ÜRETİM YÖNETİMİ - Deneme Sınavı - 6

Corporate level strategy is the top level of strategy. If there are more than one businesses unit in an organization, corporate level strategy come into play and specifies what these businesses should be, which resources are necessary and how they will be allocated, and how the business units and corporate center will be connected and managed. A is the correct answer.

Mission: A company’s mission is the reason or purpose of its existence. Mission statement basically has to answer three questions which draw the boundaries and focus of the organization. These questions are:

E is the correct answer.

Core competencies include the following: workers, facilities, market & financial know-how, systems & technology. B is the correct answer.

Until the 1970s and early 1980s, operations strategy was often neglected by United States companies. Until then, companies focused primarily on marketing and financial strategies, and they emphasized mass production which means producing standard products in big quantities. Many of the managers did not have an operations background and therefore they did not fully appreciate the importance of the operations function. After 1980s Japanese companies began offering low-cost and high-quality products, U.S. companies started to lose market share to their Japanese competitors. In order to survive, many U.S. companies started to copy Japanese approaches. But the copying process often proved unsuccessful, because it really took time to understand the Japanese approaches. It became clear that the success of Japanese companies is based on their operations strategy; which means that all their resources were designed to support the company’s business plan. D is the correct answer.

Harvard Business School Professor Michael Porter says that companies often do not understand the differences between operational efficiency and strategy. Operational efficiency could be defined as performing operations well when compared to the competitors. But a strategy is a plan for competing in the market. A is the correct answer.

Stage 1: Internal Neutrality: In this stage, the contribution of operations function is at the poorest level. The contribution of operations function to competitive success is very little or it is holding the company back from competing well. It is inward-looking which means the main goal in this stage is being internally neutral. It only attempts to improve competitiveness by ‘avoiding making mistakes’. A is the correct answer.

Cost: Competing on cost means delivering a service as a product at the lowest cost when compared with competitors’ services or products. B is the correct answer.

Flexibility: Flexibility is defined as adapting to the changes occurred in the preferences of the customers easily and quickly. There are two dimensions of flexibility. One is product flexibility which is defined as the ability to offer a wide variety of goods or services and customization of them to the requirements of the customers. Another one is called volume flexibility which means the ability to change the amount of production according to demand changes. For example, if you consider a custom tailor, he will be more flexible than a retailer. Another example would be going to a fire restaurant and asking for a meal that is made just for you. These examples are examples of flexible companies who accommodate customers’ wishes. Cemil İpekçi is a custom tailor. D is the correct answer.

As mentioned before, an effective business strategy and a supporting operations strategy contribute to the competitiveness of the company in its market. The main questions here could be how to measure competitiveness. One of the most well-known and accepted way is measuring productivity. E is the correct answer.

As a basic measure, productivity is used in evaluating economies, industries, firms and processes. D is the correct answer.

business strategy