Introduction

Operation management is a practice conducted by companies to use their available resources effectively with the aim of getting highest overall productivity and efficiency (Parisio, Rikos and Glielmo, 2016). In this report, Nissan Motors is taken for consideration which is a Japanese automobile brand and has revenue of over 90 billion . Operations management and how it assists company to perform better by avoiding the challenges will be discussed. Besides this, Different order winners and qualifiers and how company sustain in the market will also scrutinise. Uncertainty and fluctuations and role of operation in product design are explained. At last, usage of assembly line and how it helps company is explained with the help of company example.

Operation Management and Its Nature, Challenges, Process

As mentioned in the above information, Nissan is one of the largest automobile makers in the world that’s why they require updating their quality of vehicles according to customers’ needs and competitor’s product. To attain this, Nissan invented their own production process i.e., Nissan production way or NPW (Qin and et. al., 2019). It is a combination of total quality management, Just in time approach, total productive maintenance and statistical quality management. Main idea behind their production is to maintain highest quality of product by reducing cost and eliminate wastage with the aim of providing product on time.

Nissan operation management has to bring business operations changes on a regular basis if they want to sustain in the market for longer period of time. Various decisions taken by OM is to maintain goods and services which includes lowest cost incur by providing highest quality of product, usage of available resources to its maximum, delivery at the right time and right place. Other decisions consist of layout designing, job designing for human resources, capacity design etc.

Various challenges faced by Nissan motor while working is high number of competitions in the market which has a negative impact on company balance sheet and profitability. Company needs to bring continuous changes in the product and its design which incurs high cost with the uncertainty of success or failure (Meindl, 2016) . Safety management and regulatory compliance is also comes under challenges as Nissan have to make their products by strictly following rules and regulations of each country which is hard to attain.

Order Winners and Qualifier

Nissan motors is one of the big player in the automobile industry due to which they have to make their strategy objectives  by considering every factors which could affect their operations in the present or future. Company’s objectives are zero emission from their vehicle with zero fatalities caused in the factory and promoting zero inequality at workplace. Order qualifier for Nissan is wide range of product for every income class in the society i.e., from lower income group to upper income group (Saga and Hanada, 2016) . Order winner is providing high quality of product to their customers by using high quality raw materials and advanced technology.

Product Design and Operations

Product design refers to designing or making products according to customer’s needs, demands, affordability, taste etc. Operation function in product design is to usage of available resources like raw materials, machinery, equipment’s, skills and capabilities of human resources, operation process etc so that final product would be made according to customers requirements by providing high quality of product as compare to competitors.

Demand Uncertainty and Fluctuations

It is essential for company to predict demand uncertainty or fluctuations in the market as it is directly associated with company’s profitability and efficiency. To eliminate all these factors, Nissan uses Just in Time framework to bring raw materials in the factors. It means materials is only ordered by company if there is demand in the market thus eliminating factors like material handling or inventory cost, machinery cost, labour cost etc.

Poor quality of product or high cost compare to competitors is also one of the factors behind demand fluctuations. To tackle it, company has different techniques like for maintaining floor shop, they have Genba Kanri, for checking standards of raw materials, company has Douki Seisan (Stevens, Pil and Holweg, 2017). At last to maintain whole operation unit of the company, they follow NPW i.e., Nisan production way.

Proposed Process Change

Moving company’s operations from Batch process to assembly line process will bring many changes in the organisation as both the process are different with different requirements and needs. Various concerns like finance must be properly managed by Nissan as high amount of investment is required in the starting which automatically increase cost price of the products. But on the other hand, it will decrease the cost price in the future. So company needs to make the proper equilibrium between these two aspects. Nissan employees must go through proper training as need skills and capabilities should be inculcate in them so that proper utilisation of assembly line would be attain (Teixeira, Sato and Kanno, 2015).  Accounting will become easier to manage as who process will be divided in to smaller sub-assemblies with pre-set expenses which is easy to calculate. Marketing needs to be change as assembly line is rigid in nature and no changes would be inculcate within the process which could be the factor behind non satisfaction of customer. Flow of information or information system will become easier as whole process become monotonous in nature due to which easy monitoring by the management and manager would be attain (Barmeyer and Mayrhofer, 2016).

Conclusion

So it can be concluded that operations management play a vital role in the success of an organisation and continuous innovation and changes according to external environment is required to sustain in the market. By attaining this, proper monitoring on future uncertainty and fluctuations in demand is required so that company can modify their business operations accordingly. Apart from this, assembly line assist company to have a flow of information within the organisation so that maximum utilisation of resources would be attain.

References

Barmeyer, C., & Mayrhofer, U. (2016). Strategic Alliances and Intercultural Organizational Change: The Renault–Nissan Case. Intercultural Management. A Case-Based Approach to Achieving Complementarity and Synergy. 317-332.

Meindl, S. C. P. (2016). Supply Chain Management–Strategy, Planning and Operation. Tsinghua University Press. wheat soybean others land for no use.

Parisio, A., Rikos, E., & Glielmo, L. (2016). Stochastic model predictive control for economic/environmental operation management of microgrids: An experimental case study. Journal of Process Control. 43. 24-37.

Qin, S., Man, J., Wang, X., Li, C., Dong, H., & Ge, X. (2019). Applying big data analytics to monitor tourist flow for the scenic area operation management. Discrete Dynamics in Nature and Society, 2019.

Saga, I., & Hanada, M. (2016). Nissan: Recent Evolution of. Teamwork in the Automobile Industry: Radical Change or Passing Fashion?, 54.

Stevens, M., Pil, F., & Holweg, M. (2017). On the evolution of buyer-supplier relations: The case of dismantling relational contracting at Nissan. Working paper.

Teixeira, T., Sato, N., & Kanno, A. (2015). Managing Consumer Touchpoints at Nissan Japan.