STRATEGIC OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT AND OPERATIONAL RESEARCH (PS4S26)

STRATEGIC OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT AND OPERATIONAL RESEARCH (PS4S26)

SUMMATIVE ASSESSMENT PARTS A & B

 

 

Course: MBA – Master of Business Administration – V1

Teacher: Eunice Yewande Oke

Student name: Lorraine Samu

Date of submission: 24^th May 2020

 

 

++

 

 

Preface

This assessment comprises of two parts which consists of reflective analysis and examining a job description for an Operation Manager’s position. In the first part of the assessment the author attempts to critically reflect on a personal skill which they have identified with the aim to develop and improve throughout the module. In this reflective analysis the author will detail what they did to improve the said skill and how effective their efforts have been. The second part of the paper seeks to use the knowledge gained in Operation Management module to explore the operational challenges that the successful candidate would face as well as identify and explain how to mitigate the issues identified.

PART A: REFLECTIVE ANALYSIS ON EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION

In the first week I was required to choose one personal skill to improve during the course of the module. I was provided with the Belbin Self Perception and Honey and Mumford learning styles questionnaires to self assess and guide on the choice of skill I wish to improve. I chose team working skills in which I discovered that a lot of factors like communication skills and negotiation come into effect. I narrowed down to focus on enhancing my communication skills only as my job relies on transfer and exchange of quality information for accomplishment. My choice is based on my experiences with patients and their prescribers. I worked in a referral hospital where patients come from diverse cultural and education backgrounds for medical attention. As a pharmacist I would meet patients who came for their prescription refills without knowledge of their medical condition or some did not even turn up to collect their medication when scripts are left by nurses at the Out Patient Dispensary window. An older woman commented ‘the instructions you just gave me on taking these drugs were as clear as mud’ when I handed her medications that she will be taking for the rest of her life. At that moment, I was challenged on how I bridge the communication gap between patients and healthcare providers.

Despite the efforts by National Health and Awareness Ministry to provide a holistic quality health services to the public, in practice, communication at fairly proficient level is a major challenge. This becomes a problem especially in rural areas where people are unable to communicate in English. Many patients do not have a clinical background to translate the overwhelming information communicated by medical experts. This gap in communication is even more pronounced in complex diagnoses particularly in the elderly. Patients are left confused and will not actively participate in their health. Healthcare professionals make practical decisions relying on patient medical complaints, source of information and engagement with patients.

Communication challenges are manifold in a pharmacy setting because of the diverse views on the nature of medical encounter, over and above, pharmacists lack the ability to communicate in a culturally sensitive manner. Bridging the gap between patients and pharmacists will facilitate transfer of information to patients about drug effectiveness, drug interactions and cooperation with drug regimens (Higby and Stroud, 1997) and patients being able to ask questions (Van de Poel et.al, 2015) about the effect of drugs on their health and patients or carers summarising what has been said in simple and common language. As a pharmacist, we are the last port of call in delivering patient care and most patients feel comfortable to ask a pharmacist than their physician about their condition and what is expected of them so that they take total control of their health. Clinical pharmacists are able to close this communication gap caused by power distance by designing pharmaceutical care plans and reviewing medication effects with patients or carers so that patients have knowledge and confidence to be more in control of their conditions.

Effective communication is an essential tool where more than two people exist. According to Oxford Learners’ dictionaries (2020), communication is ‘the activity or process of expressing ideas and feelings or of giving people information’. If communication is not done right, the effects can be detrimental to the organisation or the person. Some of the effects of poor communication include time lost as instructions may be misunderstood or jobs repeated, low productivity and frustration as people are not sure of how and what to do in a task, messages may be misinterpreted, product may be wasted if not handled properly and people’s safety may be at risk.  Sharing information that is accurate, accessible and acceptable should be provided so as to meet organisational goals. Appropriate channels of communication should be identified that assist managers to carry out operations. Managing information received is one of the aspects of communication.

As a community pharmacist, effective communication is of great importance where quality information must be interpreted to patients. My job requires a possession of good knowledge of medication use and lifestyle advice, henceforth good communication skills with patients cannot be overemphasised.

