Training Course

Overview

Operations Management Fundamentals is a comprehensive professional training course designed to equip managers, supervisors, operations professionals, business analysts, and organizational leaders with the knowledge and practical skills required to plan, organize, control, and continuously improve business operations. The course provides a strong foundation in operations management principles, process design, productivity, capacity planning, resource management, quality management, inventory, supply chain coordination, performance measurement, and operational decision-making across manufacturing and service environments.

The course examines how organizations transform inputs such as people, materials, technology, information, capital, and time into valuable products and services. Participants will learn how to analyze operational processes, identify bottlenecks, manage capacity, improve workflows, reduce waste, optimize resources, control costs, and improve service delivery. Practical tools including Microsoft Excel, process maps, flowcharts, Pareto analysis, dashboards, KPI scorecards, inventory models, capacity analysis, and basic data analytics will be incorporated to support evidence-based operational management.

Participants will explore core operations management practices including demand planning, forecasting, production planning, inventory management, procurement, logistics, quality assurance, workforce planning, scheduling, facility and resource utilization, maintenance, customer service, and supplier management. The program introduces established approaches and frameworks such as Lean Management, Six Sigma, DMAIC, PDCA, Total Quality Management, the Theory of Constraints, ISO 9001 quality management principles, and supply chain management best practices. Practical exercises and case studies will enable participants to apply these concepts to realistic operational challenges.

The course also focuses on modern operations management, including digital transformation, automation, operational analytics, performance dashboards, process improvement, risk management, resilience, sustainability, and continuous improvement. Participants will learn how to establish operational standards, monitor performance, analyze deviations, manage operational risks, and align day-to-day activities with organizational objectives. By the end of the program, participants will be able to evaluate operational performance, improve processes, manage resources effectively, implement structured improvement initiatives, and contribute to efficient, responsive, and sustainable operations.

Course Duration

10 Days (80 Hours)

Target Participants

·         Operations managers and supervisors

·         Production and manufacturing managers

·         Service delivery managers

·         Supply chain and logistics professionals

·         Procurement and purchasing professionals

·         Inventory and warehouse managers

·         Business analysts and process analysts

·         Quality management professionals

·         Project and program managers

·         Finance and management accounting professionals

·         Human resources and workforce planning professionals

·         Customer service managers

·         Business performance and improvement professionals

·         Entrepreneurs and business owners

·         Professionals seeking practical operations management skills

Course Objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

·         Explain the principles, functions, and strategic importance of operations management.

·         Understand how operations convert organizational resources into products and services.

·         Analyze operational processes, workflows, capacity, productivity, and resource utilization.

·         Design and improve efficient operational processes.

·         Identify bottlenecks, waste, delays, inefficiencies, and operational constraints.

·         Apply Lean Management, Six Sigma, DMAIC, PDCA, and Theory of Constraints principles.

·         Develop operational plans based on demand, capacity, resources, and business objectives.

·         Apply forecasting and demand-planning techniques to operational decision-making.

·         Manage inventory, procurement, warehousing, logistics, and supply chain activities.

·         Develop effective production and service delivery schedules.

·         Apply quality management principles and continuous improvement practices.

·         Use operational KPIs and performance metrics to monitor organizational performance.

·         Apply Microsoft Excel and other practical tools to operational analysis and reporting.

·         Develop operational dashboards and performance scorecards.

·         Identify and manage operational risks and disruptions.

·         Improve workforce productivity, resource utilization, and operational efficiency.

·         Understand technology, automation, and analytics applications in modern operations.

·         Apply sustainability and resilience principles to operational management.

·         Develop practical solutions to operational problems using data and structured analysis.

·         Build an integrated operations management improvement plan for a real-world organization.

Course Content

Module: Operations Management Fundamentals

Day 1: Foundations of Operations Management

1.      Introduction to Operations Management
Understanding operations management, its purpose, scope, functions, strategic importance, and role in organizational performance.

