I am of the view that business decisions about operations can be strategic as well as tactical from the firm’s view point. In discussing this view further, I would like look at the issues at play by defining operations, strategy, operations strategy, perspectives of operations strategy and the levels of operations.
Operations.
Operations, traditionally, involves managing the day to day production activities of an organization with a view to producing goods and services for the consumer. The production activities here involves an input-transformation-output process where inputs can be raw materials, raw data, information, etc while output can be finished goods and services, processed information, opportunities, etc and the transformation process is the actual production set up that may include plant layout & design, human resources etc.
Strategy
Johnson and Scholes (2006) defined strategy as “the direction and scope of an organization over the long-term: which achieves advantage for the organization through its configuration of resources within a challenging environment, to meet the needs of markets and to fulfill stakeholder expectations".
In other words, strategy is about:
• in the long term rather than short term, where is the business trying to get to (direction)
• planning the path that will achieve defined organizational goals in general rather than in specific terms
• dealing with the total (broader) picture rather than individual activities
• which markets should a business compete in and what kinds of activities are involved in such markets? (markets; scope)
• how can the business perform better than the competiti ...