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Presented to:
Prof. Ehab Yaseen
OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT
CASE #1
“Electrosteel Castings Limited”
Prepared By:
Tamer Mahfouz
Heba Ali
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Introduction
This report concludes what is “Operations Strategy” and its importance to business.
The report starts by a brief summary about “Operations Strategy”, the summary states the
definition of “Operations Strategy”, its importance and how it’s used to compete with
other firms, the main elements of “Operations Strategy”, and how to become a world-class
organization through successful implementation of “Operations Strategy”.
The second part of this report demonstrates the importance of “Operations Strategy”
through a case study of “Electrosteel Castings Limited” company.
Operations Strategy
• Operations strategy refers to the group of operating decisions taken and investments
used to contribute in the successful implementation of the overall organizational
strategy.
• The operating investments can be classified into investments in operational structure
(hard issues) and investments in operational infrastructure (soft issues), for both
classes the investments should be appropriate, coherent, and based on the market
opportunities and functional requirements.
• The operating decisions encompass an array of complementary issues that typically
include the management of capacity, facilities, process technology & equipment,
vertical integration & materials systems, human resources, quality, production control,
performance measurement, and organizational design, these decisions must be
aligned with those of other internal business functions as well as the requirements of
the business external environment.
• Operations Strategy is key essential for the success of managing the firm’s operations
as well as creating customer value by developing a premium competitive advantage.
• To create a premium competitive advantage through operations; this could be done
through:
i. Developing a positioning (differentiating) operations strategy that provides
competitive advantage through one or more factor of customer value which
have been largely overlooked by competitors.
ii. Implementing the operations strategy more effectively than competitors do by
developing a tightly integrated system of values, skills, technologies, suppliers &
customers relationships, and HR approaches to get a system that is very hard to
be copied or transferred to competitors.
• For an organization to compete much better it should consider being competitive on
all or multiple of the following operational factors:
1) Flexibility in modifying production mix, volume, and processes.
2) Delivery timeliness and reliability.
3) Quality performance such as conformance, reliability, durability, …etc.
4) Cost.
Where these factors represent either the competitive priorities (intended strengths) or
competitive capabilities (realized strengths) and order qualifiers or order winners.
• For an organization to enhance its competitive position, it should increase the
operations effectiveness by carefully aligning & configuring the operating processes,
systems, & strategies to produce an overall system that is so difficult to imitate.
• A key factor of successful implementation of operations strategy should focus on the
processes employed to make the operating decisions as well as the content of these
decisions, also the overall strategic planning process should include an audit of the
organization’s operating capabilities.
• The roles of operations strategy can be classified into:
1) Stage 1 – Internally Neutral: Operations strategy seeks to minimize the negative
