Module 1: Operations Foundations

What Operations Managers Do

Every organisation exists to deliver something: a meal, a loan, a delivered parcel, a repaired phone, a lesson. Operations is the part of the organisation that actually produces and delivers that product or service, day after day. Marketing may win the customer and finance may count the money, but if operations fails, the promise to the customer is broken. Understanding what operations managers do helps you see where value is created, where money is lost and where you can make the biggest practical difference.

The core job: turning resources into value

An operations manager is responsible for the system that transforms resources such as people, materials, equipment, information and money into outputs that customers value. In a bakery this means flour, ovens and bakers becoming bread on the shelf by 6 a.m. In a bank branch it means staff, systems and procedures becoming accounts opened and loans processed. In a logistics company it means vehicles, drivers and routes becoming parcels delivered on time.

The job usually covers five broad responsibilities:

• Designing processes: deciding how work flows from start to finish, who does what and in what order.
• Planning and controlling: matching capacity to demand, scheduling people and equipment, and tracking whether work is on plan.
• Managing quality: making sure outputs meet the standard customers expect, every time.
• Managing resources and costs: inventory, suppliers, equipment and staff time, used without waste.
• Improving: finding and fixing problems so the operation gets better over time rather than simply surviving each day.

The five performance objectives

A useful way to think about what operations must deliver is a set of performance objectives commonly taught in operations management:

Many textbooks list these five together. They often pull against each other. Holding extra stock improves speed and dependability but raises cost. Running machines flat out lowers unit cost but reduces flexibility. A key skill of an operations manager is deciding which objectives matter most for the business strategy and making trade-offs deliberately rather than by accident.

Worked example: a Nairobi courier business

Imagine you manage operations for a small courier company in Nairobi that delivers parcels for online shops. On a typical day your work might include:

1. Checking the morning dashboard: 340 parcels to deliver, 3 riders off sick, 2 motorbikes in for service.
2. Re-planning routes so the remaining riders cover the priority zones first, and agreeing with two shops that their non-urgent parcels go out the next morning.
3. Investigating why 12 parcels were returned yesterday as "customer not reachable" and finding that phone numbers were being typed incorrectly at intake.
4. Agreeing a fix with the intake team: phone numbers are now read back to the shop before the parcel is accepted.
5. Reviewing fuel costs for the month against the budget and noticing one route uses far more fuel per parcel than others.

Notice the mix. Some tasks are firefighting, some are control and some are improvement. Good operations managers deliberately protect time for improvement, because if every day is firefighting the same fires keep returning.

Operations in services and manufacturing

Operations management began in factories, but most operations today are services. Services have some special features: the customer is often present during the process, the output cannot be stored for later, and quality is judged partly by the experience. A hotel room that is empty tonight cannot be sold tomorrow. This makes capacity planning and customer experience even more important in services. The tools you will learn in this course apply to both, with small adjustments.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Treating operations as purely administrative. Operations decisions shape customer satisfaction and profit directly.
• Chasing every objective at once. Choose which performance objectives matter most for your customers and align the operation to them.
• Living in permanent firefighting mode. Fix root causes, not just symptoms.
• Ignoring the people. Processes are carried out by people. Their skills, motivation and ideas determine whether any system works.