Course : Operational Excellence

Textbook :  

Bourgeous, D., Smith, J., Wang. S., Mortati, J. (2019). Information Systems for Business and Beyond. Retrieved from

Cover

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Langer, A. M. (2018). Information Technology and Organizational Learning. 3rd edition. Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. ISBN: 978-1-138-23858-9

Assignment:

Provide a reflection of at least 500 words (or 2 pages double spaced) of how the knowledge, skills, or theories of this course have been applied, or could be applied, in a practical manner to your current work environment. If you are not currently working, share times when you have or could observe these theories and knowledge could be applied to an employment opportunity in your field of study. 

Requirements:

Provide a 500 word (or 2 pages double spaced) minimum reflection.

Use of proper APA formatting and citations. If supporting evidence from outside resources is used those must be properly cited.

Share a personal connection that identifies specific knowledge and theories from this course.

Demonstrate a connection to your current work environment (IT Developer) . If you are not employed, demonstrate a connection to your desired work environment. 

Practical Connection Assignment

Varsha Yadav Avula

University of the Cumberlands

Operational Excellence

ITS631

Dr. Katina Ward

02/28/2019

In this final reflection, I would like to discuss how various strategies of operational excellence that I studied in this course have been applied at my work place. I work as a Quality Analyst for A&E media company. After spending a month studying this course and writing weekly papers as a part of assignments, I was able to perform my day to day job responsibilities more effectively and my Manager was also very happy with the way I was dealing with assigned tasks. The papers that I wrote as assignments helped me a lot in revisiting the concepts that were covered in power point presentations. This course has given me knowledge on various aspects of operations right from operations structure to project management. I got a chance to study about some new quality improvement techniques and process improvement methodologies like six sigma, total quality management which were used by me to make already existing processes more effective. Before starting this course, I was not very confident about taking part in various phases of a project which are beyond my scope but after studying the different segments of operations, I am now comfortable to work with any team as I can easily understand from operations point of view. I have used the principles of lean six sigma and organized kaizen projects to identify and eliminate unnecessary steps or features in our process that were causing time delay in overall delivery of services to the client.

I applied the principles of risk mitigation to identify possible failures that might arise from a project and took suitable measures in advance to counter the adverse results if there are any. Quality management principles were being used by me very frequently in performing root cause analysis to solve defects and to perform gap analysis for discovering new opportunities. I have used control charts to study various changes that were occurring in our process over a period of time. Using different techniques of statistical process control studied in this course, I was able to reduce the variance in process which resulted in more productivity. I have also performed value stream mapping which I have never done before studying this course. I feel that the principles of this course have extended my knowledge base and increased my career scope. I have used process design principles in this course to suggest new ideas for enhancing our process and delivering more value to the client. Inventory management techniques were very useful for me in identifying areas where there is more idle time and to eliminate steps that do no add value to the service. The ideas that I made based on studying this course have made the process more flexible, cost effective and sustainable. By studying the concepts of office ergonomics, I understood that even a small unproductive motion when performed repetitively can cause waste of considerable amount of time over a course of period. So, I was able to make changes to my work environment and the way I perform at my work place.