Operations management on: Analysis of London Olympics 2012

The 2012 Olympics held in London is known to be a chief international multinational sport event which was celebrated in Olympics games’ tradition and was governed by the international Olympic Committee. The opening ceremony of summer 2012 Olympics included planning for considerable redevelopment, Olympic park, operations management, cost associated, and other relevant factors. Following this, intend of this paper is to discuss, planning, processes and activities involved in opening ceremony of Olympics 2012. Therefore, report has focused on relevant issues which were involved in delivering this entire project of Olympics’ opening ceremony successfully. For this, an overview has been outlined in relation to Olympics opening ceremony 2012.

Concept of Operations management:

Before embarking on Olympics opening ceremony in London, it is required to give the brief introduction to operations management so that information can be acknowledged and aligned with theoretical framework of operations management. Managing operations is generally regarded with a framework of general management function where operations managers are concerned with planning, managing and controlling the activities. In this regard, planning is an activity in which a course of action is established and decision making is guided for future perspective. Therefore, opening ceremony of Olympics was also planned in advance and alternative course of actions were noticed and analyzed in order to select the best amongst all. The organizing committee of the Olympic Games in London was planned and established so that performance of the games could be supervised after the successful bid. On the other hand, operations department also created an Olympic Delivery Authority that was made the in charge of the venues and infrastructure’s construction of Olympic Games. In addition, department for culture, media and sport was also involved in the planning stage of opening ceremony and took the responsibility to focus on lapses of the games. A main issue involved in overall planning was responsibility for supervising of funding from public sector of around 9.3 billion EUR (Rooney, 2012).

Interrelationships of theories in ceremony’s approach:

Furthermore, operations management is considered as a process whereby resources that are flowing within a definite framework are united together and distorted by a well-organized and controlled manner to add the value in accord with management communicated policies. In this relation, operations managers are concerned with their prime responsibility for dealing out with inputs and converting them into effective outputs. Thus, it can be demonstrated that operations management consists of resources, frameworks, transformation and activities that add value to the entire system. Dave Courell was the operations manager of Olympics 2012 held in London. His planning for Olympic started as their business and program manager for infrastructure and venue required for Olympics. For this, the operations manager required a total span of around more than 4500 strong workforce to be involved in this entire project of Olympics 2012. Moreover, operations management concept states that managers can multiply the value of resources by using their intellectual competencies and capabilities. The same was performed by Courell as he made this event successful and presented a paradigm for other projects (Edworthy, 2012).

Applications of theory:

Consequently, from the perspective of system as an integral part of operations management, managers involved in this project arranged the constituents in such a manner to achieve the objectives according to the plan. In turn, it consists of a few relevant subsystems like personnel, operations, engineering and finance and all these are performed under responsibilities divided among hierarchical management. Besides, a system’s capability to achieve the planned and set objectives basically depends on its blueprint and control. Thus, the ingenious aspects and inventive performances of the opening ceremony were taken care by the artistic director Danny Boyle and his team. They designed the system in a particular way and included following stages:

The artistic programs

• Opening ceremony performances
• Costing of tickets for opening ceremony including session time, session code, date, and price category.

Pricing of tickets was the most critical part before opening of Olympics ceremony as the category was to decide and agreed upon by the operations management. Similarly, Boyle started his work for planning of opening ceremony with various designers. In this context, everyone considered that Boyle had a great idea for presenting a surprising image for first 15 minutes of opening ceremony of Olympics 2012 that could go around all over the world. In addition to this, entire management team did a great job helping with security, sustaining and marshalling the technical team involved in this project. The 2012 Olympics ceremony held in London has been hailed to be the greatest ever due to its cost spent on this ceremony. London amounted to only 27 million EUR out of budgeted amount which was approximately 80 million EUR. This amount was lesser as compared to the amount of 65million EUR spend by Beijing in 2008 Olympics. Thus, 2012 Olympic opening ceremony is seen as an effective and successful project held by London. It has also been praised by various observers and publications as a masterpiece (Olympic Trivia, 2012).

