Managing Operations

Introduction

Operation management involves the process or the systems used to create goods or provide services. This revolves around forecasting, capacity planning, scheduling, quality assurance, motivating employees, equipment acquisition and maintenance just to mention but a few. Operation strategies are employed in any given company in order to ensure that efficiency and effectiveness are improved[1]. These two are in other words the most important in an organization for efficiency ensures that the operations are at minimum cost and fast while effectiveness ensures that the intended quality is achieved. Value is the main reason why customers go for certain products or services. This therefore means that, if an organization can offer unique features from their operation management, then a customer’s has no option that to pay extra for it and most importantly remain loyal to the same organization[2].

Virgin Australian Airline

Virgin Australian Airlines in one of the largest airline and the largest by fleet size to use the virgin brand. It was established in the year 2000 and now serves 29 cities in Australia using its Boeing and Embrear jets and Airbus. It is well known for as a low cost carrier using a business model which has aspects of no frills approach of low cost carriers but still offering services which correlate with full service airline. This happens so that they can compete effectively wit Qantas, the major competitor in the market. This Airline operated more than 150,000 flights a year, with a fleet of 98 aircraft flying to 33 Australian and 17 international destinations. This calls for accurate operations and time management if at all they have to remain competitive in the market. One of the issues that have made this airline rag behind is punctuality. Many flights have experienced delays which may result to a loss of customers in the long run.

Punctuality

Despite much concentration of attention of time keeping or punctuality, this company on time performance is still far below satisfactory levels. At least 70% of all the flights were delayed in more than 25 minutes. This may be attributed to the increasing air congestion and poor operational performance of air traffic control and airport facilities. However, the individual improvement potential within the airline’s disposal is of great importance. It is worth noting that punctuality is very vital as a performance indicator in the airline industry and can be used as a service differentiator mostly for valuable high yield customers. Improved on time performance can effectively result to cost saving.

In order to improve the operations of Virgin Australian Airlines, vital insights and mind shifts by the airlines operational management is highly required. In actual facts, punctuality has for a long time being a leadership challenge in the entire organization and therefore should be given the first priority from strategy and planning and most importantly even to the front line operations. Additionally, to enhance this strategy, there is a need to involve the whole of the operation management mechanisms for this is the department concerned with the analysis of the airlines internal processes which can be deployed to improve performance[3]. It is a point worth noting that, operation management includes the entire department in the flow of communication, where processes can be redesigned or even changed entirely with an intention of being cost considerate, efficient and most importantly effective.

The role of operation management is to create an overall sound, performing company, which connects all the departments, while wholly utilizing the resources available. This is the only way this airline can he assisted if at all their performances regarding in time performance has to be addressed. This is due to the fact that, most of the delays in this airline are as a result of simulations,