Commentary: Small Businesses Need Operating Strategy
How can an operations strategy benefit your company? The easiest answer is that the business achieves more with it than without it.
The preponderance of small, and some mid-size manufacturers soldier on without an operations strategy. They live by “get order, fill order,” and discussions, usually begun at the last minute, of capacity adjustments. They complain about long supplier lead-times.
That operating model precludes agility and incurs unnecessarily high costs. It also gives constituencies reason to look for alternatives.
Most mid-size and large companies have an operations strategy that guides both longer-term and tactical decisions in support of business goals.
It’s important to not confuse an annual operations budget with operations strategy. The first is assumptions; the second, strategy.
If you’re thinking about an operations strategy, ask yourself these questions:
- Do your constituencies experience a positive difference?
- Can profitably respond to significant disruption?
- Is operational activity routine, without need for heroic action?
- Do key customers and suppliers seek to partner with you in influencing the market or creating new ones?
- Are operational risks understood, measured and managed?
- Does the operations strategy propel your business and marketing/sales strategies beyond what they could accomplish without it?
As you become more strategic and skilled at developing your operations strategy, the answers to each question will move from “no” to “yes.”
Source: Industry Week