operational improvement

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Operational Improvement
Executive Summary
The present analysis makes it clear that operational improvement is an important business concept. This is because it addresses competition concerns, making it possible for the business to achieve its profitability goals. At the core of this understanding is the awareness that personnel must have the right attitude to become effective workers. Also, there is a concession that interdependence is important as part of the improvement process, with the focus being on encouraging contributions, creating a perception of job security and valuing opinions. Also, the analysis concedes that operational improvement is an important business subject. This is because it facilitates business analysis, as seen in the case of King Hussein Cancer Center, making it possible to identify it’s sources of success and how to improve outcomes. Overall, the analysis makes it clear that improving stakeholders relationship and perception goes a long way in improving performance, to include motivating the stakeholders to actively seek operational improvement.
Discussion Posting
It is accepted that business entities are typically set up with the deliberate intention of achieving the desired goal; typically profitability and larger market share (Slack and Lewis 2). To achieve these goals, the business must engage highly effective persons who would be responsible for responding to market pressures in a way that makes good use of available resources to achieve the desired goal.

Part of that management strategy may entail creating a culture of interdependence. This statement holds true in the face of financial difficulties and increased competition in the technology industry where personnel restructuring are commonly conducted to improve competitiveness by encouraging contributions, creating a perception of job security and valuing opinions (Covey 57-60).
To take an example of Yahoo, which has been facing financial difficulties that include reduced earning. These reports have worried its shareholder, thereby occasioning the need for top management restructuring to minimize expenditure while maximizing earnings (Nicas). This decision was based on the understanding that personnel is the primary resource within the firm since they are involved in creating, communicating and availing goods and services to customers. This means that the personnel is involved in all activities about expenditure and income generation. In fact, they are involved in identifying markets and their needs, how these needs can be met and packaged, customers willingness to pay for the product, competition, product designed and description to attract customers, and how would the product be personalized and identified (Braun et al. 272-273).
Also, the personnel is responsible for the identification of the customers’ needs, creating goods and services as solutions to meet these needs, and distributing the created products and services to the customers. The implication is that the company turns costly, inefficient and less profitable if its personnel are unable to carry out their functions to include contributing towards improvement, feeling appreciated and having job security. In the same vein, it can be argued that it is not necessary to allocate resources towards other business activities and functions when the company personnel do not operate optimally and are unable to conduct and meet their functions (Ahmed, Mohamad, and Masood 45-46; Nicas). As such, Yahoo understands that its negative performance can be addressed by restructuring the non-performing workforce.
This means that Yahoo conceptualizes good performance as the need to quantitatively improve its quality of state and form over time. This is an ideal conceptualization since the company is a business entity whose primary goal is current and future profitability, an attribute that is best measured using quantitative terms to include revenues. While the restructuring may make the personnel apprehensive, it also causes them to be more diligent in their work and in forming teams that can tap their more innovative ideas to improve performance. In essence, creating a work environment ideal for innovation and forming cohesive teams is anticipated to aid Yahoo in achieving its quantitative bottom line by creating an environment in which personnel feel that they can make the most contribution, are made to feel secure in their jobs, and feel that their opinion is valid (Gächter et al. 954-955). Overall, business improvement must be approached from the perspective that the quantitative bottom line is what matters the most, making it evident that employee satisfaction is important to improve performance with the focus being on attitude adjustment (Slack and Lewis 2-4).
Application writing
The unit reading materials on operational improvement (particularly Operational Strategy by Nigel Slack and Michael Lewis, and The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey) provide some insightful strategies on how to evaluate operational management with the intention of identifying shortcomings and developing strategies for addressing them. Let us consider the case of King Hussein Cancer Center (KHCC), the most comprehensive and leading cancer management facility in Jordan and the Middle East (King Hussein Cancer Foundation; Private Hospital Association). The facility observes the values of efficiency, resourcefulness, timeliness, effectiveness, and compassion in its operations management. These five values are tied to three goals, in the form of; excellence in clinical research; excellence in cancer public awareness, training and education; and excellence in clinical care (Mahadevan 54-56).
The facility observes the five values and achieves the three goals through four core processes. Firstly, the facility manages its supplier relationship process through its material management department, which is concerned with dispensation, storage, acquisition and purchase of items used by the facility and in other processes (Slack and Lewis 47-48). Secondly, the facility manages its new products and services development process by setting up a facility review board that approves all research proposals activities before they can proceed. The board considers the risks that the research present, matching them to the anticipated positive outcomes, before making a decision on whether the research should proceed (Brown, Bessant and Lamming 86-90).
Thirdly, the facility includes a customers’ relationship process, which guarantees that the patients receive the highest quality of care and attention. Those who do not have cancer are given a clean bills of health while the individual with cancer are referred to the appropriate admission office where a strategy for their care is formulated (King Hussein Cancer Foundation; Verma 83-86). Finally, the order filling process that sees the different departments make requests for the items and materials they need to complete their activities. The order filling process begins at the case evaluation clinic where the attending physician makes a request for certain laboratory tests to be conducted to determine the type and nature of cancer that the patient is suffering from. At the laboratory, the patient is given a waiting ticket that he or she uses to register at the laboratory reception desk. This information is entered into the facility’s database to form part of the patient’s medical file. The critical to quality procedure outlines that tissue sample will be rejected if it is improperly labeled, collected using the wrong process or tools, it is inadequate for the test, or if it has been degraded (Brown, Bessant & Lamming 45-48; King Hussein Cancer Foundation).
Other than the outlined core processes, the KHCC manages quality by applying well-established procedures and policies that have been documented to outline how every step will be undertaken and common problems addressed. These procedures and policies are drawn from industry best practices. Also, the personnel working at the facilities are expected to improve their knowledge by attending new trainings that are related to their professional capacities on a regular basis. These trainings are anticipated to improve the personnel performance and competency to ensure the best outcomes in the medical care environment. Besides that, the facility uses a check sheet system to collect feedback on all occurrences with the intention of determining their causes as well as action plan effectiveness. Also, the facility’s management relies on patients and customers satisfaction questionnaires to identify the areas in which the care plan did not meet expectations and its reliability rating. In fact, the KHCC management has used the questionnaires and interviews to identify causes of service delivery delays as being technical processes and obligatory routines and not the inadequacies in its employees’ skills (King Hussein Cancer Foundation; Mahadevan 147-152).
The discussed strategies understand that integrating input from all stakeholders is critical in improving operational agility and planning. In this case, the input can be integrated at any point in the operations lifecycle phase (Monczka et al., 2015, p. 716). This is based on the understanding that aligning business goals with stakeholders expectations improve performance and output by facilitating monitoring exercises and setting up achievable aims. The implication is that successfully bridging the communication gap between stakeholders to ease their input acts as a motivation factor to ensure that they offer the company their best even as they adjust their attitude (Basu, 2015, pp. 68-69; Guo, Li & Skitmore, 2010, pp. 42-43). As a result, successfully supporting communication efforts is a principal feature for operational improvement, moving beyond the traditional approaches and adopting new approaches that ease strategic inclusion.
One must accept that KHCC is a well-managed facility to ensure that it provides the best quality cancer care to Jordanians and residents of the Middle East. This has been achieved by focusing on attitude adjustment that targets its stakeholders who include personnel and patients. This has guaranteed that it remains the premier cancer facility in the region. In fact, its core values, goals, and processes are all geared towards offering the highest quality services to its patients. Also, it has outlined its procedures and policies, organized trainings for its personnel, applied a check sheet system, and collected patients’ feedback to address service delivery shortcomings and reduce the incidence of errors thereby ensuring stakeholders’ inclusion and communication. Therefore, the course material on operational improvement has informed the analysis of KHCC to determine the reasons for its good performance.

