Skip to main content

This link is exclusively for students and staff members within this organisation.

Unauthorised use will lead to account termination.

Previous

Leaders with bottle

Next

The fight to be the world’s number one car manufacturer

TROUBLESOME TERMS

Operations: competitive advantage to waste minimisation

Each of the following terms in operations (resource) management causes problems for students in exams. You may think you know flow production and quality control. But do you know them well enough to impress an examiner?

A sustainable element of superiority over rivals, which can be from differentiation (even uniqueness) or the result of aggressive cost-cutting, making the product/service the lowest-cost provider in the marketplace (see pp. 20–22). Business guru Michael Porter emphasises that unless the advantage is sustainable, it’s not a meaningful competitive advantage.

The longest path through a project, found by adding up the durations of the activities on that path. This tells you the minimum time the project will take until completion, and shows managers the activities they must supervise most carefully. Any activity off the critical path has an element of float time, i.e. spare time.

Your organisation does not have access to this article.

Sign up today to give your students the edge they need to achieve their best grades with subject expertise

Subscribe

Previous

Leaders with bottle

Next

The fight to be the world’s number one car manufacturer