Five Essay Questions-Operations Management Assignment

Five Essay Questions-Operations Management - Assignment Example That is the only way an organization can get its resulting products and services to the right market and in the right manner while considering the time and cost aspects of the processes. It is through the knowledge of OM that an organization develops its innovation towards competitive advantages, which exist inextricably alongside processes. The processes range from the use of emerging and appropriate technology to the use of existing resources to create new ones and new values. It is only when operations are managed in ways that create the notion of differentiation that such processes lead to organizational success (Chase, Jacobs & Aquilano, 2007). CPM/PERT analyzes the tasks involved in a certain project in terms of the required time to complete each. The use of CPM/PERT techniques for managing projects is founded on the concept that a certain set of critical activities that constitute the longest path through the network of activities will control the entire project. The identification of the critical activities is important because they can then be assigned to responsible teams, allowing the management resources to be used optimally by concentrating on the key activities that determine the entire project’s fate. As a statistical tool, its design is intended to map, schedule and manage complex projects and analytically represent the necessary tasks to complete a project, employing time as the variable reflecting planned performance specifications. Advantages of CPM/PERT techniques include defining dependencies and making them visible and also potentially reducing project duration. This is possible because precedence r elationships between the structures of work breakdown are better understood, facilitating the potential to reduce a project’s lifecycle. However, the disadvantage is that individual dependency relationships can