Completed notes of the course

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1 OPERATIONS SUMMARY 1- TRENDS IN OPERATIONS If you are operating at a strategic level of a company, you have to consider a long term point of view and the environment where you are playing. Environmental and social media in the European industries nowadays depend on several trends: DEMOGRAPHIC CHANGES – the number of people in the world is increasing, but not always in the same way. The European market is not growing numerically but maybe is changing the behaviour, because the average age of the people is changing and also the needs of the people are changing. Maybe Europe is not a potential future view for a company. GLOBALISATION & FUTURE MARKETS – there’s still the trend of people moving from the country to the big cities. If you are a company that operates in the country, you have to consider both the market which you are satisfying and where I can find more resources for the company. Eastern countries are speedy growing in the manufacturing industry, if we want to be competitive we have to keep operations inside our boundaries. SCARCITY OF RESOURCES – we have registered an increasing consume of resource, in particular difficulties on catching people, though the number of people in the world is increasing. CLIMATE CHANGE – the point of sustainability must be a driver in the setting of the strategy for our operations. DYNAMIC TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION – we can recover performances in our company, not only with a sustainable point of view, but also with a productivity one, that contributes to generate advantage in the market. If we want to be competitive, we have to invest on R&D. GLOBAL KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY – thanks to internet people are more aware and more conscious about the market so it is fundamental to take care of sustainability of the resources in terms of social…