Evolution of Production and Operations Management Essay Sample

clip and cost.

Soon after their innovation in Britain. the iron-making and steam engine engineerings were imported into North America. In Canada. a few little Millss began runing in the first half of the 1800s. By the 2nd half of the 1800s. canals and railroads were built.

and lumber was being exported.The find of electricity by Edison in the late 1800s allowed replacing of electricity for steam as a power beginning. bettering the efficiency and working environment of mills.Despite the major alterations that were taking topographic point. direction theory and pattern had non progressed much from early yearss.

What was needed was an enlightened and more systematic attack to direction.

The Scientific Management Era and POM

The scientific direction epoch brought widespread alterations to the direction of mills. The motion was spearheaded by the American efficiency applied scientist and discoverer Frederick Taylor. who is frequently referred to as the male parent of scientific direction. Taylor believed in a “science of management” based on observation. measuring analysis and betterment of work methods. and economic inducements. He studied work methods in great item to place the best method for making each occupation. Taylor besides believed that direction should be responsible for planning carefully choosing and developing workers. happening the best manner to execute each occupation. accomplishing cooperation between direction and workers. and dividing direction activities from work activities.Taylor’s methods emphasized maximising end product. They were non ever popular with workers who sometimes thought the methods were used to unfairly addition end product without a corresponding addition in compensation. Surely some companies did maltreatment workers in their pursuit for efficiency.

Finally. the public call reached the halls of the U. S. Congress. and hearings

were held on the affair. Taylor himself was called to attest in 1911. the same twelvemonth in which his authoritative book The Principles of Scientific Management was published. The promotion from those hearings really helped scientific direction rules to accomplish broad credence in industry.A figure of other innovators besides contributed to a great extent to this motion including the followers:Frank Gilbreth was an industrial applied scientist who is frequently referred to as the male parent of gesture survey. He developed the rules of gesture economic system that could be applied to improbably little parts of a undertaking.Lillian Gilbreth. a psychologist and the married woman of Frank Gilbreth. worked with her hubby concentrating on the human factor in work. ( The Gilbreths were the topic of a authoritative 1950s movie. Cheaper by the Dozen. ) Many of her surveies in the 1920s dealt with worker weariness.Henry Gantt recognized the value of nonmonetary wagess to actuate workers and developed a widely used system for scheduling. called Gantt charts. Henry Ford. the great industrialist. employed scientific direction techniques in his mills.

The Human Relations Era and POM

Both Taylor and Ford expected workers to execute like automatons.

This paved the manner for the human dealingss motion. Whereas the scientific direction motion to a great extent emphasized the proficient facets of work design. the human dealingss motion emphasized the importance of the human component in occupation design. In the undermentioned decennaries. there was much accent on motive. During the 1930s.

Elton Mayo conducted surveies at the Hawthorne division of Western Electric. His surveies revealed that in add-on to the physical and proficient facets of work. giving particular attending to workers is critical for

bettering productiveness. During the 1940s. Abraham Maslow developed motivational theories which Frederick Hertzberg refined in the fiftiess. Douglas McGregor added to this in the sixtiess. In the 1970s. William Ouchi combined the Nipponese attack. with such characteristics as lifetime employment. employee job resolution and consensus edifice. and the traditional Western attack that features short-run employment. specializers. and single determination devising and duty.

The Management Science Era and POM

Management scientific discipline had its beginnings during World War II under the labels operational research and operations research. Today the footings are used interchangeably. During World War II mathematical analysis military informations lead to new determinations that improved the effectivity of the military attempt. Soon after the war these analytical methods were applied to jobs of authorities and industry with promising consequences. Management scientific discipline is concerned with the application of mathematical and statistical theory to concern state of affairss. It involves the usage of theoretical accounts to depict and supply an apprehension of a job and its alternate solutions. The aim is to accomplish the best or optimal. solution. Management scientific discipline is non a redirection in direction but a alteration in the attack to work outing direction jobs and an add-on to the tools that are available for work outing direction jobs.