Upon taking Belbin test and Honey and Mumford learning style questionnaire (1986) it was clear that I needed to develop communication skills. Most of my communication form is face-to-face and through telephone which includes advising doctors on selection and dosages, enquiring on patients’ medical insurance claims, negotiating prices with suppliers and also counselling patients about the medication they are taking and through non verbal means such as writing procedures and policies. It is therefore vital that I communicate effectively and early on before patients take medication to prevent errors in their treatment and deliver best pharmaceutical care. I work in a busy pharmacy which means we need to replenish stock at certain minimum quantities therefore without cooperation and coordination at the workplace it will be difficult to achieve a common goal. I have learnt to listen and in order to better understand so that as an organisation we can function healthily and effectively. At work I encourage open communication so that everyone’s ideas can be sought after and also provide feedback.

Finally, this paper seeks to provide information from a reflective nature of effective communication skills in operation management. The subsequent paragraphs aim to explore what I did to improve my communication skills and how effective my efforts have been.

The importance of communication skills towards productivity
My experience in community pharmacy has introduced me to elements of importance that are necessary when communicating to patients and stakeholders which include leadership, active listening, time management and negotiation. Lack of communication can lead to the collapse of any organisation. Communication internally and externally can lead to productivity and helps to avoid unnecessary delays in implementing policies. With proper communication about services offered at our pharmacy this helps avoid unnecessary complications for patients and better control of their conditions. When information is communicated effectively to clients, this can influence consumers of my professional knowledge and drug information to work in the benefit of the organisation and optimize treatment success rates. While I am confident in my technical knowledge and understanding, transferring a succinct knowledge to others is a skill I hope to develop further. When writing operation procedures and policies at the inception of our chain pharmacies I was able to draw on learning experiences to create a database of common near-misses that occur in dispensary for dispensers to put in place that serve to prevent medication errors. As a new Managing Director with a lot of work, I found it challenging to create time to share this knowledge with the organisation but rather it was used to meet regulations. Even though all chain pharmacies had the document in their premises, mistakes continued to happen because firstly no one told them the importance of those technical documents and secondly because it becomes so busy in pharmacy for pharmacists to create time to read and reflect on their work. Consequently, medication errors were repeated due to lack of monitoring and training. Upon seeing number of complaints from doctors and patients across our chain pharmacies, first I felt like a failure and was overwhelmed with fear of losing licensure as I was not meeting the minimum standards, but later I realised a shortfall on my part and these comments were necessary to improve on delivering quality healthcare. This reminded me that I must conduct training on policies for staff with the purpose to promote cooperation and mutual understanding. I took all the comments on board to work with doctors and nurses to impart the knowledge and guide therapeutic decisions, provide product information and education on how to administer newer formulation of medicines, aseptic techniques and management of ward inventories. Additionally, patients needed the correct information and motivation to take the medicines as prescribed. Apart from labelled information on their medicines, they needed to know what therapeutic outcomes to expect and how soon and what not to expect and understand when it is appropriate to modify own dosing regimen based on response and side effects. The management, staff and students of the pharmacy were trained to follow procedures and policies to ensure work was done correctly first time and interacted in a multidisciplinary setting to engender a team approach to patient care. Management was able to learn about staff problems, customer complaints and demands so that they can be managed properly. Communication played a vital role here. It became, thus a part of education, leadership and guidance function of management. Medication safety is an area that needs thorough understanding at all levels as part of the quality management systems established. Sound management of medication safety systems when they are well implemented can reduce huge financial liability associated with patient harm and litigations for compensation.  As part of management, documentation and analysis of the errors are crucial for further learning of the events and corrective action. Instead of meeting the requirements on paper, the written policies were also implemented and employee productivity was achieved with less errors. Employee performance was reviewed against the set procedures and policies and where problems identified in employees, processes were re-evaluated and continuous personal development was instituted. This led to a smooth flow of operations, doctors and clients were happy about this development.