2.      Operations Systems and Transformation Processes
Examining inputs, transformation processes, outputs, feedback, customers, suppliers, resources, and the relationship between operational activities and business value.

3.      Manufacturing and Service Operations
Comparing manufacturing, service, project, retail, healthcare, hospitality, logistics, and other operating environments and identifying their different management requirements.

4.      Operations Strategy and Business Objectives
Understanding how operations support organizational strategy through cost, quality, speed, dependability, flexibility, innovation, and customer-focused performance.

5.      Operational Resources and the 5M Framework
Examining people, machines, materials, methods, and measurement and understanding how effective resource coordination influences operational outcomes.

6.      Process Design and Workflow Fundamentals
Understanding process structures, activities, inputs and outputs, process ownership, handoffs, workflow dependencies, and process documentation.

7.      Operational Performance and Productivity
Defining productivity, efficiency, effectiveness, utilization, throughput, cycle time, capacity, and other fundamental operational performance concepts.

8.      Roles and Responsibilities in Operations
Exploring the responsibilities of operations managers, supervisors, planners, quality teams, procurement, supply chain, finance, HR, and cross-functional stakeholders.

9.      Operations Analysis Exercise
Mapping a realistic business operation, identifying inputs, processes, outputs, resources, customers, suppliers, performance measures, and major operational challenges.

10.  Operations Management Case Study
Analyzing an organization experiencing increasing costs, delays, quality problems, and customer complaints and developing foundational operational improvement recommendations.

Day 2: Process Management, Capacity, and Productivity

1.      Business Process Management Fundamentals
Understanding process ownership, process hierarchy, standard operating procedures, process controls, workflows, and process performance.

2.      Process Mapping and Flowcharts
Creating process maps, flowcharts, swimlane diagrams, and value-stream representations to understand operational activities and responsibilities.

3.      Process Analysis and Bottleneck Identification
Identifying bottlenecks, queues, delays, unnecessary handoffs, rework, resource constraints, and other sources of operational inefficiency.

4.      Capacity Planning Fundamentals
Understanding theoretical capacity, practical capacity, available capacity, utilization, capacity requirements, and capacity constraints.

5.      Capacity Utilization and Resource Planning
Calculating utilization and balancing people, equipment, facilities, technology, and other operational resources against demand.

6.      Productivity Measurement
Measuring output per employee, output per hour, output per machine, transactions per employee, service volumes, and other productivity indicators.

7.      Cycle Time, Lead Time, and Throughput
Understanding the differences between cycle time, lead time, processing time, waiting time, throughput, and their impact on operational performance.

8.      Workforce and Resource Scheduling
Developing staffing plans, shift schedules, workload allocations, resource assignments, and capacity-based operational schedules.

9.      Capacity and Productivity Exercise
Analyzing an operational process to calculate capacity, utilization, productivity, throughput, and bottleneck constraints.

10.  Capacity Constraint Case Study
Developing a solution for an organization facing growing demand, limited resources, long queues, and declining service performance.

Day 3: Demand Planning, Forecasting, and Operational Planning

1.      Demand Management Fundamentals
Understanding customer demand, demand variability, demand patterns, demand drivers, and the relationship between demand and operational capacity.

2.      Demand Forecasting for Operations
Exploring historical data, trends, seasonality, moving averages, exponential smoothing, and other practical forecasting approaches.

3.      Forecast Accuracy and Forecast Errors
Understanding forecast bias, forecast error, accuracy measures, assumptions, uncertainty, and the operational consequences of poor forecasts.

4.      Sales and Operations Planning
Understanding the relationship between sales, demand, inventory, production, workforce, procurement, finance, and operational planning.

5.      Production Planning Fundamentals
Developing production requirements, resource plans, schedules, material requirements, capacity considerations, and operational priorities.

