Business Operations: Production, Quality and Supply
What you must understand
Operations covers how goods and services are produced efficiently and to standard. Know the difference between manufacturing and service operations, and between job, batch, mass and continuous production, comparing cost, flexibility and suitability to demand. Understand quality management: quality control, quality assurance and total quality management (TQM), and how each affects waste and customer satisfaction. Learn supply chain management, including supplier selection, lead times, inventory control and the trade-off between holding stock and holding cost. Understand lean production, just-in-time (JIT) and the risks of minimal inventory.
Traps in questions
- Confusing quality control (inspecting output) with quality assurance (building quality into the process).
- Claiming JIT always reduces cost while ignoring supply disruption risk.
- Describing a production method without linking it to the product's demand pattern.
- Treating efficiency and effectiveness as synonyms - efficiency is resource use; effectiveness is goal achievement.
- Forgetting that operations decisions affect cost, quality, speed and dependability simultaneously.
Worked example
A bakery with steady, high-volume demand for one bread line should use mass production to lower unit cost through specialisation, but should pair it with quality assurance checks at each stage to prevent large batches of defective product. If it adds seasonal specialty items, batch production suits the lower, variable demand.
Rule of thumb
Use demand pattern → production method → quality approach → evaluation. Always state the trade-off, such as lower unit cost against reduced flexibility.