Advantage and disadvantage of related models of operations management:

Subsequently, as per operations management, operations managers should focus improving the efficiency for transformation and increase the overall ratio of the project. Therefore, it requires personnel, material and finance as inputs that go through transformation activities and result in effective outcomes. On the similar front, economic, non-economic and public relations impacts are controlled for further use. The impact was noticed and it illustrated the lessons for event planning. Key ingredients involved in this project setting an example in front of the world are as follows:

Operations management incorporated history and culture in order to make it a special event;

• Moreover, diversity was reflected in the advertising and events included in the ceremony;
• Motivated the audience of multi-generation
• Planners of event looked for the opportunities to inject some humor into the conferences and associated corporate events entirely;
• Besides, CEO was involved in a humorous and unanticipated way within the proposed budget;
• Finally, operations team of ceremony project ensured the success and achieved tremendous results with rehearsals (Kumar & Suresh, 2009).

Strategic framework for opening ceremony:

Correspondingly, talking about the strategy applied by the director of opening ceremony of 2012 Olympics, it can be relate to the strategic perspective of operations. According to this perspective, priorities are set among the quality, flexibility, cost efficiency and dependability. Quality is viewed as the performance of the project and on the other hand, cost efficiency is termed with project planning and opening of ceremony within or lesser than the budget. Next, dependability is represented with reliability and timely delivery of the proposed events to the audience. Similarly, flexibility is concerned with rapid response with new events or changes in plan. In this framework of strategic framework of London opening ceremony 2012, it can be stated that they planned to give the effective results within the budget and made it full of surprise to everyone watching and attending the ceremony. The investment made by London in different domains was as follows:

• Investment on elite sport and Paralympics funding was around 400 million EUR
• Investment on venue and infrastructure amounted to approximately 5.3 million EUR
• Security and policing expenses was 600 million EUR
• Contingency fund amounted to 2.7 million EUR
• VAT was around 800 million EUR (Edworthy, 2012).

Key parts for ceremony success:

Concerning the budget, director also took care of environmental policies during their planning for opening ceremony. The success report and rating was declared by BBC. It revealed that London opening ceremony got the highest ranking among all since 1992. Apart from this, operations management work can be done from delivery perspective where they arranged the transport system. According to the management, 12 Javelin trains were managed between 11 and 1.59 am with a half-hourly ferry between St Pancras and Stratford. Moreover, the service was carried from Southeastern view point and where more than 20,000 people will be transported an hour to and from the destination of Olympic Park. In this context, the disorder was not only the issues on the roads. Therefore, following were the key parts involved in opening ceremony which made it successful:

• The biggest ringing bell of Europe was used which was extolled with Shakespeare lines;
• There were around 15 thousand square metres of staging which was correspondent to more than 10 Olympic –sized swimming pools.
• In addition, operations management also included a flying system that was able to lift around 25 tones.
• More than 12,000 props were used in West-end musical
• More than 1000 automated lamps were used at the time of ceremony with proper management of Boyle.
• A PA system of a million-watt including 500 speakers was also used in the event of opening ceremony. Additionally, it was associated with 50 tones of sound gear used on stage (Travel mail Reporter, 2012).

Total quality management & JIT methods:

The set made for the event of opening ceremony of Olympics 2012 was fantastic and one of the biggest sets made ever. The three hour ceremony was started at 21:00 BST with full preparation and an hour of culture mix of countries involved in Olympics. Moreover each and every detail related to the ceremony was kept secret in order to surprise the world with their preparation. On the basis of evaluation of the opening ceremony, it can be stated that both just-in-time and total quality management theories of operations management were utilized properly and in an efficient way. The concepts revealed in the information of ceremony represent the operational strategy of the director. They had a throughput-world thinking which they used by modifying the system, introducing new structures at the time of ceremony and setting a paradigm in front of the entire world. Accordingly, just-in-time methods applied can be noticed by the evaluation of timing and preparation of opening ceremony.

