Challenges of Operation Manager

There are many challenges faced by operation managers in the field of operation management. Operation managers should equip him or her with varies issues and knowledge cross all the business function, not just the operation. To be a good operation manager, they must be able to understand the whole business flows, the products, the customers, the operation, the people and the technology. Understanding of various issue can made them deal better with various support group to improve the process and operation’s productivity and efficiency to the next level, understand problem-solving from technical point of view and able to discuss intellectually with technical parties for various operation issue and being participative. This is not strange that a lot of operation managers learn all trades before being promoted and a lot of them are well equip to tackle technical issues. Education is important for operation management career now and it is advisable to have at least a Bachelor degree as an entry requirement and potential career development in the organization. Experience in the field is important especially a good operation manager should have at least 5 to 10 years of experience.

Another challenge that operation managers will face now is dynamic business environments and be able to adapt to the changes. In this competitive business environment, customer needs requirements, technology, government rules and regulation, product life cycle, financial market, economy and politics. As customers are the most important variables in the business, manager should understand them and react to fulfill what they expect constantly. Customers now are more demanding with better knowledge on product, quality requirement and pricing. Therefore, in order to compete with others, managers should position their products better with distinctive values against others in the market.

Operation manager should think globally and act globally. Most of the business will develop rapidly only with international presence as we cannot rely on small domestic market alone. Manager should understand what the international market needs and basic requirement in the trade. Understand the other international culture and people can help operation manager to deal with global customers and vendors more effectively. Beside think global and give customer focus, operation manager also must be able to think outside the box with good problem solving skills when the needs arise.

Social responsibility may be new keywords in the modern management and an operation manager challenge is to do the business and maintain their social responsibility. While there is need to increase profits and returns for the shareholder, the action and activity from the operation must not result in bad impact for the community or social environment whether in the country or globally. Operation manager must maintain the need to understand public and not doing harm to them for example, cheating, producing low quality products or affecting the safety and cleanliness of the environment.

Justification of cost and budgets are also important to convince top management that the operation department is being managed effectively. Operation managers are challenged to keep the cost at minimum and constantly try to improve the cost even though there will be harsh decisions to take in order to satisfy the top management. Example decision has to be made in headcount reduction, machinery performance enhancement, increase productivity, manage the supply chain better etc is essential although the action will be hard to be accepted by all parties. All the budgets requested for operation department must also be justified that it will give potential good returns to the organization whether short or long term basis.

In conclusion, the job of operation management is not simple and easy as before. There are challenges to face as they are working at high competitive, dynamic and global environment. Operation managers should equip with extensive of all round business operation knowledge, good educational background and able think globally. All the action should be justified with reasons in term of money value because in business what the top management wants to see is the financial returns. The challenges also exist to maintain a balance between the returns to the shareholder and the responsibility to the social environment.