EVALUATION OF OPERATIONS CAPABILITY OF LANKA MINERAL SAND LIMITED

Abstract

The world mineral sand industry is distributed almost in all the continents of the world. The majority of the world class manufacturers are located in Australia, USA, and South Africa and South East Asian countries. In Sri Lanka, the only organization involved in the industry is Lanka Mineral Sand Limited (LMSL). Success of the business mainly depends on its operations capabilities. This paper analyzes the operations capability of the LMSL and recommends operations strategy for the company. The critical success factors and thus the competitive priorities of the LMSL products are identified by analyzing the customer needs of LMSL and its competitor strategies. In understanding the customer needs, information in obtained from the company marketing database and the world market for the mineral sand is studied. Three major companies which produce mineral sand products are analyzed to understand the critical success factors in operations of the world mineral sands industry. Operations capability of the LMSL is analyzed under 15 operations management issues. For each operation management issue, sub-issues are considered. Each operations issue is evaluated through the information provided by LMSL management. Operation capability index is used to compare the operations capability under each operations management issue. Based on the present operations capabilities and competitive priorities of the business, recommendations are given to formulate the operations strategy. According to the analysis, the operations capabilities of the LMSL are at a very lower level. When considering the critical success factors, the order qualifying factors are quality and delivery and the order wining factors are price and flexibility. The performance objectives of LMSL should be to achieve quality and deliverability in the short-term, while in the medium–term they should achieve the flexibility and a technology transfer to produce new products in the long-term.

Keywords: Manufacturing Capability Index, Operations Strategy, Operations Capability Index

For full Paper: fmscresearch@sjp.ac.lk