6.      Service Operations Planning
Planning service capacity, staffing, customer demand, appointment volumes, workload, service levels, and resource requirements.

7.      Aggregate Planning
Balancing demand and capacity through workforce adjustments, inventory, overtime, subcontracting, scheduling, and other operational alternatives.

8.      Scenario and Contingency Planning
Developing base, optimistic, and pessimistic scenarios and preparing operational responses to demand changes, resource shortages, and disruptions.

9.      Operational Planning Exercise
Using Excel to develop a basic demand forecast and operational plan based on historical demand, capacity, staffing, and resource constraints.

10.  Demand Planning Case Study
Developing an integrated operational plan for an organization experiencing seasonal demand, capacity limitations, inventory pressure, and changing customer requirements.

Day 4: Inventory Management and Materials Control

1.      Inventory Management Fundamentals
Understanding inventory types, inventory objectives, carrying costs, ordering costs, stock availability, and the trade-offs involved in inventory decisions.

2.      Types of Inventory
Examining raw materials, work-in-progress, finished goods, maintenance inventory, safety stock, cycle stock, and pipeline inventory.

3.      Inventory Costs and Trade-Offs
Analyzing purchasing costs, holding costs, ordering costs, shortage costs, obsolescence, damage, and the financial implications of excessive or insufficient inventory.

4.      Economic Order Quantity Concepts
Understanding EOQ principles, assumptions, order quantities, replenishment costs, holding costs, and practical applications.

5.      Reorder Points and Safety Stock
Calculating reorder points, considering demand variability and lead times, and understanding the role of safety stock in preventing stockouts.

6.      ABC Inventory Analysis
Classifying inventory according to value and operational importance and applying differentiated management approaches.

7.      Inventory Accuracy and Stock Control
Managing stock records, cycle counts, physical verification, inventory reconciliation, shrinkage, discrepancies, and data-quality problems.

8.      Warehouse Operations and Materials Handling
Examining receiving, storage, picking, packing, dispatch, layout, material flow, warehouse productivity, and safety.

9.      Inventory Analysis Exercise
Using Excel to calculate inventory metrics, classify products using ABC analysis, determine reorder requirements, and identify slow-moving or excess inventory.

10.  Inventory Management Case Study
Developing an inventory improvement strategy for an organization experiencing stockouts, excess inventory, inaccurate records, and increasing carrying costs.

Day 5: Procurement, Supply Chain, and Logistics Operations

1.      Procurement and Operations Integration
Understanding the relationship between procurement, operations, inventory, suppliers, production, finance, and customer service.

2.      Supplier Selection and Evaluation
Establishing supplier evaluation criteria covering cost, quality, delivery, reliability, capacity, responsiveness, compliance, and risk.

3.      Supplier Performance Management
Measuring supplier quality, delivery performance, lead times, responsiveness, cost performance, and service-level compliance.

4.      Supply Chain Fundamentals
Understanding supply chain flows involving materials, information, finances, suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, retailers, and customers.

5.      Logistics and Transportation Management
Examining transportation planning, routing, delivery schedules, freight costs, shipment consolidation, and logistics performance.

6.      Lead-Time Management
Analyzing procurement, production, transportation, and service lead times and identifying opportunities to reduce delays.

7.      Supply Chain Risk and Resilience
Identifying supplier concentration, shortages, transportation disruptions, geopolitical risks, demand shocks, and other supply-chain vulnerabilities.

8.      Sustainable Supply Chain Operations
Exploring responsible sourcing, waste reduction, resource efficiency, environmental considerations, supplier standards, and sustainable logistics.

9.      Supply Chain Analysis Exercise
Mapping a supply chain, analyzing supplier and logistics performance, identifying critical dependencies, and developing improvement priorities.

10.  Supply Chain Disruption Case Study
Developing a response plan for an organization experiencing supplier failure, transportation delays, inventory shortages, and rising customer demand.

