Speaker 1: So, let's consider the relationship between the business's overall strategy and the various functions strategies, or the department's strategies. Operations is one of the main functions, or departments, of a business, and there are other functions, such as in a simple case, marketing and finance, and typically several others, customer service or R&D for example. As we set about planning our operations strategy, we must take time to consider that it works together with the overall strategy, and with the other functions who will be making their own strategies too. So marketing will have its own strategy, and finance will have its own strategy, but it must not be its own strategy. They've got to work together to cohesively support the overall business strategy. Consider this example. In the operations strategy, you've decided that we're going to be making a top quality product and the cost is not so important. It will be the best quality there is, and that's what we make. Now that's great, but not if marketing, for example, are not on the same page. Their promotion, their location, their pricing of the product must work together with what is being made in operations. Imagine another business where the finance department has committed to a very tight return on capital employed, ROCE, or a return on investment criteria, ROI, where only the maximum return of the amount of money invested is acceptable. Many businesses are very tight on their investments, but that couldn't work if we had an operational strategy that was built around offering instant delivery of a huge catalogue of finished parts, because we hold an enormous inventory of finished goods, which represents money tied up and would lead to a poorer return on capital employed or ROI. So the takeaway from this area is that operation strategy is just one of the many functions in a business, and that all have to come together into the business strategy. And as the various functions form their own strategies, they must be made together with the other functions to form a cohesive business strategy.