Operations Management: Creating a Blueprint for Your Start-Up

Operations Plan: A Blueprint for Running Your Business

Operations management is a key component of almost every business plan. It's a blueprint for running your business, and help you anticipate and plan for contingencies..

Consider the “4 M’s”

Operations management can be broken doen into the 4 M’s, each with its own subcomponents:

• Money: budget, cash flow, financial systems, point-of-sale systems, banking, taxes, and audit
• Methods: policies and procedures
• Machines: equipment, property, leases, insurance, repair and maintenance, and capital replacement
• Manpower: human resources, whether employees or contractors

The operations plan for your business affects all aspects of planning and running your business, from time management to budgeting. The following components should be considered when developing your operations plan.

Money

• Budget. The budget for your policies and procedures in your operations plan should be written and revised as you consider each aspect of your business operations. Try to be as accurate as possible in your budget, even though most of your numbers will initially be estimates.

Methods

• Day-to-day operations. Describe how you will run your business. In general, what will your business do from day-to-day? How will these activities be done? Who will do them?
• Industry standards and regulations. Are there any that affect your day-to-day operations? Would it benefit your organization to be certified in any way (Organic, ISO 2000, industry association certification)?
• Quality of service standards. Are you setting any? If so, how will you monitor and maintain these standards? 
• Environmental standards/social responsibility guidelines. Are you setting these types of standards for your business? Are they part of your marketing efforts?