1. The Impact On Operations Management by The Latest
Engineering Management Practices That Focuses on
Customers
By Gan Chun Chet (July 2016)
In today’s competitive
environment, managing and operating a
business in a profitable manner is
important for organisation sustainability,
and to effectively increase profit yearly a
challenge. The methodology to increase
organisation profit has always been clear,
focusing on customers. With the fact that
the value for pricy goods/services is always
decreasing every year due to inflation,
management practises that focuses on
customers always ensure that internal
factors contributed as cost adder are
investigated and to add value in the supply
chain.
Has the objective of adding value to
the supply chain been achieved? Currently
many organisations adopt well-known
management practices to remain
competitively ahead in their business.
What are the underlining trend for good
management practice that companies
adopt to ensure success?
Well-Known Management Practices Focus
on Customers
A few well-known and current
management practice addresses waste
elimination, stock reduction, continuous
quality improvement, quality assurance,
defect reduction and increase plant
efficiency. These are a few engineering
management practices that are adopted to
add value to the organisation.
 Lean Management Practices – Waste
elimination
Lean manufacturing system identify and
eliminate waste within the process. Single-
minute exchange of die SMED, one of the
method of waste reduction, provides a
rapid and efficient way to reduce lot size
(or stock up) by frequent setups/start-ups.
Frequent setups off a single process offers
greater product variety to customers.
 Just-In-Time JIT, Management –
Reduce Stock Level and Response
Time to Change
To perform batch operation with low
stock-ups, 5s practices developed in Japan
identified as one of the technique to
enable Just-In-Time manufacturing,
encourages reduction in stock level and
improvement in cyclical response time.
This technique, or Toyota Production
System, sorts things, set in order, shine to
keep workplace clean, standardize the
tasks and sustain the situation. Thus
philosophy add value to the entire chain,
meeting the needs to response to changing
end customer satisfaction.
 Total Quality Management –
Continuously Improving Quality to
Satisfy End Customer

2. It is a holistic approach for organisation
that seeks continuous improvement in its
ability to deliver high quality products and
service to end customers. Quality control
tools developed in the process are utilized,
includes inspection and diagnostics ability,
to promise quality processes built into
production system.
 ISO 9000 / ISO 9001 – Quality
Management Systemassuringproduct
or service quality delivery
It is a standard that provides guidance to
organizations who want to ensure that
their products and services consistently
meet customer’s requirements, and that
quality is consistently improved. As a
quality management system, it is governed
by procedures and quality manuals to
achieve the goal.
 Sigma Six – Reduces Reject
Tremendously
A set of statistical tools and techniques to
improve the process introduced in
Motorola, with this, the main object is to
reduce defective products claiming only
3.4 defects in a million. It evaluates the
manufacturing capability in delivery,
meeting the specification requirements in
the production of goods and services. This
will ensure that customers do not own
defective products/services.
 Total Productive Maintenance –
Higher Productivity through
Maintenance of Equipment
It aims to increase plant and machinery
equipment productivity by investing in
maintenance. The focus is on the working
condition to avoid breakdowns and delays
in manufacturing processes.It is seenby its
customers as a way of achieving higher
efficiency.
These Factors in Business Operations
These management
practices/techniques addresses
operational matters where it is now a
Customer Active Paradigm (CAP) from
previous Manufacturer Active Paradigm
(MAP); that is the goods and services,
including the processes are designed to
meet end customer satisfaction instead of
customers accepting manufacturers’
products or services capabilities. In termof
operational matters, improvement in
products and services quality, increase in
process flexibility, increase in
dependability in a plant, cost reduction and
reduction in the time to response (speed)
to changes have overall been addressed to
satisfy customers’ need. These on-going
operational strategies are summarises,
with the aims reasoned as follows:-
 Flexibility improvement – more
products/services variety, meeting end
customer satisfaction required in
todays’ environment to remain
competitive with a single
process/procedure,
 Cost reduction –waste elimination and
reject reduction,
 Quality Improvement – promising
more sales due to less defects, i.e.
statistical count based on probability
built-in process line to detect/diagnose
the fault(s) before it occurs,
 Dependability – efficient plant that
customers can rely on its output(s),
 Speed – shorter lead time, improving
time to respond to change in
customers’ appetite
With these strategies in place, it promises
increase in sales figures, claiming profit
increase as required annually.

3. Considering Some Current Trend in
Practise : Are the Objectives Achieved?
Engineering contribution in this
case is automating the processes, and has
become common as it shows evidence that
it is in support of these strategies. With the
process technology available today, it has
emerged to manage the parameters
effectively.
A flexible system, for example in
flexible manufacturing system (e.g. CNC
machines), allows flexibility in terms of
products/service variety, enable more
reactive to changes in customer
appetite/design.
Cost reduction - The use of
computer simulation to optimize the
processes is a move to reduce the risk level
before implementing the solution.
Quality Improvement- Also with
diagnostics feature that allows on-line
quality checks, which are built into the
process lines, assures production situation
in real circumstances.
Reliability (dependable) system, for
instance, a Safety Instrumented System SIS
with its initiators (sensors/detectors) and
actuators has remarkable PID Controllers
to effectively manage the flow process, as
well as its functional logic program to
protection on demand; safeguarding the
plant asset, personnel and also the
environment.
Time to react to customer change
(speed) - De-bottlenecking project in
manufacturing facilities identifies the
critical tasks and thus eliminates it through
innovative solutions.
Depending on the type of
application, these engineering solutions
have manage to serve the function in a
continuous improvement environment.
Business nature is always looking for an
upgrade of its facilities tobe a“world class”
player to prepare to serve future demand.
Costly project investments must register
foreseeable returns before the move
forward.
The Current Change Enables Mass
Production to Batch Processes, A Variety
Matter
The change in production output
figures has changed to some organisation
but not all. This has changed from
mass/continuous to batch production,
with the conditions that it meets the
required demand or some degree of
varieties out of a single process. In mass
production, the stock level is high and the
variety of choice to end customer are
limited. However in batch production, it is
Let us examine the processes in a
systemto transform raw materials to finish
goods or services by its nature and the
determined purpose. In every of these
processes, the critical path of a particular
system of interest is regarded as the
backbone of the project where any
conventional practices or approaches
along this path are changed to either fully
or semi-automated system, as the purpose
outlined the benefits.
Raw materials are processed using
the available technology, filled
appropriately, shipped readily in batches.
The capability of the processes caters for
large quantities, but the drive for smaller
batches (the demand) claims to reduce
stock level at the next tier in the chain of
supply. Thus, these efforts of management
practices effectively contribute towards
increasing money value to an organisation
and indirectly to the nation and region as a
whole.
The operational costs have
increased and yet to increase even more
year by year. Sales figures/volume

4. depends on demand, and pricing does
comes with competition. The inclusion of
these strategies promise increasing profit,
by examining the situation of increase
flexibility in manufacturing
products/services variety, dependable
Safety Instrumented System SIS in
processing facilities, frequent machine
setups to reduce stock level, etc. as
positive scenario of the situation.
Conclusion
Engineering management practices
nowadays focuses on customers. It must
meets and/or exceed market requirements
in order to remain competitive in the
business environment today. A thought
that will challenge our plant/process
capabilities; strategizing work functions,
organising resources, etc. to meet and be
ready for future uprising demand of the
nation and also in the region.
In addition to the increase in
technological cost (getting common
nowadays) to achieve the promised results,
stay ahead of business and remain in good
faith with the current business nature is
the challenge in today’s business world.