The importance of communication skills towards customer relations
Appropriate medium to communicate across different stakeholders was determined. This information must be accessible through various platforms where the market is found, such as social media platforms, radio broadcasts and websites. In practice, communication of services offered to customers, creates a good image to the brand and while promoting wellbeing of our customers, patients. Communication brings to surface customer suggestions, dissatisfaction, misinformation, difficulties, changes and concerns to help management to provide good customer service. We depend on technology to use real time channels of communication to give customers feedback on medical claims, availability of medicines from suppliers and choices on products and equipment. As management I have to lead in providing accurate and transparent information so that both employees and customers have confidence in our services. The organisation follows customer focused relationship management processes that aim to provide customer satisfaction and customer loyalty by offering more responsive and customized services to each customer. I requested mobile service providers and Integrated Patient Management System personnel that link patients medical booking to their mobile for improvement of adherence and medical review.

In the earlier days running a business as a Manager who did not previously have the skills in customer relationship management became a learning curve. I had a belief that it was adequate to attract and retain customers as long as we met all their needs and operating long hours. I knew that if I ordered enough stock based on market knowledge for all pharmacies according to the season, I will be able to satisfy our customer demands. Unfortunately the unanticipated happened, such as patients requesting for unavailable and expensive brands.  Stock was lost due to expiry, damages and redundancy. Due to this, I asked employees views and potential customers through web based customer surveys in order to understand their needs and offer customized products as well as through suggestion boxes. Customers were happy because they felt that the company was caring for their needs by selling what they need. Working from customer point of view gave me a sense of accomplishment in terms of providing solutions to customer needs while building a strong customer base.

The importance of communication skills towards ideas and innovation
Open channels of communication can lead to new ideas and innovation in a number of areas. A positive work environment can motivate employees to focus on making improvements and spotting opportunities that can promote further success. The ability to connect and communicate effectively with people can lead to success and open up to things that were never imagined. A manager cannot afford to be careless with their words. Results of our work come from how we communicate with each other and how we support new ideas. A rapport across departments with management is created by feeling of commonality because people are able to express their ideas without fear or favour. Employees that understand what is important to their companies can focus on making improvements and spotting opportunities for innovation that can help further success. When employees know that their ideas will be sought after, that company leaders will have open minds and be responsive to their feedback, they are more likely to contribute their ideas. Customers also can be a great source of ideas and innovation to help improve products and services.

The importance of communication skills towards employee management
Employees need to believe that they are valuable to the organisation. They need a sense of belonging and self worth. This comes from leaders who listen to their concerns. The more employees know about the company, its culture, products and services and its response to any negative issues, the better job they can do of serving as ambassadors to the community. A study by Yu et al 2007 showed that teams with trusting and effective leadership positively impacted team members’ individual and collective performance. As an example, when I realised that our sales figures were dropping while company costs continued to climb, communicating directly with employees proved fruitful. Mutual understanding reinforces business vision, connects employees, fosters teambuilding, facilitates change and drives business results. When the company sales continued to fall, employees shared with management alternative and achievable plans. When employees are empowered they become a valuable resource and encouraging open communication allows this to happen.

The importance of communication skills towards building strong relations
Communication is a form of public relations and enhances strong relationships. Effective communication is key to building trust and loyalty with customers and partners. Lack of communication can lead to misunderstandings, lack of information, poor performance, high employee turnover and absenteeism. Implementation of a stakeholder communication making sure employees, partners, customers and financial community clearly understand long, medium and short term goals is achieved through effective communication. When employees are empowered they become effective and efficient at what they do. Organization communication will lead to strong teamwork and ability for employees at all team levels to work together to achieve company goals. Communication provides a critical link between core functions.  People decide who they want to do business with, for this reason I placed emphasis on open and often communication and having clear, committed communication policy, strategy and processes. This earned our company credibility and support from the community and garnered new investors.

CONCLUSION
Effective communication creates a mutual understanding environment between management and employees and plays a critical role in productivity, customer relations, employee management and innovation. I have learnt that effective communication is an ongoing continuous improvement exercise and managers use communication to perform their duties such as planning, organising, leading, controlling and motivating. Miscommunication can be costly to individual, customers and to organisations. All successful companies rely on accurate information provided at the right time to grow their market. Effective communication skill can be realised when one applies emotional intelligence to get the correct information across and choosing the right atmosphere and language is crucial for the success of the business. Managing communication and providing support to employees help provide quality service to customers. I am pleased that I have enhanced my communication skills by designing pharmaceutical care plans combined with medication use reviews and feedback provided by other healthcare providers not to mention that providing patients with information on treatment has beneficial effects on recovery.

