The troubled history of the Airbus A380 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words - 3

The troubled history of the Airbus A380 - Essay Example In addition, Soft Systems Methodology allows to identify analyze multiple levels of the problem with purpose of finding the most effective solutions that take into account relationships and dependencies that might not be clearly seen using the Hard Systems Methodology. The analysis and evaluation have shown that the role of systems and operations management is underestimated by Airbus management in the process of managing separate projects and overall business operations. In addition, effective systems and operations management strategies have not been integrated within the company well enough due to lack of organization, strong leadership and communication, among other factors. Business process reengineering, total quality management, Lean and Six Sigma approaches to improvement have been analyzed with the purpose of determining the most effective for Airbus to use. The analysis has shown that business process reengineering would be the most appropriate for Airbus approach because i t implies implementing radical changes within rather narrow time frames. Rapid changes, in their turn, show to be the most effective in attempts to radically improve organizational performance. It is recommended that Airbus uses business process reengineering approach for improving its systems and operations management. Furthermore, decision making and supporting systems, such as transaction processing systems, management information systems and decision support systems should be incorporated into organizational operations in order to align information systems and operations management of the company. Introduction Airbus is, as the company writes about itself, a technology-oriented organization that created its first jet in 1974 (Airbus.com, 2011). In 1991 the company started working an idea of creating a super-large passenger aircraft. The jet would become the largest airplane ever made. Consequently, the work on its creation was sure to be complex and demanding. However, it took t he company 14 years, since 1993 when Airbus started working of the development of the ‘super jumbo’, for the new aircraft to take off in full service in 2007 (Slack, Chambers and Johnstone, 2010). As Slack, Chambers and Johnstone (2010) report, it took the company so many years to, finally, complete the project, because of a number of problems within the organization. Most of them, such as weak organization of production processes, poor leadership or use of incompatible software by different departments, are related to of systems and operations management practices of Airbus. Therefore, the goal of the given report is to determine and analyze how systems and operations management concepts are used by the company and how systems and operations management is integrated into the business. Soft Systems Methodology will be used for analyzing the situation and making recommendations about how the Airbus information systems and operations management should be updated to suppor t and improve their business efficiency. Furthermore, people, technology and organisational issues involved in improving the operations at Airbus will be assessed and analyzed in order to clarify how in particular Airbus can improve its business processes through the update and improvement