Craft Production to Lean Production

In the earliest yearss of fabrication. goods were produced utilizing trade production: extremely skilled workers utilizing simple flexible tools produced goods harmonizing to client specifications. Goods were produced in little stores by craftsmen and their learners. Under that system. it was common for one individual to be responsible for doing a merchandise such as a horse-drawn waggon or a piece of furniture.

from start to complete. Merely simple tools were available ; the machines that we use today had non been invented. Craft production had major defects. Because merchandises were made by skilled craftsmen who custom-fitted parts production was slow and dearly-won. And when parts failed. the replacings besides had to be custom made. which was besides slow and dearly-won. Another defect was that production costs did non diminish as volume increased ; there were no economic systems of graduated table. which would hold provided a major inducement for companies to spread out.

Alternatively. many little companies emerged. each with its ain set of criterions.Mass production Systems are systems where lower-skilled workers use specialised machinery to bring forth high volumes of standardised goods. Henry Ford introduced the mass production to the automotive industry a system of production in which big volumes of standardised goods are produced by low-skilled or semiskilled workers utilizing extremely specialized. and frequently dearly-won. equipment. Ford was able to make this by taking advantage of a figure of of import constructs. Possibly the key construct that launched mass production was interchangeable parts.

Ford accomplished this by standardising the gages used to mensurate parts during production and by utilizing freshly developed procedures to bring forth unvarying parts. A 2nd construct used by Ford was the division of labor. Together. these constructs enabled Ford to enormously increase the production rate at his mills utilizing readily available cheap labor.A figure of Nipponese makers developed or refined direction patterns that increased the productiveness of their operations and the quality of their merchandises.

This made them really competitory. triping involvement in their attacks by companies outside Japan. Thin production systems are so

named because they use much less of certain resources than mass production systems use-less infinite. less stock list and fewer workers-to produce a comparable sum of end product. Thin production systems use a extremely skilled work force and flexible equipment. In consequence. they incorporate advantages of both mass production ( high volume low unit cost ) and trade production ( assortment and flexibleness ) . And quality is higher than in mass production. Thin production is a wide attack to just-in- clip.Table 1 – A comparing of trade. mass and thin production

The Summary

For over two centuries operations direction has been recognized as an of import factor in a country’s economic well being.

Progressing through a series of names – fabricating direction. production direction. and operations management-all of which describe the same general subject. the development of the term reflects the development of modern operations direction.

The traditional position of fabricating direction began in the 18th century when Adam Smith recognized the economic benefits of specialisation of labour. He recommended interrupting occupations down into subtasks and transfering workers to specialise undertakings in which they would go extremely skilled and efficient. In the early 20th century. Frederick W. Taylor implemented Smith’s theories and crusaded for scientific direction throughout the huge fabrication composite of his twenty-four hours. Till about 1930 the traditional position prevailed. and many techniques we still use– today were developed.Production direction became the more widely recognized term from the 1930s through the fiftiess. As Frederick Taylor’s-work became more widely known. directors developed techniques that focused on economic efficiency in fabrication.

Workers were “put under a microscope” and studied in great item to extinguish uneconomical attempts and accomplish greater

efficiency. At this same clip. nevertheless. direction besides began detecting that workers have multiple demands. non merely economic demands. Psychologists sociologists. and other societal scientists began to analyze people and human behaviour in the work environment. In add-on. economic experts mathematicians. and computing machine scientists contributed newer. more sophisticated analytical attacks.With the 1970s emerge two distinguishable alterations in our positions. The most obvious of these reflected in the new name-operations management-was a displacement in the service and fabrication sectors of the economic system. As the service sector became more outstanding. the alteration from “PRODUCTION” to “OPERATIONS” emphasized the widening of our field to service organisations. The 2nd more elusive alteration was the beginning of an accent on synthesis. instead than merely analysis. in direction patterns. Spearheaded most notably by Wickham Skinner.

American industry was awakened to its ignorance of the operations map as a critical arm in the organization’s overall competitory scheme. Previously preoccupied with an intensive analytical orientation and an accent on selling and finance. directors had failed to incorporate operations activities coherently into the highest degrees of scheme and policy. Today the operations map is sing a renewed function as a critical strategic component. Consequently. organisational ends are better focused to run into consumers’ demands throughout the universe.