Day 6: Quality Management and Continuous Improvement

1.      Quality Management Fundamentals
Understanding quality, customer requirements, quality standards, prevention, inspection, assurance, control, and continuous improvement.

2.      Total Quality Management Principles
Exploring customer focus, employee involvement, process orientation, continuous improvement, evidence-based decisions, and organizational quality culture.

3.      ISO 9001 Quality Management Principles
Understanding customer focus, leadership, engagement of people, process approach, improvement, evidence-based decision-making, and relationship management.

4.      Lean Management Fundamentals
Understanding value, waste, flow, pull, customer value, continuous improvement, and the elimination of non-value-adding activities.

5.      The Eight Wastes of Lean
Identifying defects, overproduction, waiting, non-utilized talent, transportation, inventory, motion, and extra processing.

6.      Six Sigma and DMAIC
Applying Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control to structured operational quality and process improvement.

7.      PDCA and Continuous Improvement
Applying Plan-Do-Check-Act cycles to operational problems, experiments, corrective actions, and performance improvement.

8.      Root-Cause Analysis
Applying Five Whys, fishbone diagrams, Pareto analysis, process analysis, and other techniques to identify underlying causes of operational problems.

9.      Quality Improvement Exercise
Analyzing operational defect data, identifying root causes, prioritizing problems, and developing corrective and preventive actions.

10.  Quality Failure Case Study
Investigating an organization experiencing recurring defects, customer complaints, rework, and operational costs and developing a structured quality improvement program.

Day 7: Operations Scheduling, Maintenance, and Resource Optimization

1.      Operational Scheduling Fundamentals
Understanding scheduling objectives, priorities, constraints, sequencing, resource availability, deadlines, and service requirements.

2.      Production Scheduling
Developing production schedules based on demand, capacity, material availability, workforce, equipment, and delivery requirements.

3.      Service Scheduling
Applying scheduling principles to appointments, customer service, healthcare administration, field services, call centers, and other service environments.

4.      Workforce Scheduling and Shift Management
Balancing staffing requirements, workloads, employee availability, skills, shift patterns, overtime, and service levels.

5.      Resource Allocation and Optimization
Assigning scarce resources to high-priority activities and balancing cost, capacity, service requirements, and operational risk.

6.      Maintenance Management Fundamentals
Understanding preventive, corrective, predictive, and condition-based maintenance approaches.

7.      Equipment Reliability and Availability
Measuring downtime, availability, mean time between failures, mean time to repair, maintenance effectiveness, and equipment utilization.

8.      Operational Scheduling Tools
Using Excel, Gantt charts, scheduling matrices, workload models, dashboards, and basic optimization techniques for operational planning.

9.      Scheduling and Resource Optimization Exercise
Developing a practical schedule while balancing demand, staffing, equipment availability, deadlines, and resource constraints.

10.  Operational Disruption Case Study
Responding to equipment failure, workforce shortages, urgent customer requirements, and capacity constraints while maintaining critical service levels.

Day 8: Performance Measurement, KPIs, and Operational Analytics

1.      Operational Performance Management
Establishing performance objectives, measurement systems, review cycles, accountability, and continuous improvement processes.

2.      Operational KPIs and Metrics
Designing measures for productivity, efficiency, quality, cost, utilization, throughput, cycle time, service levels, inventory, and customer performance.

3.      Leading and Lagging Operational Indicators
Differentiating predictive indicators from historical performance measures and applying both to operational monitoring.

4.      Benchmarking and Performance Comparison
Applying historical, internal, external, functional, and industry benchmarking to identify performance gaps.

5.      Variance and Trend Analysis
Comparing actual performance with targets, budgets, historical performance, forecasts, and benchmarks.

6.      Operational Dashboards
Designing management dashboards that communicate KPIs, targets, trends, exceptions, bottlenecks, and improvement priorities.

7.      Excel and Power Query for Operations
Using formulas, PivotTables, Power Query, data validation, charts, and structured datasets for operational reporting and analysis.

