The Four V's of Operations Management

Volume Dimension

The intention of this is to have low costs, but have a high volume of output. An example of this is McDonalds. The volume of McDonald's operation is key to their business' organisation. This is due to the staff being able to work systematically and do repeated tasks - meaning the business is well organised. This means there are lower costs but still a high volume of output.

Variety Dimension

The variety offered. Bus vs Taxi is a good example as buses don't give the option to drop off and pick up where you want, but taxis do. This means that taxis have more variety. However, the more variety means there will be higher costs.

Variation Dimension

This is best explained with an example. There are two house building companies, QuickHouse Ltd and CustomBuild Ltd. QuickHouse shows the houses online, you order it, and the house is built using prefab methods. CustomBuild on the other hand, has show homes. You choose the features you want in your house and they build it for you. CustomBuild will have much higher costs as well as a lower volume of output compared to QuickHouse - CustomBuild may be able to build 2 houses in 6 months while QuickHouse could build 200.

Visibility Dimension

This dimension is related to the customers being able to track, see or order through the operations process. An example would be courier companies - who use online parcel tracking. This would be high visibility. While, on the other hand, there is low visibility, which would be something like a web development company - you can't directly see and track what they are doing.