Extra Credit Blog 2

Blizzard Inc. is the largest U.S. video-game maker. The company has created many epic games, such as Warcraft, StarCraft, Diablo, World of Warcraft, and Hearthstone. Each game has its own glorious history. Blizzard believes the sales will keep rising in the next few years. The operation management of Blizzard Inc. is very impressive. They spent about 500 million dollars to investigate new games and improve existing games every year. Although total operating cost is expensive, they can earn 4.5 billion dollars in sales each year. The scale of Blizzard Inc. is much larger than other U.S. video-game makers. They don’t produce many games, but every game they made is very famous. This indicates that Blizzard Inc. focus more on quality instead of quantity.

The strategies of making games in Blizzard are wonderful. About 15 years ago, Warcraft 3 was coming. They gave every minion and hero a unique history or position in this game. Blizzard created millions of year history for this game, when players playing the game, they would feel that they are discovering history of this world. In this way, players would feel discovering history is more meaningful than playing game. Since Warcraft 3 achieve a huge success, they made another game named World of Warcraft. It utilized same history as Warcraft, but in this game, players control a little person to beat minions and heroes from Warcraft 3. And this game gives players a chance to change history, and player could build large and strong teams which other players. As usual, Blizzard always bring something outside the games to players.

Hearthstone is also a game with the same history as the last two I mentioned. However, this game is more likely a small game. You need to brainstorm and appropriately use your cards beat other players. You can not only regard this as a competing game, but also a small game for entertaining. It will be accepted by more people. The strategies of making games made the company become more powerful and successful. Now, they own a lot of loyal fans, and get a huge achievement that other video-game companies cannot compete with. Players could receive some feelings beyond these games. This is the charm of games that Blizzard made.

Reference:

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2014-08-05/activision-tops-analysts-estimates-as-online-sales-rise

Extra credit blog 1

I read a paper titled Operational Failures and Problem Solving: An Empirical Study of Incident Reporting and the topic of this paper is intriguing and impressive. In our daily life, operational failures occur within organizations across all industries, with consequences ranging from minor inconveniences to major catastrophes. We cannot ignore small operational failures, because it may evolve into serious problems. When a problem arises in a company or an organization, managers need to ascertain the root of this problem first and adopt effective methods to solve the problem. By reading this paper, managers are able to learn some practical approaches to help them solve operational failures.

 

In this paper, the authors used data on “nearly 7500 reported incidents from a single hospital”, and had some findings. First, they found the frontline worker are associated more with financial and liability risks. Second finding is line managers can stimulate increased problem solving among frontline workers. Thirdly, communication can promote more problem solving. Finally, adjusting managers’ approach would stimulate workers’ participation in problem solving. These findings enable organizations to increase the contribution of incident reporting systems to operational performance improvement. The authors concluded that problem-solving in response to operational failures is influenced by both the risk posed by the incident, and the extent to which management demonstrates a commitment to problem-solving.

 

Operational failures associate not only workers, but also management approach, managers’ regular engagement, and communications among managers and workers. This paper taught managers how to encourage frontline workers to solve problems in response to operational failures. By explaining some of the variation in responsiveness to operational failures, frontline workers could feel serious consequences operational failures bring. In this way, workers are able to recognize their responsibilities. In addition, worker’s participation in problem solving is motivated by their inherent characteristics of problems as well as by particular management practices. Both managers and workers should involve into the operational failures and problem solving processes.

 

Reference:

http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/10-017.pdf

Blog 4

For this week’s blog, I chose an article that talked about a Chinese e-commerce company. I read an article entitle Alibaba's IPO May Herald the End of U.S. E-Commerce Dominance. From this article, I learn how a company grown into the largest e-commerce company in China. Jack Ma, CEO of Alibaba, made all the right decisions that led the company to grow and expand.

Jack Ma was a former English teacher in Hangzhou, China. In 1995, a time when few Chinese owned PCs, he started an online directory called China Pages. It was not difficult to imagine that Ma’s venture would fail, but he generated a more ambitious idea. In late 1998, Ma and 17 colleagues started Ali Baba to help small local companies sell their products online. The company was founded in Ma’s one-bedroom apartment and has grown into the largest Chinese e-commerce company. It will go public on the New York Stock Exchange this fall. To measure the power of Alibaba, the author compared Alibaba to Amazon and EBay. In 2013, the volume of merchandise sold through Alibaba was worth $248 billion; Amazon did about half that; and Ebay, a third. Alibaba facilitated the delivery of 5 billion packages from retail transactions, and UPS sent around 4.3 billion packages and documents last year. Ma and his colleagues have succeessfully created several sites for different style of transaction and each with potential for massive global outreach.

Without Jack Ma, Alibaba would not have became such a successful company. Ma was wise to plan ahead and make long-term goals. From the Internet development in America, Ma has forecasted the development prospect of Internet in China. He also discovered, applied and spread a new purchase pattern in China. These preparations and plans gave Alibaba enough space to develop. In addition, Ma and his colleagues have made plans for the future of Alibaba. Alibaba promised to enable a new age of “border-hopping” commerce that bypasses middlemen and erodes the ability of government to regulate trade. Under these wise management, Alibaba will edged itself into the largest e-commerce company in the world.

