Global Operations Management

Chapter 2 discusses operations strategy and competitiveness. Operation strategy can be viewed as part of a planning process that coordinates operational goals with those of the larger organization (p. 24).

There are seven major competitive dimensions that form the competitive position of a firm, they are as follow: cost or price, quality, delivery speed, delivery reliability, coping with changes in demand, flexibility and new product introduction speed, and other product-specific criteria (PP. 25-27). A strategic position is not sustainable unless there are compromises with other positions. Trade-offs occurs when activities are incompatible so that more of one thing necessitates less of another (p. 27). Order winners and order qualifiers describe marketing-oriented dimensions that are keys to competitive success. Order winners are the criteria that differentiate the products and services of one firm from another, where as order qualifiers are the criteria that permit the firms products to be considered as candidates for purchase by customers (pp. 27-28).

The task of developing a comprehensive strategy for a firm is complex. Robert Kaplan and David Norton developed a Generic Strategy Map Template that is a starting point for the strategy