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Is MIS Applicable in Management? By the end of the first year of your MBA program, you would finish all the core courses, allowing you to appreciate the various management areas, particularly Operations Marketing Finance Human Resources You may also ask yourself how MIS fits as a management subject. This assignment will help you relate MIS to the management area of your choice. You are required to provide a practical example of how MIS can be deployed in one of the four specialization areas listed above.
The report should include two integrated components: I. A discussion of why and how MIS is suitable for the specialization area; identify how widely (or otherwise) MIS is actually used in the area, and what can be done to further promote its use (if needed). II. The above discussion should be accompanied with an example of a real-world company/industry that deploys MIS in the specialization of interest. Introduction You have to consider three managerial factors together in MIS: effectiveness, efficiency and profitability. Effectiveness ‘ How well a firm is pursuing a goal or objective of its business; for instance, providing quality product/service can be a business goal that is usually stated in a firm’s mission statement; Management by objective (MBO), etc. Therefore, it is necessary to drastically improve operations in the functional areas, increasing productivity, quality, speed, and customer service. Therefore, I am explaining the use of MIS in Operation Management Operations management focuses on carefully managing the processes to produce and distribute products and services.
Usually, small businesses don’t talk about “operations management”, but they carry out the activities that management schools typically associate with the phrase “operations management. ” Major, overall activities often include product creation, development, production and distribution. (These activities are also associated with operation and product management. However product management is usually in regard to one or more closely related product — that is, a product line. Operations management is in regard to all operations within the organization. Related activities include managing purchases, inventory control, quality control, storage, logistics and evaluations. A great deal of focus is on efficiency and effectiveness of processes. Therefore, operations management often includes substantial measurement and analysis of internal processes. Ultimately, the nature of how operations management is carried out in an organization depends very much on the nature of products or services in the organization, for example, retail, manufacturing, wholesale, etc.
Control and Coordinating Function of Management Product and Service Management Quality Management Inventory Management Logistics and Transportation Management Facilities Management Configuration Management Distribution Channels {text:bookmark-start} {text:bookmark-end} Management Control and Coordinating Function Management control and coordination includes a broad range of activities to ensure that organizational goals are consistently being met in an effective and efficient fashion.
Many People Are Averse to Management “Control” New, more “organic” forms or organizations allow organizations to be more responsive and adaptable in today’s rapidly changing world. These forms also cultivate empowerment among employees, much more than the hierarchical, rigidly structured organizations of the past.. “Coordination” Must Exist or There’s No Organization — Only an “Experience” Regardless of the negative connotation of the word “control”, it must exist or there is no organization at all. In its most basic form, an organization is two or more people working together to reach a goal.
Whether an organization is highly bureaucratic or changing and self-organizing, the organization must exist for some reason, some purpose, some mission (implicit or explicit) — or it isn’t an organization at all. The organization must have some goal. Identifying this goal requires some form of planning, informal or formal. Reaching the goal means identifying some strategies, formal or informal. These strategies are agreed upon by members of the organization through some form of communication, formal or informal. Then members set about to act in accordance with what they agreed to do.
They may change their minds, fine. But they need to recognize and acknowledge that they’re changing their minds. This form of ongoing communication to reach a goal, tracking activities toward the goal and then subsequent decisions about what to do is the essence of management coordination. It needs to exist in some manner — formal or informal. The following are rather typical methods of coordination in organizations. They are used as means to communicate direction and guide behaviors in that direction. The function of the following methods is not to “control”, but rather to guide.
If, from ongoing communications among management and employees, the direction changes, then fine. The following methods are changed accordingly. {text:bookmark-start} {text:bookmark-start} {text:bookmark-end} {text:bookmark-end} Product and Service Management Product (or service) management includes a wide range of management activities, ranging from the time that there’s a new idea for a product to eventually providing ongoing support to customers who have purchased the new product. Every organization conducts product management, whether it’s done intentionally or unintentionally.
This module provides a wide overview of considerations in developing and managing a product. How a product is developed or managed is depends very much on the nature of the organization and its products, for example, retail, manufacturing, wholesale, etc. Note that different people might even have different categorizations for the activities described below. {text:bookmark-start} {text:bookmark-end} Product Development (Building Your Product or Service) At this point, you’ve concluded that your idea can become a viable product.
Now you’re faced with actually building the product itself. The particular process you use to build your product or service depend very much on the nature of the product or service. The following links might help you as you develop your unique process to build your product. {text:bookmark-start} {text:bookmark-end} Product Distribution, Advertising and Promotion, Sales and Service There are several major methods you can use to get your products or services to your customers or clients. The following link will help you select the most appropriate method(s). text:bookmark-start} {text:bookmark-end} Quality Management Quality management is crucial to effective operations management, particularly continuous improvement. More recent advancements in quality, such as benchmarking and Total Quality Management, have resulted in advancements to operations management as well. {text:bookmark-start} {text:bookmark-end} {draw:frame} Inventory Management Costs can be substantial to store and move inventory. Innovative methods, such as Just-in-Time inventory control, can save costs and move products and services to customers more quickly. text:bookmark-start} {text:bookmark-end} Logistics and Transportation Management Logistics is focused on the flow of materials and goods from suppliers, through the organization and to the customers, with priority on efficiency and cost effectiveness. {text:bookmark-start} {text:bookmark-end} Supply Chain Management Below is an example of a very simple supply chain for a single product, where raw material is procured from vendors, transformed into finished goods in a single step, and then transported to distribution centers, and ultimately, customers.