8.      Power BI for Operational Performance
Exploring interactive dashboards, KPI cards, filters, trends, drill-down analysis, and management reporting for operational data.

9.      Operational Analytics Exercise
Analyzing a realistic operational dataset to calculate KPIs, identify performance trends, compare departments, and develop management recommendations.

10.  Performance Management Case Study
Redesigning an ineffective operational reporting system and developing a focused KPI dashboard that supports timely management decisions.

Day 9: Operational Risk, Resilience, Technology, and Digital Operations

1.      Operational Risk Management
Identifying risks arising from processes, people, systems, suppliers, equipment, information, facilities, and external events.

2.      Operational Risk Identification and Assessment
Using risk registers, likelihood-impact analysis, risk scoring, control assessment, and risk prioritization to manage operational exposures.

3.      Business Continuity and Operational Resilience
Understanding continuity planning, critical processes, recovery priorities, contingency arrangements, alternative resources, and resilience.

4.      Digital Transformation in Operations
Exploring how cloud platforms, enterprise systems, analytics, automation, artificial intelligence, IoT, and digital workflows are transforming operations.

5.      Automation of Operational Processes
Identifying repetitive activities suitable for automation and evaluating opportunities to improve productivity, accuracy, speed, and consistency.

6.      Real-Time Operational Monitoring
Understanding live and near-real-time data, operational alerts, exception reporting, dashboards, and data-driven response mechanisms.

7.      Data Governance and Operational Information
Applying data-quality, access, security, documentation, ownership, and information-management principles to operational systems.

8.      Sustainable and Resilient Operations
Integrating resource efficiency, waste reduction, energy management, responsible sourcing, resilience, and sustainability into operational decisions.

9.      Digital Operations Exercise
Mapping a traditional operational workflow and designing a digitally enabled process using analytics, automation, dashboards, and appropriate controls.

10.  Operational Resilience Case Study
Developing a response strategy for an organization facing a major technology outage, supplier disruption, workforce shortage, and customer-service pressure.

Day 10: Strategic Operations Management and Integrated Improvement

1.      Operations Strategy and Competitive Advantage
Connecting operational capabilities with competitive priorities such as cost, quality, speed, flexibility, reliability, innovation, and customer experience.

2.      Integrated Operations Planning
Connecting demand, forecasting, capacity, production, inventory, procurement, workforce, logistics, quality, finance, and customer requirements.

3.      Theory of Constraints
Identifying system constraints, exploiting bottlenecks, subordinating other activities, elevating capacity, and continuously reassessing operational constraints.

4.      Operational Excellence Frameworks
Integrating Lean, Six Sigma, DMAIC, PDCA, Total Quality Management, Theory of Constraints, and process-management principles into an operational excellence approach.

5.      Operational Cost and Efficiency Improvement
Identifying cost drivers, reducing waste, improving resource utilization, optimizing processes, and balancing cost efficiency with quality and service.

6.      Change Management in Operations
Managing operational change, stakeholder engagement, communication, training, resistance, implementation risks, adoption, and sustainability of improvements.

7.      Operations Governance and Standard Operating Procedures
Establishing operational policies, SOPs, controls, process ownership, documentation, review mechanisms, compliance, and accountability.

8.      Continuous Improvement and Operational Maturity
Assessing operational maturity, establishing improvement pipelines, monitoring benefits, institutionalizing best practices, and developing long-term improvement capabilities.

9.      Integrated Operations Management Capstone Exercise
Developing a complete operations improvement plan covering process analysis, demand, capacity, inventory, procurement, quality, workforce, KPIs, technology, risk, and continuous improvement.

10.  Final Assessment and Operations Improvement Action Plan
Presenting the integrated operations solution, defending improvement priorities, responding to operational scenarios, and developing an actionable roadmap for strengthening operational efficiency, resilience, quality, and performance.