Operations Strategy 5 - Process Strategy Network

This guide deals with process technology strategy. Also, again, there is a rough split between considering the static issues of process technology and the more dynamic issues. What this means is that the static issues concentrates on the general characteristics of different types of technology, while the dynamic deals with the way in which process technology is changed through investment and implementation decisions. In practice these static and dynamic dimensions merge together. So, for example, a key issue in deciding which technology warrants future investment should be a thorough understanding of the technological characteristics of the various options available for investment. One final point, many managers are reluctant to get involved in the details of process technology because they consider them to be the province of "technical experts". In other words, they believe that a detailed degree of technical knowledge is necessary before one can judge the appropriateness of a particular process technology. Yet this is clearly not the case. More than thirty years ago, Wickham Skinner, in many ways the founder of operations strategy, was pointing out that we did not need a degree in engineering to choose a domestic lawn mower. We could all ask the fundamental questions regarding its ability to do the job, convenience of use, investment and operating costs, susceptibility to technological obsolescence, and so on.

Key points

Note we are dealing with process technology rather than technology in general. This is because, we are interested in how services and products are created through the processes within a company, rather than the detailed technology of the service or product itself. But note that as usual there is an overlap between the two. The boundary between process technology on one hand and product or service technology on the other can sometimes be blurred. This is especially true in high-contact services where the customer experiences the process as part of the service. Yet in a different way, it is also true more generally. Changes in product or service technology often imply changes in process technology, and vice versa.

Direct and indirect process technology

This is another one of those distinctions which it is important to understand yet which is not, in itself, a clear and clean distinction. Direct process technology directly helps to create the service or product whereas indirect process technology helps to manage the process that creates the service or product.

The product/process matrix

There are three dimensions of process technology. These are,

• The scale of the technology (that is, its capacity, not its physical size).
• The degree of automation of the technology (what the technology does itself as opposed to requiring human intervention).
• The degree of coupling of the technology (the degree to which different parts of the technology are integrated or linked together).

These three dimensions are very strongly related. So, for example, a small manufacturing jobbing shop will probably use "general purpose" machines requiring the use of the skilled labor and physically separated so as to allow flexibility of materials flow between them. At the other end of the scale, a large food processing plant will have many of its activities automated with each stage in the process being physically connected through materials handling devices.

The type of tasks that operations managers will be concerned with will also change as technology moves down these three dimensions. With small, labor intensive and separated technologies there is likely to be an emphasis on managing and controlling the complexities that characterize such technology. On the other hand, large, capital intensive and integrated technologies once designed and implemented, to a large extent, run themselves. The key involvement of operations managers therefore is in that initial design.

The main purpose of the product/process matrix is to demonstrate two points. The first is that there is a "natural diagonal" or line of fit between the product or service offerings that a company has and the characteristics of its process technologies. Companies may move their position on this line of fit (often moving down the diagonal as they progress along the product/service life cycle, or choose to concentrate on inhabiting one particular position on the diagonal). The second point is that any deviation away from the natural line of fit has cost consequences. If technologies are too small, labor intensive and uncoupled for the volume and variety of products and services produced, then the costs of making those products and services will be higher than they could be using more appropriate technologies. Conversely, if the technologies are too large, capital intensive and integrated for the volume and variety of products and services produced, then the technology will be too rigid, which itself produces extra costs and/or lost opportunities.

The characteristics of "new" technologies

Much of the basis for the product/process matrix came from academic work routed in the 1960s and 70s. At that time most process technology meant conventional manufacturing technologies. When dealing with process technology that has significant amounts of information-processing embedded in it, the dimensions need changing.

• Scale become scalability.
• Automation becomes analytical content.
• Coupling becomes connectivity.

Scale is less important when technology can be brought together on an ad hoc basis because it is scalable.

Automation as such is not relevant when all technology to some extent replaces human decision-making. More important is the extent to which it replaces human decision-making; this is its analytical content.

Coupling was traditionally associated with the rigidity that comes from integrating physical technologies. But this rigidity can be overcome in IT-based technologies when they can easily communicate with each other because of their connectivity.

These developments have, to some extent, changed the nature of the trade-off between cost and flexibility. However, remember rarely are they eliminated completely; rather they just shift to a higher level. There may still be a trade-off between cost and flexibility but the actual cost performance and flexibility performance of the technology is better than it used to be.

Selecting process technology

Companies should choose between different process technologies. In doing so it does not cover all the conventional financial capital budgeting techniques. Rather it focuses on the overarching idea that technologies should be judged both on their impact in the market place and their impact on the resource base of the organization.

It also introduces a simple three-stage approach to evaluating technology that distinguishes between:

• the feasibility of the technology - how difficult it is to get it operational.

• the acceptability of the technology - how much it improves competitiveness and gives us a return on investment as well as adding to the resource base.

• The vulnerability of the technology - how much risk is involved in terms of what could go wrong, especially during the implementation of the technology.

Compared with the more narrow capital budgeting techniques, this is a far broader approach.

It is worth remembering that, in practice, the choice of new technologies is far less rational and "clinical" than the impression given. Usually, investment decisions of this type are made against a background of opposing factions in the managerial team with different views of how the market may chance, what risks are appropriate, which technologies represent the way of the future and which represent technological "dead-ends", and so on. The issues and questions should therefore be considered as providing a set of checklists and structures which can raise this debate to a higher level rather than give any answers as such.