Personal Skills Reflection

Skills Assessment

            When we take a look at what we can offer a company and how to improve ourselves it is always a great place to start with looking at your skill set.  By improving your skill set and working on your week areas allows you to become a better employee and manager.  So as I took the assessment not only did I find the skills I would use but the ones that I could improve on.  By the time I am done writing this paper I hope you hae a feel for what skills I possess and what needs to be improved do that I can succeed.

            Probably the biggest skill that I will have to rely on for this internship is time

Management.  While working a full time job already, spending time with my daughters, my other school work, and the internship time will be tight.  Balancing the time will be a challenge but, one that is manageable and it necessary so I can complete a life goal to graduate college. This will aid me in the future as I further my career and take on more responsibilities.

            Decision Making is also a big one that will be used over the next eight weeks.  Right now the decisions are when and how to do the work asked of me but, in the upcoming weeks it will impact those interns that are placed under my leadership.  The ensuing challenge here is to make decisions that favor all those involved and not just use my own needs as the basis of the decision. The decision making process will aid me in the understanding of how to make a decision that affects those that work for me not just who I work for.

            Communication to say the least is going be huge and it is always one of the keys to success.  I am presented with communication that is more challenging than we encounter within most of our jobs.  I do not have the option of face to face communication but, have to rely on technology to assist me.  And that is not the only barrier to good communication in the internship.  With interns spread out all over the nation and in some cases world, I will have to deal with time zone differences.  Email will aid in the time zone barrier but, something are needed to be communicated using the phone.  So where communication does come with its natural barriers there are added barriers to this skill.

            Reading comprehension with be key to my success in the internship as well.  With email being the primary mode of communication I will need to be able to comprehend what the sender is needing and is needed of me.  Within the meetings sometimes there is a lot of information on the slides that will need to be understood as well.  Being able to read and understand these things properly will make the transition through the program smoother.

            As I think of where this internship may take me, I feel that Service Orientation could turn into a great skill to display.  Thinking about how I can help others and acting on it could help a fellow intern learn easier or be able to complete a challenging task.  This skill will work closing alongside Social Perceptiveness.  Being able to read people and understand what is going on with them will aid me in the endeavor to help them.  Sometimes people are reluctant to ask for help so if I sense they need help and offer it then maybe the person will be able to complete a task that is confusing them.

            So as I start to get deeply involved with this internship and now have talked about the skills that I feel I will need to the most and their role in the scheme of things, I will push myself to put all these into practice.  Sometimes I may come across something new that I need help with and it is my duty as a student and a seeker of knowledge to not be afraid to search out the help and answer.  If I sit still and do nothing to better myself then I will not only fail myself but, fail those around me that depend on my strength, knowledge, and leadership. 

             

Professional Development Plan

Professional Development Plan

Introduction:

 

Operations management is a complex, yet attractive field of study. This module was one of the most value-added modules which the author studied in this MBA program, mainly because it a completely new domain for him. It enables the student to start view operations differently, and pay attention to little details which were not of much interest before.

This post would analyze how the concepts of layout, process technology, job design, planning and control, and capacity planning have influenced the decision making and attitudes of the author, by using relevant examples.

Layout:

 

Designing facilities layout whether for manufacturing facilities or for offices is an important part of operations management responsibilities. The author could now understand the value of a suitable layout in improving the performance of the facility, and how it could be connected with the overall strategy of the business.  Production volume-variety characteristics, size and shape of the facility, material handling systems, and the dynamic, long-term plan of the facility, all affect the layout decision (Drira, Pierreval & Hajri-Gabouj, 2007).

Every layout design has its advantages and disadvantages, and based on the above factors and others such as the customer contact and perception; operations managers can chose to select a functional, cellular, line, or mixed layout.

Coming from the service domain, the author was interested in understanding layout design options and decision-making within this domain, where the unique characteristics of services need to be considered in the design. By considering the high degree of customer involvement in the service generation; the social and the social symbolic dimensions might gain even more importance in influencing the customer perceptions (Rosenbaum & Massiah, 2011), so they should be incorporated in the layout design process.

Process technology:

 

Technologies in the current environment are a very important tool to improve the performance of operations, they might even be considered as a competitive advantage. Slack, Brandon-Jones & Johnston (2014) mentioned the key aspects need to be understood by operations managers; what are the characteristics of the new technologies, how they are different from the current ones, show they could benefit the operations of the business, and what are the accompanied risks and constraints of using these new technologies.

The current dynamic environment and the continuously changing demands of customers would affect the operations in many ways, and how the operations would respond to this environment is critical for business survival. One way to respond to this issue is through the use of process technologies, as the capability to customize product is related to the level of process technology implemented in to enable the product design modifications (Marsillac & Roh, 2014) to achieve the current trends of simultaneous flexibility and complexness in the final products.