 

Reference:

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-08-07/alibabas-ipo-may-herald-the-end-of-u-dot-s-dot-e-commerce-dominance#r=hpt-ls

Blog 3

In week 3 of MIS 373 lectures, the instructor talked about two main topics. One is the statistical process control (SPC). SPC is a tool used to help people control a process and evaluate its output. In this part, the instructor also discussed normal distribution, sample distribution, two types of errors, and control chart. The other main topic discussed was aggregate planning. Aggregate planning is an intermediate-range capacity planning used by organizations to satisfy overall demand. By utilizing aggregate planning, organizations could implement plans, help synchronize flow throughout the supply chain, and also connect to the budgeting process. Instructor introduced some aggregate planning strategies, and master scheduling that organizations could use in their business.

After leaning aggregate planning, I realized this concept is widely used in real business. In an article entitled “Aggregate Planning for a Large Food Manufacturer with High Seasonal Demand”, the authors discussed using aggregate planning and master scheduling to improve the demand forecasting processes and achieve reduction of inventory level. A Brazilian food company has a high seasonal demand but poor inventory management performance. By analyzing the company’s current situation, the authors recognized that to improve the inventory management, they should improve the demand forecasting and production planning process first. Therefore, the company developed an aggregate production planning model based on liner programming. They also used a sample disaggregating method and a detailed master production schedule for a shorter horizon of three months to the solve problems they are facing.

From this article, I realized that aggregate planning can help a company or an organization utilizes resources to satisfy demand and manage inventory more effectively. Aggregate planning can determine company’s monthly production rate, and inventory level of finished products. In addition, disaggregating method could searches equal run out times, translates aggregate plans into master production schedule for a short time. Companies can use this knowledge to balance the consumption of resources, inventory levels, and customer demand. Aggregate planning helps to reduce the cost of buying raw materials and storing final products and also make the whole process under their control.

Reference:

• PowerPoin Slide Chapter10, 11
• Takey, Flávia M., and Marco A. Mesquita. "Aggregate Planning for a Large Food Manufacturer with High Seasonal Demand." Brazilian Journal of Operations & Production Management 1 Nov. 2010: 05-20. Print.

MIS 373 Blog 2

The three topics of the second week of MIS 373 course are reliability, strategic capacity planning, and quality management. These concepts are important to companies and organizations in order to increase competitiveness and management. Reliability is a kind of probability, which could help companies realize their ability to perform their intended function under certain conditions. Strategic capacity planning helps companies and organizations achieve long-term supply capability to match predicted level of long-term demand. Quality management help companies identify the appropriate product or service to meet customers’ expectations. Of these topics, strategic capacity planning gave me a deep impression. As I was reading these articles, I found capacity problem is to be one of more important aspects that companies should be concerned about.

I read a paper entitled When Supply-Chain Disruptions Matter this week. The two authors of this paper identified some factors responsible for disruptions to companies. They stated disruption matters in the magnitude of disruption’s impact on the share price; internal disruptions are far more damaging than external factors; “a higher rate of improvement in operating performance aggravates the impact of internal disruptions”. Managers should focus on reducing buffers and excess capacity. To reduce these disruptions, companies should use strategic capacity planning.

Through capacity planning, companies can identify the kind of capacity needed to reduce excess capacity and also meet customer demand. In addition, capacity decisions are strategic. It could affect operating costs, ease of management, and competitiveness. In this paper, the authors believe that improve operational efficiency could improve firms’ agility and allow them to respond more effectively to a disruption. I think companies could also use these three capacity strategies- leading, following, and tracking. Companies should realize future demand to build their capacity and be able to build capacity when there is excess demand. These strategies could also help companies deal with disruptions.

Strategic capacity planning can help companies solve problems and handle disruptions. Overcapacity results in higher operation cost and increases internal problems. Companies should use strategies capacity planning to improve their effectiveness and competitiveness.

Reference:

• PowerPoint Slides Chapter 4,5,9
• http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/13-006_cff75cd2-952d-493d-89e7-d7043385eb64.pdf

MIS 373 BLOG 1

The first week of MIS 373 summer II session is taught by Srikar Velichety. In the first, Srikar introduced the basic functions of operations management, taught us the operations strategies, and help us understand the strategic product and service design. From these lectures, I learned that operations management exists in our daily life. We could see some commercial advertisements use operations strategies, and we also use some operations management to create products and services. Operations management is changing our life, and companies are using it to create a more competitiveness environment.

The article named Organizational Factors that Contribute to Operational Failures in Hospitals, which illustrated two hospitals fail to use operational management that leads several operational failures. The author and other 25 people directly observe nurses and employees of two hospitals and found 120 operational failures. These failures could be classified into four categories: errors and poor training, “insufficient worksplace, poor process design, and a lack of integration in the internal supply chains.” In my opinion, to remove operational failures, the hospital should learn and use operations management.

First, hospitals should use organizational strategies to scan the environment. By using this method, hospitals could identify internal factors and external factors, and then, they could improve the environment in the workplace, support departments, and the flow of materials through internal supply chains. Next, they should make the planning and decision making process. Every employee should know their missions and goals, especially nurses. Thus, they could have a clear direction of efforts. Finally, hospitals could train their employees and use technology to increase the productivity and efficiency.

Hospitals could use operations management to redesign their workplace and process to meet patients’ needs, and they can also successfully remove the operational failures. Organizations and companies should also realize the importance of operations management and use it to improve themselves.

References:

• PowerPoint Slides MIS 373. Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 4
• http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/14-023_f68586ef-ffd3-4147-8178-0053916c0af8.pdf