Operation Managementa & Ethics

Operations Management and Ethics

Operations Management (OM) involves the management and the design of products, processes, supply chains and services. Operations management focuses on using the organization's resources to deliver a product or service that their clients want. The methods in which OM is carried out in any organization depends the nature of the products or services and can include the managing of purchases, inventory control, quality control, storage, logistics and evaluations. Operations management is decision making process is divided into three main functions; strategic, tactical and planning and control. The strategic function involved the long-term issues such ad of plant locations, telecommunications, and designing supply chains. Tactical issues involve plant layout, equipment selection and replacement. Planning and control involve issues of assignments of tasks and the priority of these tasks.

Ethics and Operations

Ethics in its simplest form is choosing what is right or wrong, and these decisions are based on values and beliefs. The concept of business ethics is choosing what is right or wrong in the workplace and how these decisions affect the products or services, the stakeholders. Operations managers as others managers within organizations are responsible for integrity, competence, accountability and creating ethical values.

In the recent case of BP (British Petroleum), which July 2006 reported a profit surge of 7.3 billion, a 30 percent increase from last year despite reduced output and rising costs (Lawless, 2006). While the profits surged BP has also been plagued with operational problems. In March 2006, BP was blamed for a rupture of a pipeline it operates it Alaska which lead to a criminal investigation in BP's management of its Alaskan operations. In more recent case, August, 2006, the closure of a corrosion hit pipelines in Alaska that could cause crude oil shortage in United States. BP is in charge of the operations at the Prudhoe Bay and could spend up to $100 million to replace 16 miles of corroded pipeline (Foley, 2006). Whistleblowers have been raising concerns over safety of the site for the last seven years. There have been well documented complains on how budgets cuts were leaving the staff with insufficient manpower, poor maintenance, widespread corrosion threatening employees and the environment.