REFERENCES

Higby, G. and Stroud, E. (1997) The Inside Story of Medicines: A symposium. American Institute of the History of Pharmacy. Madison, WI. USA. Google books

Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries, (2020). Available at: https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/communication?q=communication Accessed on: 22^nd May 2020.

Van de Poel, K. Van Dyk, T. Gasiorek, J. Blockmans, I.G. (2015) A needs for communication by pharmacists in a multilingual setting: First steps towards materials and syllabus design. Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics, (44), 189-212.

Xiaomin, Y. Yang, W. Wei, S. (2011) ‘The Relationship between Transformational Leadership and Leader-Member Exchange in Different Culture: A Meta-Analysis’, Wireless Communications, Networking and Mobile Computing (WiCOM), 23^rd – 25^th September, Engineering village, Available at: https://www.engineeringvillage.com/home.url [Accessed on: 22^nd May 2020]

 

PART B: CHALLENGES OF OPERATION MANAGER AND SOLUTIONS

Introduction

Operations management is of strategic importance to organisations. The strategic role of an Operation Manager is to contribute to the direction and plan of the business to support its long term competitive advantage. The main goal of operation strategy is to provide a plan for the operation functions so that it can make the best use of its resources. The strategic role of Operations Manager is to manage the costs so that the business can maximise the profits. Operations Manager function is responsible for managing resources needed to produce company goods and services. Operations management specifies the design and use of resources that support the business strategy. A number of important areas that fall under the responsibilities of an Operations Manager include the location decisions, capacity management, human resource management, managing of technology, integration and affiliation, processes management and management of value. The operation strategy should be aligned with company business strategy to enable the company to achieve its long-term plan.

Operations manager promotes culture of the organization by
encouraging top performance and high morale. The Operations Manager should be able to manage their staff to ensure that the organization mission is accomplished. The Operations Manager should be a strong communicator so that the team understand their daily goals and tasks, being positive, open to change as the organisation has to be continually changing in order to be successful and understanding how important is to operate with speed, accuracy and efficiency. The operational aspect of the business must be fast, to a high standard and above all consistent. A good Operations Manager ensures their team is aware of the required standards expected of them. They will set very high standards but will support the team in the function of their duties, inspire and motivate the team to be the best they can possible be and a high performing team is praised and rewarded.

Operations Manager is tasked with meeting the needs of stakeholders which includes making profit for shareholders, making valued products or providing a service at reasonable cost for customers and providing and rewarding employment opportunities for employees. Moreover, Operation Managers ensure all legal and regulatory documents are filed and monitor in compliance with laws and regulations. McFarlane (2014) asserts operation management as a value and quality adding approach and philosophy to planning, organizing and controlling organizational resources for optimum results in terms of efficiency and customer expectations. As the cliché goes “Operation management is like the glue that holds the organization together”.

Finally, this paper seeks to identify possible operational challenges of the Operations Manager of the advert on LinkedIn, see appendix 1.

Challenges faced by operation managers
The advert on appendix 1 shows that Operations Manager must work in conjunction with other managers in all departments like marketing, finance, human resource and responsible pharmacist to make best decisions to produce optimum outputs that deliver great customer service. Thus, they must have a general understanding of various functional teams in a company to achieve efficiency. Given the integrative nature of operation management, the Operations Manager must be technically competent to overcome potential challenges or barriers and in order to achieve positive results.

Supply chain management gives an opportunity to reduce costs but has moved to creating and delivering value for customers to differentiate themselves and to gain competitive advantage. This requires organisations to work with partners in supply chain to enable the supply chain to be more flexible.  In today’s business environment, managers are faced with uncertainty in supply chain, making forecasting very difficult on both supplier and demand sides. Companies are therefore forced to move away from forecast driven to demand driven, thus driven by events as they happen. To do that requires a lot of agility and capacity management. Operations Manager requires a deep understanding of business processes and tools to develop, test and implement changes leading to continuous improvement. Operation managers must have basic understanding of operational principles so that they can use them when required. These include lean systems, Just in time, PDSA cycles, statistical process controls and agile approaches.