Realistic supply chains have multiple end products with shared components, facilities and capacities. The flow of materials is not always along an arborescent network, various modes of transportation may be considered, and the bill of materials for the end items may be both deep and large. Traditionally, marketing, distribution, planning, manufacturing, and the purchasing organizations along the supply chain operated independently. These organizations have their own objectives and these are often conflicting. Marketing’s objective of high customer service and maximum sales dollars conflict with manufacturing and distribution goals.
Many manufacturing operations are designed to maximize throughput and lower costs with little consideration for the impact on inventory levels and distribution capabilities. Purchasing contracts are often negotiated with very little information beyond historical buying patterns. The result of these factors is that there is not a single, integrated plan for the organization—there were as many plans as businesses. Clearly, there is a need for a mechanism through which these different functions can be integrated together. Supply chain management is a strategy through which such an integration can be achieved. text:bookmark-start} {text:bookmark-end} Configuration Management It’s important to track the various versions of products and services. Consider the various versions of software that continually are produced, each with its own version number. Tracking these versions is configuration management. {text:bookmark-start} {text:bookmark-end} Distribution Channels The means of distribution depend very much on the nature of the product or service. You can choose a wide variety of methods to distribute your products and services. You’ll probably end up with a variety of methods.
Direct distribution methods include your providing your products and services directly to your customer. Direct methods are, for example, direct mail, retail, catalogs, or even over the Internet. Indirect methods include having a middleman. Indirect methods include, for example, using wholesalers and distributors, or retailers (the middleman is a large chain of retail stores, for example, Kmart). Various Perspectives Choosing distribution methods Choosing a distribution system or distribution agent All Roads Lead Through Distribution Food and Beverage Distribution Industry -Distribution EXAMPLE HERO HONDA MOTOR LIMITED’S INFORMATION MANAGEMENT *SUPPLIER & CUSTOMER* RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT Processing Orders Manually They have a large supply chain and they needed accuracy and speed in the deliveries of raw material and components. Their suppliers were given a plan for the month but changes are often necessitated by market conditions ‘ like changes in the mix of models and colors. And there could also be increase or decrease in demand. They wanted the ability to respond to these changes by aligning the production plan, supply schedule of components, and other resources to handle this efficiently.
Hero Honda had already been using the mySAP™ ERP solution for its core applications but until January of 2004, the company continued to enter its customer orders manually ‘ using a portal to communicate with suppliers. They used to receive orders from dealers in the form of spreadsheets, e-mail, and phone calls. It took a few days to bring in the customer orders and consolidate them. Then they would get our material requirements plan from the ERP [enterprise resource planning] system and post the information on their portal.
This was done through periodic updates ‘ twice a day ‘ and hence did not consistently give the latest information to their partners. They had no visibility of materials in transit and a lot of time was wasted on follow-ups. They also had to deal with incorrect deliveries from vendors when they sent either less or more than the scheduled quantity. For example, they might have ordered 100 units but the supplier delivered 110. This kind of error would slow down the receiving station while their people would seek approval for receiving the extra quantity.
Also, mismatches like this meant that either they carried more inventory than needed or caused production holdups if the quantity supplied was less than ordered. Automating Supplier Transactions SAP® Consulting End-to-End Process Integration Hero Honda also implemented a customer portal, as a feature of mySAP CRM. With the two portals now in place, the company benefits from end-to-end process integration. “Our dealers place their orders once a month,” he says. “Typically, a dealer might order several hundred motorcycles, as well as spare parts.
So every Friday we get our orders in, we consolidate them on Saturday, and on Monday morning our suppliers are all receiving our delivery schedules, directly from our production planning system. ” {draw:frame} The below figure explains the Supplier & Customer Relationship Management. Another use of ERP in Shipping Industry for Operations Why Containerized Shipping Lines Need ERP Systems? Shipping business grows parallel to world trade. Containerized shipping depends on industry. In recent years there is rapid growth in the Far-East, this growth also had an affect on shipping lines.
Container control The containers are the main asset of a containerized shipping company. EMES has approximately 35,000 containers in total. Every movement of each container is assumed to be known by container control department. By using this movement information of containers, lots of financial transactions are being calculated like depot/storage costs, detention/demurrage, and terminal operation fees (etc). The empty containers have to be controlled and operated carefully to be a successful container line. Some countries have excess imports, and some have excess exports.
So shipping line has to transfer the emties from one port to another, from one country to another in order to meet the demand for empty containers. Booking – BL control Operation Control By using the software, the shipping line would be able to control dangerous good, out-of-gauge, cut-off time kind of operational controls. Profitability Control Since all operational account payable proformas and account payable transactions are stored in ERP system, at the time of operation, proforma profitability would be available. When the invoices came, the actual profitability would be available.