• July 27, Friday, 7am- quick chat with team of operations management,
• 8am-3pm- checking, ticketing, security and keeping an eye on potential risks
• 3pm-5pm- ready to go at 5pm to open the door for the ceremony
• 5.01pm- Door opening of ceremony and seating arrangements of national committees and other VIPs,
• 9pm- Placing of late arrivals and resolution of broadcast related issues
• 10.30pm- Athletes’ parade (BBC News UK, 2012)

Similarly, ceremony goes on and starts with the Olympic rings that were enlightened with pyrotechnics as they were elevated above the stadium of Olympics. Afterward, successful journey of London Olympics’ opening ceremony included a presentation of storm cloud that was also hanged over the stadium. It gave a sassy jiggle to the notorious grey summer of the country. In addition, a pastoral wear scene was also a part of that three hours event to add more surprise and effectiveness to it. Thus, overall presentations during those three hours of ceremony were appreciable and made the entire project of Boyle successful. This $42 m show took the television audience of around one billion on a high reach and created history (Stebner, 2012).

Operations model of strategic planning:

As a result, it is clear by this evaluation of correct timing in delivering the presentation at the time of event of opening ceremony that just-in-time method was applied by the operations management and demonstrated their optimum capacity. Correspondingly, operations model of strategic planning can be presented in this paper to stimulate the work done for success of opening ceremony. The operations model is as follows:

• Wide economic assumptions
• Statement of mission
• Consideration of major threats from government/regulatory framework in active planning and implementation
• Interrelation set of both financial and non-financial objectives
• Major forces in relation to technological framework
• Statement including strength and weakness of the framework
• Significant opportunities that can be considered for effectiveness of the project
• Forecasting of operations and relevant structures
• Explicit and key competitive strategies
• Planning of all the programs in advance and presentation on time (Joseph, 2004)

Afterward, discussing about the productive work of Boyle in planning of ceremony, the ceremony was based on youth, sport, urban transformation and inspiration through their innovative performance. A total cast of more than 10,000 took part in the entire ceremony and covered by NBC London. It was also revealed that Olympics’ opening ceremony was a 2 year planning project and it got only 36 days for the preparation. Hence, it is clear that there were a number of unexpected challenges in project management as planning and building of venues were to be done beyond London. Likewise, customer’s strategy was also viewed in their work throughout the preparation of the project. Thus, to make the attendees feel delighted and surprised, the team carried out the interviews with a number of people from each one. Additionally, more than 700 million EUR of goods and services were procured as required for Olympic 2012 (Ocasio, 2012).

Concept of good composition of operations:

The success of this event was noticed as an outcome covered by BBC London which revealed that London 2012 Olympic opening ceremony became the most watched and appreciated TV show of the year 2012. It was rated in top 20 programs of U.K and provided and average of more than 20 million viewers and a peak record of five-minute (Szalai, 2012).

Further, linking this to the theory of operations management, a project is judged on the basis of its performance, precision, throughput and outstanding outcomes. A good theory of operations management consists of some following major components:

• Description of terms and variables to be used in the event or project
• A specific domain where theory would be pertained
• A well-managed set of variables’ relationships
• And some particular possible issues and predictions (Gupta & Boyd, 2008).

Recommendations:

Apart from these specific constituents, there are other things that should be considered in operations management such as location of facilities, plan layout and handling of materials for use, process design, planning and control, quality control and maintenance management. All these aspects should be considered by the operations team involved in opening ceremony as they selected venues and infrastructure with a proper strategy and implemented all the activities in accordance with the layout planned. They should planned an optimum arrangement of competencies including resources, storage space, operating equipment and all other supporting activities with the best designed structure in order to enclose all these activities. Besides, the team also designs a process which encompassed their choice of technologies to be taken for use, analysis of process flow and layout of these facilities. The basic idea behind the process design should be to convert inputs into effective outcome. Therefore, planning, routing, scheduling of the events and presentation should be the main part of their consideration for the opening ceremony (Deloitte LLP, 2012).

Conclusion:

On the basis of overall analysis, it can be concluded that the efforts of entire team involved of operations management made 2012 Olympics’ opening ceremony a best event ever in the world. The successful outcome was noticed and covered through TV broadcast. They made this event possible and cost-effective within the given budget and set an example for other event planners. From operations management’s perspective, it can be stated that, quality, cost, flexibility and efficiency was taken care with consideration of theories and models of operations management such as total quality management and just-in-time. The ceremony was designed and planned effectively while facing and dealing with critical issues of project management and operations management.

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