How the Leather Industry Handles a Specific Operations Management Issue or Set of Issues Essay

Operations management is the field which is concerned with organizing and executing physical and technical activities of a firm. These actions are conducted by a combination of raw materials and processing or assembling the various components, using the services of workers, machines, tools and power. It is a typical integration of many different functions. Operations management plans normally include instructions in principle of general management, manufacturing and production system. An operation may be defined as â€Å"the process of changing input into outputs by adding value to some entity† (Edurkar, 2009). The two key functions are to provide a product or service and to sell that product or service. It involves the planning and scheming of all functions necessary for the procurement of the firm’s product or services. There are some specific aspects of operations management product or services to emphasize; company volume and location of business feasible for customers and suppliers, marketing strategies, techniques and machinery to make goods, workforce management and training and quality assurance. While establishing a leather industry in Kanpur India or even a small unit, an entrepreneur is required to pay attention to various grounds like size, location and layout as they shape the efficiency of production. Such factors should preferably be considered by the entrepreneur at the project planning stage, and they must be cautious about them at the project implementation stage. A leather industry is commonly comprised of four sectors; the foremost and primary sector being the tanning and finishing sector (Singh, 2002). This phase in the production process possesses a lot of importance because the leather industry involves both small and heavy industries, so its size varies and depends upon the availability and accessibility of a large raw material base. Country’s livestock like buffaloes and goats provide basic raw materials for this industry. Some factors determine the size of the industry like land, building, etc. Size of land should be enough to take care of present and future requirements like storage of raw material and finished goods. Kanpur in Utter Pradesh is a city which enjoys abundant availability of raw material and it is very easy to establish a leather production unit there because it also has basic infrastructure for this business (Bhargava, n. d. ). As proper location of an enterprise is crucial for its success, so Kanpur is the place where a novel entrepreneur can establish his leather business easily, because availability of raw material and cheap skilled labor is not a big deal as it has a professionally developed leather market. The first issue of operations management is the designing of a system. This begins with product development. It should start with the assessment of customer needs and gradually grow into product design. The competence and apparatus that will produce a product, as well as the information system needed to observe and control performance, are part of this design process. As far as the leather industry or unit is concerned, one factor is quite interesting and encouraging that this business in developing countries like India is not as difficult or complicated in terms of competence and equipment needed. For example, a newcomer can initiate a small cottage leather industry with reasonable investment and can get a cheap skilled labor force. Kanpur is the largest centre of buffalo based leather in India. Its tannery industry (tanning is the process of preserving skins of animals to produce leather) began during the British rule and the industry has continued to grow since then. Most of the tanneries are small, so it is quite feasible for an entrepreneur to initiate a leather-oriented business in this region. Leather production system design in the specific region is dependent upon the existing resource base. During recent years, most of the leather industries have shifted from industrialized to developing countries. Reasons can be frequent availability of raw material, cheap labor cost and flexible environmental regulations. As environmental regulations are stricter in the industrialized developed world, establishing leather business in a country like India can be helpful for an enterprise so that chances of changes in its layout would be minimal.