Operations Management – Project Management, Essay Example

“A leader in sustainability, corporate philanthropy and employment opportunity, Wal-Mart ranked first among retailers in Fortune Magazine’s 2009 Most Admired Companies survey.” (Wal-Mart, 2009) Among possible projects that Wal-Mart can implement in their company can be productivity project and facility layout projects.

With regards to the productivity project, manager can propose new technologies that can be implemented up to its commercialization to meet the market needs. Specialist would need to develop a thorough analysis of the existing situation and market needs. The project could engage creation of new technologies aimed to meet innovation gap in the industry and execution of that technology. Equipment can help focus on growing production output, advancing efficiency in food preservation and its utilization. Another option is that the manager can re-design existing processing/production lines to create efficiencies and increase productivity. It would be essential to quantify existing production efficiency and anticipated gains.  As a second project manager can select to work on the facility design and layout. The primary task of the specialist is to review the existing operations and strategic plan. This should involve sales volumes, service levels and changes that occur in products. Preparation includes budgeting staff time, creating management and project teams and gathering data about products and existing processes. Manager should draw the overall material and part flow patterns.

Among possible problems that can appear can be the location of all manufacturing resources inside the working area. The best idea is to create a closest to reality model and implement its algorithm. By doing so, manager will obtain an optimal solution. The cost of material movements is also assumed to be an increasing function of the volume and length of product moves. Also possible problem can be the variability and uncertainty of production scenarios over the period of time. It is not very probable to foresee number and typology of parts to be processed, material flows between departments, etc. However, with the good comprehensive analysis and strong strategic operations plan, company can successfully implement changes.

References

Wal-Mart. (2009). About Us. Last retrieved on July 19, 2009 from http:/ /walmartstores.com/AboutUs/