Page 350 - Operations Strategy

HoW do WE knoW WHEn THE foRmulATion PRoCEss is ComPlETE? 325

Figure 9.5 ‘fit’ is concerned with ensuring comprehensiveness, correspondence,
coherence and criticality

Resource usage

Quality
Performance objectives Dependability Correspondence Critical Coherence Critical Critical Market competitiveness
Speed

Flexibility
Critical
Critical
Cost
Development
Supply Process
Capacity and
network technology
organisation
Decision areas
Comprehensive?

● Exploring what it means for an operations strategy to be comprehensive
● Ensuring there is internal coherence between the different decision areas
● Ensuring that decisions taken as part of the operations strategy process correspond
to the appropriate priority for each performance objective
● Highlighting which resource/requirement intersections are the most critical with
respect to the broader financial and competitive priorities of the organisation

Comprehensiveness
The notion of ‘comprehensiveness’ is a critical first step in seeking to achieve operations
alignment. Business history is littered with world-class companies that simply failed
to notice the potential impact of, for instance, new process technology, or emerging
changes in their supply network. Also, many attempts to achieve alignment have failed
because operations have paid undue attention to only one of the key decision areas.

Coherence
As a comprehensive strategy evolves over time, different tensions will emerge that
threaten to pull the overall strategy in different directions. This can result in a loss
of coherence. Coherence is when the choices made in each decision area do not pull
the operation in different directions. For example, if new flexible technology is intro-
duced that allows products or services to be customised to individual clients’ needs,
it would be ‘incoherent’ to devise an organisation structure that did not enable the
relevant staff to exploit the technology because it would limit the effective flexibil-
ity of the operation. For the investment in flexible technology to be effective, it must
be accompanied by an organisational structure that deploys the organisation’s skills

M09 Operations Strategy 62492.indd 325 02/03/2017 13:27