The successful candidate is likely to face a number of operational challenges. The main challenges will be discussed on following paragraphs as well as recommending ways in which they could be addressed.

Staff/Skill levels
The right number of staff need to be recruited and trained ahead of demand so that they can contribute to the operational processes. In this pharmaceutical supply chain the Operations Manager engages in inter functional coordination in making the best added value decisions in order to optimize the use of resources in the creation of maximum output or yield that systems and machines that create goods or services (McFarlane, 2014). The candidate must possess a sound knowledge of operation management needed in various departments to get positive results and achieve maximum efficiency. Thus the Operations Manager is exposed to many sources of conflict because of different value systems among the organization.  Different departments should work with each other even though they come from different angles and different disciplines. OM could help avoid this by keeping all departments up to date with regular meetings, including in person meeting and office visits, weekly emails. Operations Manager must be capable of managing conflict and must be able to handle the conflicts effectively in order to improve the team’s performance (Mohammed et. al, 2008). As an example, the sales team may frequently be in conflict with dispatch team on delays of customer orders or non delivery of goods which could have detrimental impact to operation productivity. In this case, the OM should use the conflict resolution approach of the organisation. The Operations Manager could train a new employee to be more flexible in their contribution to the process. The operations can benefit from the learning curve, where a new employee can become more efficient at a given process and therefore be quicker at their job which can increase the capacity of the operation.  Operations Manager should coordinate with Human resources management to hire right people and provide tools that make task seamless. This is called a lean operation philosophy. Lean systems are so called because they use fewer skilled workforce in order to reduce labour costs and operate at low operation cost to produce a higher quality products and services (Stevenson, 2015). Managers must maintain a healthy and motivated team not just shove strategies to realise targets. An Operations Manager should be able to educate, train and manage diversity and cultural differences.  A well planned and well executed process will be required to increase the chances of a positive working relationship between different personalities and clientele. The Operations Manager should understand that it is the processes that create value, therefore strive to manage those processes in relation to the value that they envision for the organization and their customers.  Conflict can be managed by setting standard procedures and policies that guide operation of each department and specify goals and encourage open communication. The operations can benefit from the learning curve, where customer demands can be forecasted through previous year sales and market intelligence. This means less number of workers will be needed and costs saving realised. OM may outsource labour during peak seasons in light of cutting on overhead expenses. A skilled workforce will be a pharmacist who will be maintaining and improving the system as this involves a repetitive work of high volumes and low variability.

IT facilities/ technology
An Operations Manager requires a good knowledge of computer application systems. Though this may seem an easy task to accomplish, a change in operational software introduced by senior management overnight can lead to a major challenge for an Operations Manager. This will affect productivity especially during the training period, fewer tools and equipment provided to meet goals, key performance indicators and deadlines missed, workers slow to adapt to change of new system applications. Key personnel like software technicians and employees should be involved in the early process to ensure a successful application and employee adoption at the outset. Open communication channels between management and departments, extra support provided on the transition and performance support for employees will yield better understanding, commitment and faster adoption from all people expected to use the software. As Operations Managers work in different departments they must be aware of accurate records keeping with aid of computer backup data management. Doing this, will help them excel at complying with rules and regulatory laws particularly during inspection (audit purposes) and assessing the company’s long term viability. The other challenge experienced by Operation Managers is experiencing a downtime with computer systems which can cause a significant change to a process. Undoubtedly this will have a negative impact on customer deliveries, supplier orders and delays in logistics. Operations managers can avoid opportunity costs by instituting agile strategies and involving key stakeholders to reduce the waiting time like using mobile applications etc. OM should have knowledge and keen sight to recognize potential IT problems and use an opportunity to create service improvement flowcharts that show which steps are followed to resolve the issue. Also finding out best systems applications used by competitors and this means Operations Managers will focus on processes, not technical issues. This is termed benchmarking. It is a systematic procedure that measures a firm’s processes, services, and products against those of industry leaders in an attempt to adopt or adapt those that are deemed best practices (Krajewski et.al, 2013). The investment in ICT can reduce process time or even completely change the nature of the process itself. Online ordering has been a significant improvement in larger wholesalers by reducing human errors and cutting down expenses on sales people and telephone costs required to make orders and therefore massively increasing the capacity of the company to focus on meeting customer needs.

