Managers are also responsible for critical activities such as quality management and control, capacity planning, materials management, purchasing, and scheduling. The importance of operations management has increased dramatically in recent years. Significant foreign competition, shorter product and service life-cycles, better-educated and quality-conscious consumers, and the capabilities of new technology have placed increasing pressures on the operations function to improve productivity while providing a broader array of high-quality products and services. With the globalization of markets, firms are recognizing that the operations function can be used to strengthen their position in the market place. Managers in operations management play a strategic and tactical role in satisfying customer needs and making their firms strong international competitors.

The role of operations management is to transform a company’s inputs into the finished goods or services. Inputs include human resources (such as workers and managers), facilities and processes (such as buildings and equipment), as well as materials, technology, and information. Outputs are the goods and services a company produces.

Basically, Operations management has an impact on the five broad categories of stakeholders in any organisation. The five groups are:

• Customers – These are the most obvious people who will be affected by any business.
• Suppliers – Operations can have a major impact on suppliers, both on how they prosper themselves, and on how effective they are at supplying the operation.
• Shareholders – Clearly, the better an operation is at producing goods and services, the more likely the whole business is to prosper and shareholders will be one of the major beneficiaries of this.
• Employees – Similarly, employees will be generally better off if the company is prosperous; if only because they are more likely to be employed in the future.
• Society – Although often having no direct economic connection with the company, individuals and groups in society at large can be impacted by the way its operations managers behave. The most obvious example is in the environmental responsibility exhibited by operations managers

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Company Profile

CRH plc, the international building materials group, has its headquarters in Ireland and operates in 22 countries in three closely related core businesses:

Primary materials

Value-added building products

Specialist building materials distribution.

Listed on the Irish and London Stock Exchanges and on the NASDAQ in the US, CRH consistently delivers long-term growth in total shareholder return, averaging over 18% per annum since the Group was formed in 1970. CRH maintains a rigorous focus on improving existing operations through experienced local management teams.

These regional platforms and management structures