Design operations

You are the operations managers of a company planning to open a chain of large computer stores in major cities. You plan to offer small businesses a range of hardware, including servers, PCs, and cell phones, and software applications that work on both the Windows and Linux platforms. Your business model is to offer small businesses "one stop shopping." Your designers, salespeople, installers, and service and maintenance employees will be expected to provide a solution that matches each customer's specific needs.

You are meeting to decide how to design your operations and materials management processes to provide the best quality solutions at the lowest possible cost.

1. Analyze the problems, issues, and tasks employees will have to solve to best provide such a service to customers.

2. Based on this analysis, what kind of work methods and procedures will be needed to achieve your goals? In particular, what kind of operating system-small-batch, mass, or flexible production-will you use?

3. How will you organize employees and coordinate their activities?

4. What kinds of materials management techniques will you need to develop to control OMM costs and yet provide excellent customer service?