MGT3059 Week 1 Project

Operations Strategy

An operations strategy should describe how an organization plans to reach its goal, which always involves

creating value for its customers.  An operations strategy needs to focus on how to use the resources available to

the organization to meet the overall objectives of the organization.

Many organizations state their purpose or overall goal in their mission statements.  For example, the mission statement of Starbucks is “To inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup and one neighborhood at

a time.”  Thus, the operations strategy will ensure that all resources are used in order to help achieve this goal. 

Whether pouring a cup of coffee or participating in community engagement, every action of the company is

targeted toward this objective. 

When developing an operations strategy, an organization needs to determine its position in the marketplace. This

is done through strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis.

A SWOT analysis helps a manager determine the organization’s position within the current business environment.

The strengths and weaknesses focus on the organization itself (meaning that they are internal to the

organization), while the opportunities and threats evaluate the environment (meaning that they are external to

the organization).

SWOT analysis is not only useful for OM, but is useful for the business in its entirety.  However, decisions that are

made in the OM area should be consistent with decisions that are being made for the organization as a whole. 

Thus, operations strategy should dovetail with the organization’s strategy. 

Since SWOT analysis is such a large part of developing an operations strategy, it should be noted that strengths

and opportunities are helpful in achieving the organization’s goals.  Similarly, weaknesses and threats make

achievement of those goals more dif�cult.