Works Cited
Ahmed, Riaz, Noor A. Mohamad, and Mohammad T. Masood. ‘The Essence of Project Leadership is Significant to Project Management.’ Research Journal of Recent Science, 2.5(2013), pp. 44-48.
Basu, R. Managing Projects in Research and Development. Burlington, VT: Gower Publishing Company, 2015. Print.
Braun, Susanne, Claudia Peus, Silke Weisweiler and Deiter Frey. ‘Transformational leadership, job satisfaction, and team performance: A multilevel mediation model of trust.’ The Leadership Quarterly, 24.1(2013), 270-283.
Brown, Steve, John Bessant and Richard Lamming. Strategic Operations Management (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge, 2013. Print.
Covey, Stephen. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Personal Workbook: Powerful lessons in personal change. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2004. Print.
Gächter, Simon, Daniele Nosenzo, Elke Renner and Martin Sefton. Who makes a good leader? Cooperativeness, optimism, and leading‐by‐example. Economic Inquiry, 50.4(2012), 953-967.
Guo, H., Li, H. & Skitmore, M. ‘Life-cycle management of construction projects based on virtual prototyping technology.’ Journal of Management in Engineering, 26.1(2010), pp. 41-47.
King Hussein Cancer Foundation. King Hussein Cancer Center. 2015. Web. 5 Nov. 2016. <http://www.khcf.jo/>
Mahadevan, B. (2010). Operations Management: Theory and Practice (2nd ed.). New Delhi: Pearson Education India.
Monczka, R., Handfield, R., Giunipero, L. & Patterson, J. Purchasing and Supply Chain Management (6th ed.). Boston, MA: Cengage Learning, 2015. Print.
Nicas, Jack. What is Yahoo? Riddle plagued CEOs for two decades. 25 July 2016. Web. 5 Nov. 2016. <http://www.wsj.com/articles/what-is-yahoo-riddle-plagued-ceos-for-two-decades-1469446207>
Private Hospital Association. Hospital Profile: King Hussein Cancer Center. 2015. Web. 5 Nov. 2016. <http://phajordan.org/EN/HospitalProfile.aspx?uid=36>
Slack, Nigel and Michael Lewis. Operations Strategy (4th ed.). Harlow, United Kingdom: Pearson, 2015. Print.
Verma, Harsh. Services Marketing: Text and Cases (2nd ed.). New Delhi: Dorling Kindersley, 2012. Print.