The author decision-making and attitude towards process technologies were negative in the past and always exhibited strong change resistance. However, it is clear now that changes must be done and evaluating the roles of new technologies and what they could offer to the business is very important to provide customers with flexible products and services.

Job design:

 

 The job design is an important aspect in ensuring maximum productivity and efficiency. Many factors affect job design; task allocation, using scientific approach to job design, flexibility in the working environment, team-work, ergonomic design of the workplace, and the consideration of individual behavior (motivation) (Slack, Brandon-jones & Johnston, 2014).

Previously, aspects such as flexibility in time and location were never considered by the author as important factors, but the new communication technologies and the global business environment should of course influence how operations managers perceive these factors, which might contribute to better performance from the employees.

Campion & Thayer (1987) stated four approaches to job design; mechanistic, motivational, biological, and perceptual. Of all the four approaches only the motivational one take into consideration the social aspect of the job design, but each of them have positive and negative influences with regards to productivity, efficiency, innovation, motivation, errors probability, medical incidents, and cost.

The author would take all of these factors into consideration when a job design is required from him, and depending on the actual job, the employee personality, and the organizational goals, would formulate a balanced model to design the jobs needed.

Planning and control:

 

Planning & control are two very inter-related concepts in operations, while planning would formulate plans to reach the operations objectives in the long-term, medium-term and short-term future, and control would be practiced to ensure that the set objectives are met, and any unforeseen changes in the internal or external environment are coped with (Slack, Brandon-Jones & Johnston, 2014).

The author acknowledges that control measures are not identified or performed well within his organization, and plans need to be monitored more closely. Identifying bottlenecks hindering the plans and eliminating them is what control is all about, to make sure the processes run as close to the plans as they could. 

Capacity planning and control:

 

Identifying seasonal changes in demand and capacity is an important responsibility of operations managers. Mostly every operation have a seasonality characteristic, where demands and capacity change over the months, days, or even hours.

The author could recognize from the readings in the past four weeks that capacity planning and control are of huge importance to keep customers satisfied. Several practices could be evaluated in a response of demands variance, some of them are mentioned by Meredith (1992, cited by Adenso-Díaz, González-Torre & Garcia, 2002) such as; overtime strategy, hire temporary staff, hire part-time staff, subcontracting, have stock ready prior to the demand period, customer participation, price varying, and promotions and advertisements campaigns. Many practices of them would enhance the operations performance during peak seasons, and others would enhance it during off-seasons.

Conclusion:

 

The author could see clearly how this module would improve his understanding, attitudes and decision-making processes towards about the above mentioned concepts. He realizes that most of these concepts are inter-related and influence each other, and that force operations management practitioners to always view their responsibilities holistically.

References:

 

Adenso-Díaz, B., González-Torre, P. & Garcia, V. (2002) ‘A capacity management model in service industries’ International Journal of Service Industry Management, 13(3-4), pp. 286-302, Scopus, EBSCOhost [Online]. Available from: DOI: 10.1108/09564230210431983 (Accessed: 20-June-2015).

Campion, M.A. & Thayer, P.W. (1987) ‘Job design: Approaches, outcomes, and trade-offs’ Organizational Dynamics, 15(3), pp. 66-79, ScienceDirect, EBSCOhost [Online]. Available from: DOI: 10.1016/0090-2616(87)90039-8 (Accessed: 24-June-2015).

Drira, A., Pierreval, H. & Hajri-Gabouj, S. (2007) ‘Facility layout problems: A survey’ Annual Reviews in Control, 31(2), pp.255-267, ScienceDirect, EBSCOhost [Online]. Available from: DOI: 10.1016/j.arcontrol.2007.04.001 (Accessed: 12-June-2015).

Marsillac, E. & Roh, J. (2014), 'Connecting product design, process and supply chain decisions to strengthen global supply chain capabilities', International Journal Of Production Economics, 147(part B), pp. 317-329, ScienceDirect, EBSCOhost [Online]. Available from: DOI: 10.1016/j.ijpe.2013.04.011 (Accessed: 24-June-2015).

Rosenbaum, M.S. & Massiah, C. (2011) 'An expanded servicescape perspective', Journal of Service Management, 22 (4), pp. 471-490, Social Sciences Citation Index, EBSCOhost [Online]. Available from: DOI: 10.1108/09564231111155088 (Accessed: 24-June-2015).

Slack, N., Brandon-Jones, A. & Johnston, R. (2014) Operations management, 7th ed. Harlow: Pearson Education.