ASCM 553: Agricultural Operations Management

Description

COURSE OVERVIEW

The agricultural industry is seen as one of the most dynamic, volatile, and innovative parts of the global economic environment. It also has a big impact on society and is an indicator of the agricultural systems’ condition. Some changes have happened in the last decades, for example, shifting the production facilities to the developing countries, new market entries, or the new law changed the previously established and stable layout of market forces. Operations is what businesses do. Operations are processes that either provide services or create goods. Operations take place in businesses such as restaurants, retail stores, supermarkets, factories, hospitals, and colleges and universities. In fact, they take place in every business organization.

Moreover, operations are the core of what a business organization does. As you read this book, you will learn about managing those operations. The subject matter is relevant for you regardless of your major. Productivity, quality, e-business, competition, and customer satisfaction are important for every aspect of a business organization. This first chapter presents an introduction and overview of operations management. Among the issues it addresses are: What is operations management? Why is it important? What do operations management professionals do?

The ideal situation for a business organization is to achieve an economic match of supply and demand. Having excess supply or excess capacity is wasteful and costly; having too little means lost opportunity and possible customer dissatisfaction. The key functions on the supply side are operations and supply chains, and sales and marketing on the demand side. While the operations function is responsible for producing products and/or delivering services, it needs the support and input from other areas of the organization. Business organizations have three basic functional areas, finance, marketing, and operations. It doesn’t matter whether the business is a retail store, a hospital, a manufacturing firm, a car wash, or some other type of business; all business organizations have these three basic functions.

Service operations management is concerned with delivering service to the customers or users of the service. It involves understanding the needs of our customers, managing the processes that deliver the services, ensuring our objectives are met, while also paying attention to the continual improvement of our services. As such, operations management is a central organisational function and one that is critical to organisational success.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

Upon the successful completion of the course, students should be able to:

• Explain the nature and roles of operations management in the agricultural industry.
• Analyze competitive priorities/operations strategies within the agricultural industry.
• Design Agricultural operations. 
• Apply operations-specific tools and decision models (e.g., decision analysis, forecasting, linear programming, scheduling) for optimizing operations performance. 
• Measure and evaluate the performance of a typical agricultural operation