4v volume variety variation visibility ม อะไรบ าง

All operations processes have one thing in common, they all take their ‘inputs’ like, raw materials, knowledge, capital, equipment and time and transform them into outputs (goods and services). They do this in different ways, and the main four are known as the Four V’s, Volume, Variety, Variation and Visibility.

Process Characteristics: The Four Vs

It is generally recognised in operations management that there are ‘Four V’s’ which form part of the overall process design. These are:

• Volume
• Variety
• Variation
• Visibility

The precise combination of these four characteristics will ultimately determine how best to design an organisational process for maximum efficiency. Typically, it will be necessary to make trade-off decisions in respect of operations management depending upon these four factors. It is helpful to offer some examples to illustrate why these four characteristics are so important.

Volume

This refers to the physical number of units or items produced. A high volume manufacturing or service output example would be McDonald’s. They sell quite literally millions of hamburgers and other related food items every day around the world, and one of the known characteristics of McDonald’s is that they have a very high degree of consistency in all of their products and their service delivery. They have a well-established process meaning that they can be confident of regular repeat production at high speed. One of the advantages of having a high volume is that it is typically accompanied by a relatively simple production process, one that is broken down into a number of simple steps. This helps to increase efficiency through systemization. Alternatively, a low-volume example might be an artist who produces bespoke commissions and pieces of artwork. They are entirely unique, ‘one-off’ items which are likely to take a very long time to produce and which cannot be easily replicated or repeated exactly, if at all. This is highly resource intensive and often long-term process.

Variety

This refers to the amount of flexibility in the overall process. An example might be a courier firm which knows that it has to collect and deliver parcels, but at the start of every day it is unknown exactly where they will have to travel to. Variety can and does often increase costs, as it is not necessarily possible to know in advance exactly how far the courier will have to travel. An alternative might be to use Royal Mail instead, as they have a standard procedure of delivering to the majority of UK postcodes every single day, but the trade-off is that it may well take longer and it is much more difficult to track parcels exactly with Royal Mail as opposed to a dedicated courier service. In these instances an organisation using a courier would have to decide whether cost or service was more important.

Variation

This usually refers to changes in demand patterns over a defined period, for example during the course of a year a hotel is more likely to be very busy in the summer months and quieter in the winter months. This has implications for resources such as staff and food for the hotel restaurant. An alternative might also be a toy shop which is likely to be exceptionally busy at Christmas but only moderately busy for the remainder of the year. If an organisation understands its patterns of variation this can help considerably with forecasting and planning resource requirements.

Visibility

This refers to the extent to which end users or customers have visibility of the overall process of delivering. For example, a retail outlet with a physical presence (a bricks and mortar shop) is highly visible and it is likely that customers will have a short tolerance for waiting for the product or service. Alternatively, an internet-only retailer may have similarly demanding customers, but they at least prepared to wait for some amount of time, hours or days, for their product to be delivered. However, increased customer expectation has impacted upon internet retailers in recent years, and they are now finding that some customers in certain areas expect same-day delivery, although this attracts a price premium.

Operations can be categorised into four dimensions, referred to as The 4Vs typology. These four dimensions are Volume, Variety, Variation in demand, and Visibility.

Volume

It refers to the Quantity (units) of products that a company can make, based on the demand. Companies use different production systems to handle the volume. It strives to adjust to the demand and not overproduce (wastage) or underproduce (lost sales).

Variety

The more the variation in the products, the more are the operations process needed and more are the costs.

Visibility

Visibility is about being knowing the Customer’s needs and experiences of the products. Companies conducts surveys and interviews of customers, and also keeps track of warranty claims and sales data to understand more about the customers preferences. IT systems also provide more visibility in the production process.

Variation in Demand

Increase in demand requires increased inputs whereas decrease in demand requires reduced levels of productivity. Workers may work longer hours or work in additional shifts to meat increase demand.

By using these dimensions to understand the structure of an operation, one can highlight the operations performance objectives.

Related: more operations management topics

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