Operations strategy must contribute to the overall strategy of the business if the business is to be successful, but many business owners don't know whether their operations strategy is truly effective or not. By conducting an evaluation of your company's operations strategy, you can determine whether it is contributing to your overall goals or hampering them.

Is It Consistent?

The first question to ask yourself when evaluating your operations strategy is whether your operational goals are consistent with the goals of the company as a whole. For example, if your company strategy is to emphasize customer service but your daily operations concentrate on cost-effectiveness, then your operations strategy is not consistent with your business strategy. Employees will have a hard time consistently satisfying customer service expectations when they are always encouraged to cut costs.

Is It Adaptive?

The second question to ask yourself is whether your operations strategy is well-adapted to the current business environment. If customers are mostly focused on saving money, an operational focus on high quality would be out of touch with what customers are looking for. If customers are willing to spend more to get the highest quality product, an operational focus on efficiency would not be adaptive. Because the business environment changes constantly, operational strategy must be re-evaluated periodically to see if it is still a good fit for the current situation.

Where's The Advantage?

No one strategy provides an advantage for every company in every situation, so the next question to ask is whether the strategy being used provides any advantage for the company. For a pizza delivery restaurant, an operational focus on speed provides the business advantage of quick delivery. Short delivery times might not be as much of an advantage as high quality and reliability for a company selling custom machine parts. If your company is the best in the business at something that provides no real competitive advantage, then your operational strategy has the wrong focus.

Is It Feasible?

The last question to ask is whether the operational strategy is feasible. A restaurant with a superb chef and access to top-notch ingredients could feasibly compete with other restaurants on quality, but not on cost or speed. Customers wishing to eat an inexpensive and fast meal don't usually go out to gourmet restaurants. Whatever the strategy is, it must be feasible with the resources that are currently available or it's the wrong strategy for the situation.