Inventory levels
In a pharmaceutical supply chain it is very important to maintain reasonable inventory quantities which meet customer expectations. After placing orders, the Operations Managers expect reliable, defect free and to the exact specifications that they ordered. Unfortunately not every time this goes as expected, products can be received damaged, expired or near expiry, wrong products, incorrect quantity and wrong consignment from suppliers outside the country. This can have significant inconveniences to the business particularly regarding National Medicine Regulations where an unregistered product has been delivered, increased storage costs and result in operation inefficiencies.

Operations Managers should establish high information sharing and high connectivity with suppliers local and abroad to eliminate human errors when placing orders and minimise adverse effects of supply and demand uncertainty. Quality checks should be standardised and implemented before stock can be dispatched. The benefits of quality control can never be overemphasised, sub standard products are spotted before it reaches distributors and wholesalers, minimises disruption to production and ability to apply consistent standard of quality to all products. Operation managers need to continually improve processes to be able to compete in today’s market. A properly managed sales system will reduce sales errors and dramatically reduce order turnaround times. Maintaining efficiency despite the need of serialization to track and trace customer packages requires robust and efficient systems uniquely customised to the business. Operation management involve more than managing costs but also being fully compliant with regulations. The responsibilities of OM include managing of value. Porter’s five forces suggest that organisations should compete in low cost or differentiated products. The OM may help reduce expenses and increase productivity by changing facility layout and redesigns using automated order picking and packing.

Regulation
Operations Managers must follow regulation as set by the government especially in drug and related substances handling. If the company does not adhere to the set guidelines and procedures this may result in company facing lawsuits or penalties. In a pharmaceutical wholesale distribution, this can happen when a marketing team advertises a drug to health facilities with unverified claims or detailing on an unregistered product can lead the company in serious trouble with the medical regulatory agency. The Operations Manager should keep abreast with new government regulations and policies that affect the pharmaceutical business and also train all employees on that information to align operations with customer expectations and regulations.

Budget
One of the key priorities of Operations Manager is to ensure that the business has enough regular cash flow. It is important that they work with their employees to understand where the money is going and keep track of company expenses. Pharmaceutical industry keeps various drugs in liquid, solid and gaseous forms, of which some are highly flammable and very dangerous. Therefore they must ensure safety of people in the premises. This needs the management to involve Health, Safety and Environment training institutions for all workers who have access to the warehouse. In this case Operations Manager will ensure that Health and Safety guidelines are implemented and managed to achieve and maintain prescribed key performance indicators. They should coordinate with finance and sales teams to maximise turnover of the branch through service excellence. The manager must be directly  involved in daily operations of supplier and customer returns with procurement team to deliver operationally excellence and service levels and manage operational costs within or below budgets.  Just in time (JIT) processes must be applied where inventory of dangerous items are purchased per order and goes straight to the customer without need of storage.

Customer service
Operational functions provided should meet pharmaceutical compliance and conduct business in an ethical manner, thus ensuring customers do not receive counterfeit products that could be harmful to either the consumer or the society. Conducting ethical business falls under the purview of the operations manager. Unethical business practices will tarnish the company or brand. Operations manager should liaise with responsible pharmacist to deliver quality products that meet customer expectations. Thus quality control standards must be in place for spotting defects or tampered consignments and addressed before items are packed on shelves and leave to customers. Items detected will be removed and the supplier notified immediately to avoid inconveniences and loss of sales. In addition to optimum stock availability and levels, after sales service is very important and helps improve customer loyalty. Open communication should be encouraged with outbound team, managing customer interface ensuring customer satisfaction and business growth. Operations Manager must have in place customer service policies and corrective actions or strategies that guide customer care team on how to assist dissatisfied customers to prevent same issues recurring.

