To maintain profitable growth over time requires sound direction and relevant functions providing support for the needs of agreed markets. Operation is being recognized as a major, often dominant, player in determining and securing competitive advantage. The operational role is to manage and control the various, wide ranging tasks involved in providing services and making products and to do this efficiently by bringing about developments and improvements. .
The strategic role of ASDA is to contribute to the debate and agreement on the markets in which to compete in terms of retaining customers, growing market share and entering new markets. This could involve a market driven and market driving perspective. Operations then need to develop and invest in the delivery system and infrastructure to provide those competitive dimensions for which it is responsible, for example price and delivery speed. Thus, operational capabilities are guided by strategic requirements and so help provide competitive advantage. For five years ASDA Company has been trying to become like Sainsbury and Tesco, and it has the mission to be the Britain's best value retailer exceeding customers' needs. Also it aims to send zero waste to landfill by 2010. To fulfil this aims and strategy operations managers are trying to make successful in every steps of the business of the ASDA Company, ( Naylor J (1996).
1.2 Evaluate the success of existing operation management process in meeting an organization's overall strategic management objectives.
Strategic Management can be defined as "The art and science of formulating, implementing and evaluating cross-functional decisions that enable an organization to achieve its objective. ".
Operations management is concerned with the design, management, and improvement of the systems that create the companies goods or services. The majority of most companies financial and human resources are invested in the activities involved in making products or delivering services.
