its back ground useful also.  I intend to look at potential opportunities outside of my organization in the next 6 months, and being in the heart of the auto industry it was invaluable to have an instructor with a background in this field and able to give real world examples often that will pertain directly to the markets close to our area.  I will highly recommend this class to anyone interested in working on the auto industry as I feel a basic understanding of core topics covered will go a long way for any employee in understanding the operations process and help to better understand how their role fits into the larger picture.