Inventory management
Distribution of high volume and frequent orders demanded at different times requires careful designing, planning, and managing of systems. Pharmaceutical companies are compelled to apply lean systems to eliminate waste, enhance quality and meet the dynamic demands of customers. Management must constantly engage customers in testing procedures to figure out whether they enhance processes since the supply chain is built on customer pull. The end user has a vital view. It is important that OM has basic understanding of treatment guidelines which prescribers follows when deciding treatment options. In this regards, OM has to liaise with   the pharmacist and the procurement team to streamline process for unnecessary suppliers and service providers. Where suppliers do not meet set standards, terminate contracts and involve a reliable supplier, in this way loss on sales due to damages and returns are reduced.

CONCLUSION

OM acts as a general overseer of an organisation. OM should build on his/her knowledge of operation management and other functional activities to develop, implement and evaluate operational strategies. Without appreciating this interconnected relationship it will be difficult for OM to provide goods and services of high value and quality. In summary, an operations manager cannot plan, organize or control systems and processes that are sustainable without engaging relevant stakeholders. It is important that the incumbent possess technical, systems and processes competence to be capable of adding value and quality to products and services.

REFERENCES

Krajewski, L.J., Ritzman, L.P., and Malhotra, M.K. (2013) Operations Management: Processes and Supply Chains, 10^th Edition. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc., Prentice Hall.

McFarlane, D. A. (2014) The Challenges of Operations Management for Business Managers. International Journal of Operations and Logistics Management. 3 (1), pp. 16-29.

Mohammed U.K., White, G.R.T. and Prabhakar, G.P (2008) Culture and Conflict Management Style of International Project Managers. International Journal of Business and Management, 3(5), pp 3-11.

Stevenson, W.J. (2015) Operations Management. 12^th Edition, McGraw Hill Education, 2 Penn Plaza, New York, 10121. Available at: https://unicaf.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781309071120/cfi/8!/4/4@0.00:0.00 [Accessed on” 22^nd May 2020].

APPENDIX 1 Advert for Operations manager position downloaded from LinkedIn

Operations Manager

Company Name UPD Company Location Western Cape, South Africa

We are looking to recruit a permanent Operations Manager to work for United Pharmaceutical Distributors (UPD). The role will be based at our Cape Town branch and will report to the General Manager (Coastal).

Job Purpose:

• To manage all inbound and outbound operational activities of the wholesale and distribution departments within required SLA’s, including receipt, storage and control of stock; assembly of orders; dispatch of orders to fleet and couriers; and compliance with legal requirements relating to the acquisition, storage and distribution of medicines.

Responsibilities

• Establish and maintain business standards for accuracy, productivity and reliability
• Manage the daily functions of the business
• Prepare annual performance review and reevaluate processes
• Ensure regulatory, compliance and legal rules are followed
• Manage budget to align with goals of business

Job Qualifications & Experience

• Relevant degree or diploma in Supply Chain / Logistics or related (Essential)
• Essential: 5 years experience in a warehouse environment within the pharmaceutical industry
• Essential: 5 years operational managerial experience

Job Knowledge:

• GWDP/GMP
• Pharmaceutical wholesale and distribution
• Pharmaceutical industry laws, regulations and ethics

Job Skills:

• Management/supervisory skills
• Communication skills
• Analytical and problem-solving skills
• People management skills
• Computer literate
• Attention to detail
• Ability to work in a team
• Ability to work under pressure
• Honesty and integrity

 

Essential Competencies:

• Leading and Supervising
• Deciding and Initiating Action
• Delivering Results and Meeting Customer Expectations
• Planning and Organising
• Analysing
• Coping with Pressures and Setbacks

Contact the job poster

Kekeletso Suping

Resourcing Business Partner at UPD (New Clicks Group)

Send InMail

Job Details

Seniority Level

Mid-Senior level

Industry

• Logistics & Supply Chain
• Pharmaceuticals

Employment Type

Full-time

Job Functions

• Management
• Supply Chain